Best practice for uncashed cheques?

[Marc Sherman]

On 10/27/2012 11:54 AM, Phil Longstaff wrote:
> I leave uncashed cheques where they are (and when they were
> written).
>
> Why does your balance not match?  Cheques should remain with status
> 'n' until they are cleared through your bank.  Then, change them to
> 'c' (or 'y' if reconciling).  My balance always matches, even if I
> have uncashed cheques.

The Present Balance in the account register in gnucash has the
outstanding cheques subtracted, which doesn't match up with the actual
balance of my bank account. When the outstanding cheques are dated close
to today, I can see the N's above the blue line in the register and
realize what's going on. But when there a couple months back, and thus
not visible in the current screen of the register window without
scrolling, it's less obvious where the missing money went.

On 10/27/2012 12:04 PM, John Ralls wrote:
>
> But I don't see the problem, particularly if you d/l transactions
> from the bank to mark them as cleared: When you open the reconcile
> window, those old checks will be at the top, and they won't be
> marked, so they should stand out as clearly (or even more so) than if
> you changed the dates. As long as you enter the balance from your
> statement and not the register into the "reconcile information"
> dialog box, reconciling should be almost automatic. What part of that
> isn't working for you?

Yeah, everything is fine in the Reconcile window, as you point out. It's 
the account register (which I spend more time in throughout the month, 
as opposed to reconciling only once a month) where things get more 
complicated.

On 10/27/2012 12:12 PM, Robert Heller wrote:
>
> You probably should not alter the dates on the checks.  It is afterall
> the date you wrote on the check.

That's true, but once the cheque finally does clear, importing the 
transaction from the bank is going to update the date to the when the 
cheque actually cleared at that point.

I guess this is a philosophical difference between accounting on a Cash 
basis or an Accrual basis. For my purposes, Cash accounting is more 
important -- I want to be able to manage and predict my cash flow in the 
chequing account, so that I can keep it as low as possible and use the 
excess to pay down my mortgage aggressively. To do that accurately (and 
avoid accidentally letting my balance fall below the "no fee minimum"), 
I need to accurately track when cash comes in and out of the account, 
and predict my future cash transactions when they'll actually clear the 
account.

- Marc