Automatically reconcile interest charges

[AC]

On 2015-02-11 04:55, David Carlson wrote:
> On 2/11/2015 12:28 AM, Edward Doolittle wrote:
>> In my personal experience the date the interest is added at the end of the
>> statement period, so after the last transaction on the statement and before
>> any new transactions. When you add the interest transaction, be careful to
>> set the date properly; do not use the date you receive the statement but
>> rather the closing date of the statement. Then the interest charge should
>> appear right after all the other transactions once they have been cleared.
>>
>> On 11 February 2015 at 00:11, AC <gnucash at acarver.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 2015-02-10 21:58, Edward Doolittle wrote:
>>>> Since the information about the interest came from the bank rather than
>>>> from the user, it makes sense to mark it as cleared (but not as
>>> reconciled
>>>> until the reconciliation process is complete).
>>>>
>>>> That said, I personally have never had any trouble finding the interest
>>>> transaction during the reconciliation process. Interest is typically
>>>> charged at the end of the statement period so it will show up near the
>>> end
>>>> of the clearing items during the reconciliation process. I just look for
>>>> interest charges last, after I've cleared everything else.
>>>>
>>>> I sometimes think that I should be trying harder to verify the bank's
>>>> calculation of interest. In some cases it's easy but in other cases not
>>> so
>>>> much. I usually just ballpark it in my head and hit enter when my mental
>>>> calculation inevitably agrees (within a healthy margin of error) with the
>>>> bank's calculation.
>>> This is a credit card rather than a bank but it doesn't really matter.
>>> In my case, the interest charge is usually separated from the
>>> transactions within the billing period by all of the transactions from
>>> the subsequent billing period.  As an example, one of my cards has a
>>> billing period that ends on the first of each month (so the billing
>>> period is essentially an entire natural calendar month).  I don't
>>> typically receive my bill until about two weeks later.  In those two
>>> weeks I accumulate more transactions.  Now when I finally receive the
>>> bill and reconcile, there could be several dozen or more transactions
>>> added to the account.  Once I reach the end of the transactions to
>>> reconcile, there's still many more that belong to the next period and
>>> somewhere in there is the interest entry.

> 
> AC,
> 
> Perhaps your issue is one of timing when or how you are selecting your
> date range when you do your download.  What if you chose to download
> only transactions through the closing date of your statement?  Some
> credit cards only let you do it that way anyway.
> 
> Another thought.  Perhaps you are noticing that the reconcile window
> shows transactions after the closing date that you selected when you
> started reconciling.  That is the way the reconcile window works.  All
> of the downloaded transactions will be pre-checked when you start the
> reconcile and future transactions will be un-checked.  That makes the
> search as simple as looking for the first un-checked transaction in the
> right hand column.
> 
> I find it easier to keep my bearings in the reconcile list when the
> 'future' transactions are shown, because I often check whether certain
> transactions cleared before or after the closing date.

I don't download my transactions, I type them all in from the receipts
as I make them (entered at the end of each day).  When the bill arrives
in the mail I start the reconcile process at which point the interest
gets entered using the Interest Charge dialog that comes up when
reconciliation starts (I don't directly enter it into the register like
a normal transaction, I only use the dialog box).  When I start to
reconcile, no transactions since the last reconciliation are marked.

I fully understand that the reconcile window shows all transactions
after the date selected.  That's the same way any other software package
works (MS Money did the same, all transactions since the last statement
date) and I have no problem with that.  The issue is that the interest
charge is buried among all of the last and current period transactions
(again, none of which are cleared yet) but, since the interest was
entered by actually reading the bill and typing into the Interest Charge
dialog box, I would like it to be auto-cleared after it is entered via
the that dialog box.  I'm already in the reconcile process to begin with
when that dialog box appears so it seems reasonable to have that happen.