Find Transaction Result – Can’t change View

[Derek Atkins]

Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> writes:

>> On 19 Mar 2015, at 15:51, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>> Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> I’m not so sure about Derek’s suggestion of marking the transactions
>>> as “cleared” and later “reconciled”. Reconciliation involves
>>> comparison of your books with a statement from elsewhere, and ensures
>>> the two stay in step. 
>> 
>> Indeed, and the "statement" in my case is the reimbursement from my
>> employer.
>> 
>>>    In the case of the loans to my children,
>>> mentioned above, repayment is made by instalments - perhaps over
>>> several years - and neither of these flags would be useful. I’d be
>>> inclined simply to record the fact that a claim has been submitted in
>>> the Description field of the transaction e.g. “A Stationer - claim
>>> submitted to School B on dd/mm/yy”. By inspection of the account’s
>>> register, you can easily spot a non-zero balance, find the claim that
>>> hasn’t been paid, and know how much it’s overdue.
>> 
>> Yes, in YOUR case it's a loan, not a reimbursement.  Different can of
>> fish completely.
>
> I don’t want to come to blows here, but when you purchase an item for
> your employer, you’re making him a loan. The reimbursement happens
> when he pays you back.

You could certainly look at it that way (and it's not an incorrect way
to look at it).  However I would argue you're making a bunch of little
loans (one for each item you purchase for your employer).  In my
experience they pay back for full items, not in installments, so you can
still perform the clear/reconcile on each item individually to signify
that (cleared) you filed for reimbursement and (reconciled) you were
paid.

This is very different than what most people would consider a loan,
where you provide a significant value in one chunk and get paid back in
pieces over time.  In this case you're right, there's really no way to
use the clear/reconcile trick to keep track of it and it does not at all
make sense.

This is why I'm trying to categorize the two examples differently.

>>> Call me pedantic, but I’m not comfortable with misuse of a feature
>>> (the “reconciled" column) when there’s a more transparent way through.
>> 
>> It's not at all a misuse.
>
> Hmm. I don’t believe this is the way the Reconcile feature was
> intended to be used, but if it works for you, that’s fine.

Glad you approve ;)

I wouldn't say anything about how it's intended to be used.  It's a
tri-state mechanism.  And in the case of a reimbursed purchase once
you've been paid for it you should never need to "see" it again, so it's
actually quite convenient to see which items have requested
reimbursement and which items have been paid.  The View -> Filter By
works quite well for this.

However I will maintain that I'm a developer and not an accountant.  :)
But it works well for me and I would certainly recommend this practice.

> Michael

-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