What's the best way to model an electronic funds transfer pull with hold

[John Morris]

Hi Nelson,
  Such is life in the real world. GnuCash is not designed for the real world, just a simplified approximation. GnuCash reports just one main balance. You can get more by using the reconciled, cleared, present, future minimum and total columns in the main Accounts tab, but that is beside my point. In the bank-a tab, you get just one balance. In contrast, your online view of the bank probably reports at least two balances: one for the total amount of money in the account, including the $10,000, and one for the available balance, excluding the $10,000 while those funds are on hold. Since GnuCash gives you just one balance, you can only model one of those balances. I choose to model the available balance in the moment because that is more important to me at the time. For my long-term records, I choose to model the actual balance, which is why I delete those transactions after the hold expires.

Best,
John

> On Oct 1, 2017, at 12:49 PM, Nelson <fkjasdhf878 at mailinator.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> What I am doing today is exactly you are saying. I have a "pending" account
> and I would record two transfers:
> 
> - $10000 bank-a -> pending
> - $10000 pending -> bank-b postdated by 5 business days.
> 
> What bothers me with this approach is that when I go online on bank-a I see
> a different balance than I have in GC.