GNUCash value proposition

[Adrien Monteleone]

I started out with GnuCash casually and quickly found that approach was going to get me in trouble. (or at least make the effort useless)

I now get receipts for everything possible and make it a point to enter them every day. (usually the next morning when my memory is fresh)

It really is not difficult or a pain since it is rarely I have to enter more than 3 or 4 transactions. Keeping current also prevents large accumulations to ‘miscellaneous’ because I can’t remember where cash went.

Certainly a full mobile app would be nice, but the present situation is not impossible.

The only inconvenience is that suddenly (within the last 3 months) it seems there is a disease amongst cashiers to either not print, not offer, or throw away an auto-printed receipt. I’ve had to make the habit of asking for one for each transaction. While this has been an issue on rare occasion in the past, it seems some critical mass was reached this spring and now this is an issue in about 90%+ of all my transactions. It’s quite disconcerting.

As for downloading transactions from financial institutions, the best application I can see for this is NOT to have them entered into GnuCash for me, but rather to use in the reconciliation process. Instead of doing this on a periodic (monthly) basis, it could be done as transactions are posted by the bank. That way, there is a ‘running reconciliation’ always in progress. THAT I could see as taking full advantage of interconnectivity. Periodic reconciling against statements is to me, still the old ‘pen and paper’ mode of accounting that computers should be able to improve upon.

> On Jun 5, 2017, at 10:52 AM, John Morris <johnjeff at editide.us> 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.  
> 
>  To each his own. I enter every transaction just about as soon as possible: usually when I get home to my computer. However, I often have the computer with me and enter a gas purchase as we leave the gas station. I find this much less tedious than trying to remember all our purchases and expected credits from the last month or so. In addition, entering the transactions as they come gives me a much closer approximation of our financial situation that I could get from a monthly reconciliation.
> 
> Best,
> John
> 
>> On Jun 4, 2017, at 10:21 PM, 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.  
>> 
>> That said, I review every transaction I import before I complete the
>> import.  If I don't recognize/remember a transaction, I research it to
>> verify if I (or my wife) made it and what it was for.  I do this as
>> part of assigning transactions to balancing accounts.  
>> 
>> I do this for both the Baysian matched tranactions (some transactions
>> it never gets right), and for the unmatched transactions.  When I find
>> things out of balance, it is almost always because a transaction was
>> not matched by the Baysian matcher, which then becomes a double
>> transaction in the account, or not imported. In the end I believe I
>> would catch fraud if it occurred. The Bank's math has never been wrong.
>> 
>> There are two wishes I have for the transaction import review window
>> that would improve this experience:
>> 
>> 1) I wish I could edit descriptions, this would be a HUGE improvement,
>> over trying to remember to go back and find them and edit them
>> afterwards.
>> 
>> 2) I could split transactions in the import window... Same reasons...
>> but if I could edit transaction descriptions, I would be able to find
>> them more easily after import, and then split them. I use the imbalance
>> account to do this when I have to, but it has the draw back of
>> confusing the Bayesian matcher. 
>> 
>> I'll bet the later (2) is harder than the former. The former would save
>> a bunch of time.
>> 
>> Lincoln
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