GNUCash value proposition

[prl]

On 5/06/2017 18:24, Colin Law wrote:
> On 5 June 2017 at 03:21, Lincoln A Baxter <lab at lincolnbaxter.com> wrote:
>> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
>> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
>> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
>> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
>> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
>> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
>> time of entering all the transactions.
> It depends on whether you trust your bank and, for example, its OCR
> cheque reader. I keep all my receipts then it is easy to enter the
> transactions. A little tedious I agree but for most using this for
> personal accounts I imagine it is only a handful a day.  For business
> users I would have thought that keeping receipts and entering
> transactions manually is mandatory.  For cash I enter significant
> items (that I have kept receipts for) then balance the cash in hand
> with GC once a week or so, assigning the missing cash to
> Expenses:misc.
>
> Colin
It's not just the bank that can be the source of erroneous transactions. 
I've had instances where I was double charged on a credit card (the same 
charge twice for a single restaurant meal), and I was once double 
charged for my home and contents insurance (again two transactions on 
the account for the same amount for a single premium). In both cases it 
wasn't the "banks application" that had made the error, it was the 
business making the charges. The bank had done nothing wrong.

Peter