Change reconciled code

[Dave H]

Hi Derek,

That's what I'm stuck with at the moment, I'm trying to replicate my real
world situation as it happens.

I'm using gnucash for my personal finances and a rental property only and
add all my transactions manually and I guess I'm a bit ocd'ish about
GnuCash exactly reflecting my real world situation at any point in time :-)

I don't import csv or qif transaction files from my bank at the end of the
statement period like some people do as I use GnuCash to confirm that the
bank's view of my situation is correct according to me, Most of my
transactions are added within a few hours of the transaction taking place
so they automatically get an "n" allocated in the reconcile column, which
I'm happy with, although I'm sometimes left scrambling to catch up with my
better half's transactions after a weekend of shopping :-)

If I go to online banking after adding a few transactions, some
transactions may not even show up there until the next day - some show up
immediately, some don't, it all depends on which bank the retailer uses for
their eftpos/credit card transactions - if they use the same bank as my
credit card issuer uses they generally show up in online banking
immediately, if not it can take a few days.

The next day, especially if it's a weekend, some of these transactions
generally show up as PENDING in online banking and my bank lists these
PENDING transactions in a separate section at the top of the transaction
listing and also displays the number of PENDING transactions and a total
amount of the PENDING transactions, Some transactions may show up as
cleared and some may still be missing - it's not uncommon for some credit
card transactions to be missing for 4-5 days and then suddenly show up in
my online banking as a cleared transaction.  Once the transaction is no
longer pending in online banking I click the Reconcile column to set it to
Cleared.

I have a VISA debit card with another bank and they do things slightly
differently.  If I have for example a balance of $100 and make an online
purchase for $40 using the VISA debit card (or PayPal as the bank account
is also my PayPal debit account), in online banking this bank will show me
3 balances - Account Balance = $100, Authorisations = $40 and Available
Balance = $60.  In this situation I tend to regard the Authorisations as
Pending Transactions and would set the Reconcile column to "p" to mark them
as pending if I could until the Authorisation's clear and the Account
Balance drops down to $60 in online banking at which time I would click on
the Reconcile column again to update it to cleared.

So at any point in time I can have uncleared transactions that are pending,
or not yet showing up in online banking at all as they haven't hit my bank
yet.  Some may disagree but to my mind these are two different states :-)

Having a "p" = pending state and separate "Pending:" total at the bottom of
the register would allow me to confirm at a glance the I've entered all my
pending transactions correctly and agree with the bank's view of my account.

Cheers Dave H.


On 10 December 2016 at 01:35, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Dave H <hellvee at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I'm happy with the n = not reconciled but for credit card accounts in
> > particular I wouldn't mind seeing a "p" for pending and an associated
> > "Pending:" total at the bottom to cover the multitude of pending
> transactions
> > that credit cards seem to attract these days and that can show up for a
> number
> > of days in online banking.  My banks generally display a separate
> section of
> > pending transactions along with a pending total at the top of the
> transaction
> > listings these days.
>
> Why not use 'n' for pending and 'c' for cleared (i.e., posted)?  I don't
> see the need for another state.
>
> > Cheers Dave H.
>
> >     Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> >     You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -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
>