Recocile checking account with OFX file

[Michael Hendry]

> On 16 Mar 2015, at 03:54, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 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. 
> 

I have to confess to a hybrid scheme myself!

My bank transactions are mostly direct debits and standing orders, dealt with in GnuCash using Scheduled Transactions. The remainder are cheques, cash withdrawals and online transactions, which I enter from the cheque stubs, receipts, or at the time of the online payment.

More troublesome are the increasing number of online credit card transactions. These are acknowledged by email, but there are often several similar emails about the same transaction, and most items ordered online will come with a receipt in the package.

I found myself duplicating entries, so now I record only those for which I have a paper receipt until the monthly statement is available. At this stage I reconcile all that can, and search my emails for the missing ones.

Michael

> Cheers,
> David
> 
> On Mar 15, 2015, at 11:59 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com <mailto:hendry.michael at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> On 15 Mar 2015, at 17:42, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com <mailto: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!)
>