[GNC] how do I get different dates for balancing transactions when transferring amounts between two accounts
Adrien Monteleone
adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Tue May 15 14:22:58 EDT 2018
Rufus,
The date issue is handled by the suggestion offered by Kate. You need an intermediary account.
I assist a family business with their books and we use both an ‘undeposited funds’ account (for checks received) and a ‘check clearing’ account to handle these ‘in-transit’ states until the funds end up at their final resting place. I was about to suggest as much, but kept reading the thread and realized she beat me to it. I’ve seen that approach (and no others) suggested many places so my guess is that it is fairly standard practice. (plus her CPA creds attest to that)
When you write the check, that will get the date you write it, into the account you wrote the check on.
When you confirm the deposit, that is a separate transaction with it’s own date from the clearing account to the other checking/savings account you wrote the check to.
I’m not sure what others do but I put check numbers on transactions when I receive a check as well as issue one. I see it just as a document number, a reference number. I don’t consider the number itself to be anything special. What makes it a ‘deposit’ is if it is a debit to a checking/savings asset, not the existence of a reference number.
Note, a withdrawal of funds might also have some sort of reference/transaction number. I’d put that in the same field in such a case. It’s just a reference to the document evidencing the transaction.
In your case, you’re doing both the writing and receiving, but the process is otherwise the same.
If you’re not using the clearing account (and thus still not going to get different dates) you’ll see something like this:
1/1/18 12345 Bank ABC
transfer by check Assets:Savings $100
Assets:Checking $100
If you were using the clearing account:
First the initial draft:
1/1/18 12345 Bank ABC
transfer by check Assets:Savings $100
Assets:Check Clearing $100
Then the acknowledgement that the check was received by the other bank:
1/4/18 12345 Bank XYZ
transfer by check Assets:Check Clearing $100
Assets:Checking $100
You could alternately put the check number in the Action field instead of the Num field. A reason might be to either repurpose the Num field, or for the case of multiple drafts:
1/1/18 Bank ABC
12345 transfer by check Assets:Savings $100
67890 transfer by check Assets:Money Market $100
Assets:Check Clearing $200
In my case, I repurpose the Num field as a time entry. (since GnuCash doesn’t have a time-stamp entry field, though it internally does use one) This way, I can enter transactions in any order and still have them appear in my register as they really happened. (this is most important for cash accounts, but can be useful elsewhere, so I just use this 100% as a habit)
My version would be something like this:
1/1/18 1425t Bank ABC
12345 transfer by check Assets:Savings $100
67890 transfer by check Assets:Money Market $100
Assets:Check Clearing $200
The ‘1425t’ would indicate I conducted this transaction at 2:25pm that day. The ’t’ distinguishes the number from a check or other reference number as being a time, and I use 24 hour notation since the sorting algorithm in GnuCash on this field stops once it encounters a non-numeric so I can’t use any am/pm designation or a ‘:’. Now that I’ve placed a time in the Num field, I can’t use it for a check number, so I use the Action fields for that on each relevant split line.
You could instead use the Action field with one of the preset actions that might make the transaction more readable and structured (its intended purpose) and then place the check/transaction number in the split’s memo field. Either way, that number will still be searchable.,
1/1/18 1425t Bank ABC
Transfer by check #12345 Assets:Savings $100
Transfer by check #67890 Assets:Money Market $100
Assets:Check Clearing $200
If the account is of type ‘Bank’ you’ll have a nice list in the Action drop down of bank-related actions, or if you want an action that isn’t listed in the drop down, or the type isn’t ‘Bank' you can always just type the action you want.
None of this is a ‘right way’ or ‘wrong way’ but rather how you do this is up to you depending on what level of detail you need for your records to be able to audit yourself for reliability and to make financial decisions. (that’s why we keeps records, not just for their own sake, but to use that info to make decisions)
The question I ask myself after I figure out what accounts I need to use for a particular transaction is, “What info am I going to need when I want to investigate something about this transaction?” The answer will determine what level of detail I enter and where I choose to put it. Of course, it’s only slow going in the beginning. After a time, you tend to just enter the transactions ‘automatically’ without much thought, because you’ve already done the thinking on previous entries.
Regards,
Adrien
> On May 15, 2018, at 12:35 PM, RL <rlaggren at mail.com> wrote:
>
> Adrian
>
> I can see where using the check number might be reasonable. Just not
> what I have done so far and it looked "strange". I'll try it, since
> having the check number of a deposit front/center is all to the good. I
> think my original feeling was that I wanted to quickly, at a glance,
> tell which "direction" the funds were going - and unfortunately I'm not
> used to checking to the right to see which column the funds appear in.
> TBD, I guess.
>
> However, the date _is_ a problem because I want to unequivocally match
> any transaction in GC with the line on the statement the bank provides.
>
> Thanks for you comment. So more experienced users regularly enter the
> check number on both sides of the transaction?
>
>
> Rufus
>
>
>
> On 05/14/2018 10:42 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
>> Rufus,
>>
>> I don’t see why a check number on a deposit line doesn’t seem proper if in fact, you are depositing a check. In this case, it happens to be a check you wrote, but it IS from another account, so from the perspective of the receiving account, it’s no different than the case where someone else wrote you a check and you deposited it. And if you have multiple such checks to deposit for some reason (say you’re transferring funds from more than one account) then you can put the check numbers in the action field for each split.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
>>
>>> On May 14, 2018, at 5:19 PM, RL <rlaggren at mail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have two bank accounts on which I regularly write checks to transfer
>>> amounts between them. Downloading the ofx files from each bank, I have,
>>> for those checks, transactions with different (correct) dates in each GC
>>> account which represent the left and right side of the same accounting
>>> transaction. For purposes of reconciling against the bank statements,
>>> these dates must remain different in their separate GC accounts, even
>>> though they are opposite ends of the same accounting transaction.
>>>
>>> GC wants to make the balancing transactions in each GC account one
>>> single identical transaction (except for the proper credit/debit column,
>>> depending on which account I'm looking at). I don't see how to work this
>>> and maintain both accounts true to their source, the bank transactions.
>>> The date is also important because at times it matters when a check was
>>> cashed and when it was payed by the originating bank; there needs to be
>>> an accurate record of this. An additional, maybe lesser, problem is that
>>> GC's methodology makes the transaction number the same in each GC
>>> account. Since the trans number is one of the most easily noted text
>>> fields, I have been using it to quickly/easily identify "deposits" - but
>>> this won't work if I want to retain the check number in that field (very
>>> important). Also, a check number on a deposit line doesn't seem
>>> particularly proper.
>>>
>>> How is this handled in GC?
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Rufus
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