Transaction Reconciliation

Tue Oct 30 13:45:38 EDT 2012

I have a couple of additional comments here:

1) Liz mentioned the trouble with "identical transactions." Presumably, they won't be exactly identical. I have found over the years that care should ALWAYS be taken at two points in particular: first when you are importing your transactions (is the matcher messing up the match?) and second when reconciling, to be sure that you don't mix two similar transactions up.

2) It is my experience that the reconciler automatically uses the date you enter for the statement as the cutoff for showing check-marks for 'c' status transactions. In other words, if you enter 2012-10-26 as the statement date, downloaded transactions with dates after that are NOT pre-checked.

3) On rare occasions, I have had the luck to download all my transactions for a statement time period. In this circumstance the amounts in the statement and in Gnucash match, and all I have to do is quickly check to see that my transactions aren't off in some way. Obviously, this method occurs only rarely, and it relies on my diligence in importing. [IMPORTANT PREFLAME DISCLAIMER: the official "Good Accounting" thing to do is not download transactions from the bank and then reconcile to the bank's statement, since the point of reconciling is to check the bank's work against your accounting. To that I note that these are my personal books, with transactions generated by myself and my wife, and keeping track of them all is a nightmare, so downloading is taking steps away from lunacy.]

4) When (more commonly) the numbers don't add up at first, I work to eliminate problems. My statement has a summary of how many deposits and charges there were, and the total amounts involved. I start with deposits (since I always have fewer of them, sadly!) and see whether the totals match. Then, I tab over to the charges pane and clear all the check marks by holding down the spacebar, taking care to re-uncheck any transactions that get checked in this step. Having removed all the checks, I then sort first by date (click on the column heading) and then by transaction number (ditto), because my bank lists checks under a separate listing.  I then check each check off (this is where I usually have the similar transaction problems that Liz noted). Finally, I work through the other charges one by one (and yes, the differing order of transactions can be annoying).

5) Finally, I will point out (since it seems to come up in every discussion about reconciling, even if it hasn't yet come up here), that the starting balance **doesn't really matter**; it's only the **ending balance that is important.** If the Gnucash starting balance and the statement starting balance are not the same, it means that some transaction that you had previously reconciled somehow got unmarked. This is not a big deal, unless the unmarking happened because you weren't paying attention under point 1...

David

________________________________
 From: David Carlson <carlson.dl at sbcglobal.net>
To: Liz <edodd at billiau.net>; Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> 
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org 
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 8:07 AM
Subject: Re: Transaction Reconciliation

Derek,

I think that Liz and probably others (as I used to be) are confused when they receive their paper statements and the screen shows some transactions already checked.  They are then not sure which ones they have personally checked unless they start over.

That is always a little more difficult because they are never in the same order on the screen as on the paper statement.  If they do not want to print an extra copy of something so they can use a pencil, they need some tool to track which they themselves have checked.  

It is definitely not satisfactory to assume that downloads are accurately matching transactions so that they can be assumed to be 'cleared'.

David C

--- On Tue, 10/30/12, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:

From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Transaction Reconciliation
To: "Liz" <edodd at billiau.net>
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 9:20 AM

Liz <edodd at billiau.net> writes:

> On Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:37:02 -0700 (PDT)
> "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> As for your first use case, I don't really see why you'd need to
>> change the R status on a manually-entered transaction; in my
>> experience, the primary difference this makes is to pre-check a
>> transaction in the (above-mentioned) reconciliation window. However,
>> it is a simple matter in that window to mark such a transaction as
>> reconciled--despite it's not having a "C" status.
>
> If I import data there is a 'helpful' change from 'n' to 'c'.
> When I try to reconcile, the 'c' marked transactions don't appear in
> the window, and I used to waste considerable time reconciling from the
> paper statement when I had only part-downloaded the account data.
> Now I change all the 'c' back to 'n' and reconcile speedily.

Anything marked 'c' should just already be checked off in the reconcile
windows.  You shouldn't need to change them back to 'n', unless you wind
up clearing transactions after the statement is generated but before you
receive it -- in which case yes, you will need to uncheck those items in
the reconcile window.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user at gnucash.org
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.