oops, i forgot

D. Gassen gnucash3r7826354 at dirkgassen.com
Tue Oct 9 17:04:49 EDT 2012


On 10/9/12 10:21 AM, Alexander, John Ryan wrote:
> One of the things I'm looking for is a way to track non-cashed checks. I wrote a check for taxes in April and forgot about it until it was cashed late September. Does Gnucash have a function for tracking something like that so I don't bounce checks in the future by accident? I've browsed the FAQ and have just glanced over the archives, but I haven't seen anything of the sort.

What I have started doing is to have two sub accounts for each checking
account (or account I write checks for):
* Pending
* Realized

When I write a check I have a transaction coming out of the "pending"
account and when the check posts I have a transaction from "pending" to
"realized".

This way I can:
* look at the parent checking account to see the total balance including
all checks that I've ever written and those outstanding
* see the total amount of checks to still be cashed by the recipient
that hasn't been posted in the "pending" account
* compare all transactions that my bank knows about with the "realized"
account

I think I have seen suggestions with only one sub account, where you'd
have the check writing transaction go against the sub account and then
transfer from the sub account to the parent account.

Not sure if it is worth the hassle for you compared to just creating a
transaction when you write the check. When you reconcile your account
this might be good enough:
* you could set a transaction to "cleared" when the check appears in
your account
* reconcile the the transaction when you get the account balances

Then the status bar in the account register will show you the "cleared"
balance, which should match what your bank reports but you still see the
total balance for the pending transactions (aka the checks that haven't
been cashed yet) as the running total "balance" column in the register.
The "reconciled" balance then would be the one from your last statement.

I really like the two sub accounts b/c it gives me a bit more detail: I
know when I wrote the check and when it has been cashsed.

Side note: I'm not an accountant, this just "works for me".

Dirk


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