Fwd: Re: Transaction Reconciliation

C. Andrews Lavarre alavarre at gmail.com
Thu Oct 25 14:43:54 EDT 2012


Sorry, left off the group.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Transaction Reconciliation
Date: 	Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:34:52 -0400
From: 	C. Andrews Lavarre <alavarre at gmail.com>
To: 	Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com>



On 10/25/2012 11:56 AM, Colin Law wrote:
> I don't think I have ever changed that field manually. Or is there a
> use case that I am not aware of?
Well I agree that the reconciliation screenis the final step, but
preparing for it requires examining the splits in the transaction and
making adjustments, etc. in the register.

For example, I do a lot of foreign travel. When I record my expenses I
can put in the foreign currency amount exactly if the account is in the
foreign currency, but if it is a dollar account then the underlying and
offsetting accounts are in dollars.

So I put in estimates of the offsetting dollar amounts, but have to wait
for a statement to determine what actually got charged with the exchange
rate at the time of posting by the merchant's bank.

For example. I buy something for GBP 1.00 with my debit card. I check
the exchange rate and it looks like it is £1 = $1.60. Since the debit
card account is in dollars I enter the amount as -$1.60 in the debit
card account and +$1.6 the offsetting account (e.g., Expenses: Beer).

But the merchant's bank doesn't post the transaction until the next day.
By that time the exchange rate is actually £1 = $1.61, so *my* bank is
charged $1.61, which is what shows on my statement.

So I want to edit the transaction splits (Alt+A, P) to make the
correction in order to balance the debit card account (as well as the
offsetting accounts).

This cannot be done from the reconciliation window. (You can do Ctrl+E
in the reconciliation window to "edit" a transaction but all that does
is opens a new register for the account and the problem remains the
same: You have to use the mouse to change n to c for a transaction split.)

Yes I could just make all the adjustments, then use the Reconciliation
screen to check them off but that seems like double work. Better to
change n to c while you're working on the particular transaction. That
way you've recorded that you have corrected that transaction, and can
leave it and come back later (say, after another beer... :-) and pick up
where you left off. The other way you'd have to back over all your
transactions to find out which have been corrected and which have not
and that's a lot of beer transactions, especially if you're visiting
England during the cask ale festival.

At present the only way to record your corrections in a way that is
visible that they have been entered is with the mouse, AFAICT.

Thanks for the reply.

Cheers, Andy







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