Accrual / Cash Acct

[prl]

On 19/01/13 04:17, Christopher Lam wrote:
> ...
> I have little inclination to change my practices especially that I
> understand some of the risks. I prefer trusting my bank statement far
> more than I wish to enter individual transactions and try reconcile
> every month. But does anyone have any particular advice on what
> exactly I'll be missing by this method?
> ...
The idea of recording your transactions when they are made is that the 
GnuCash balance includes the value of payments that you have made, but 
are yet to be debited from your bank account. In my experience, this is 
useful because there are often delays between making a payment and the 
debit appearing in the bank account, which sometimes happens here in 
Australia for credit or debit card transactions. It's particularly 
useful for keeping track of cheque payments, as, at least in this 
country, they typically take several days to clear, and there may also 
be delays in the trader presenting the cheque for payment. However, 
cheques are little used here (we wrote two cheques in 2012 and four in 
2011).

Reconciling the account checks whether your record of the transactions 
matches the bank's. Differences between the two are most often due to my 
error, but doing a reconciliation helps find unauthorised transactions, 
including fraudulent ones. I've found a couple of transaction errors 
through reconciliation, and have been able to have the amounts refunded.

If you simply copy the bank's transaction record into GnuCash, I'm not 
sure what role GnuCash is playing for you.

Peter