Recocile checking account with OFX file

[David T.]

Michael,

I reconcile my bank’s transactions against my bank’s statements. An absurdity, I know.

Since they are only personal books, my main concern is to see if there are transactions that look fraudulent.

I do the reconciliation because it gets me to look at each transaction one more time to see if anything looks off. If anything *is* off, the bank requires me to contest it in a timely manner.

A long time ago, I gave up trying to get both my wife and me to save (and turn over!) a receipt for every transaction she and I generated, then enter them all into the software manually, and then reconcile them against the statement—especially because the only errors I ever turned up were my own. The number of hours of my life I lost in years past trying to track down precisely where **I** had screwed up in my books was not worth the satisfaction of being able to say that my bookkeeping was as good as the bank’s. 

Cheers,
David

On Mar 15, 2015, at 11:59 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
>> On 15 Mar 2015, at 17:42, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Dave, 
>> 
>> I am in the same general boat.  I usually download the transactions in one pass, and then reconcile in a second one.
>> 
>> David T
>> 
> 
> Why bother with the reconciliation? You’ve downloaded the bank’s version of your account, and you’re going to compare it with (wait for it!) the bank’s version of your account.
> 
> If you’ve forgotten to enter a large future-dated online transaction, or a large cheque which hasn’t yet been presented, you’re due for a nasty surprise at the next download after these transactions actually hit the bank account.
> 
> Michael (still puzzled!)