[GNC] Last month's transactions included in Reconciliation Report

[Adrien Monteleone]

It seems to me like Dale mentioned, what you want is in fact presented as the Reconcile window in GnuCash, rather than a printed report. The Report is for after the reconcile is done, though I suppose you could use the unreconciled portion for a future statement comparison when reconciling.

To explain the report more:

If you reconciled transactions from June in your July reconciliation, then yes, they should appear in the July Reconciliation Report because they are part of the formula that got you from the balance on 6/30/19 to the balance on 7/31/19. And they should also show up as cleared in July on your statement from the bank.

If you reconciled transactions in June in the June reconciliation, they should not show up in a report for a July Reconciliation, as they aren’t part of that calculation.

If they *are* showing up in that case, you might have a bug, but I can’t seem to reproduce it in my test. (or my usual workflow)

The report can give you both the a), b) & c) sections you want.

On the Filter tab, set `Reconcile Status` to “All”

Be sure on the Display tab to check both `Date` and `Reconcile Date` and `Totals`

On the Sorting tab, set your `Primary Key` to “Reconciled Status”, check `Primary Subtotal`, set `Secondary Key` to “Date” and make sure `Secondary Subtotal for Date Key` is set to “None”.

Now you should get a report for the time period specified in the General tab, that first shows all transactions reconciled during that time period, regardless of their actual transaction dates. This will be followed by a subtotal of those transactions.

The next section will be a chronological listing of all outstanding transactions that have not been reconciled with another subtotal.

The Grand Total at the bottom will be the sum of the two subtotals, that is, the sum of debits/credits for the report date range.

The reason for selecting both “Date” and “Reconciled Date” is this will both make clear what the report is doing, and maybe expose an error.

If you really want a printed report rather than a window to work from, (you still have to use the window to perform the task) then set `Reconciled Status` to “Unreconciled” and you’ll get just those transactions that still need to be matched up. I don’t think you can restrict these by date. You’ll get all of them. (helpful if you see one from the past that should have been reconciled, but messy if you’re behind several months on reconciliation) At the least, you can specify “Monthly” as the `Secondary Subtotal for Date Key` to divide them up. You could also make “Date” the primary key since you’re only dealing with unreconciled transactions in this case.

Finally with regards to ‘Reconcile Date’ perhaps being a source of the problem, my understanding is this date is the one you choose for the closing date, not the actual calendar date you happen to perform the reconciliation. (at least it should be) If instead, it is tagging transactions that you reconciled with a closing date of June 30th as being reconciled on July 3rd, then yes, that is a bug. But all of my reconciliation reports display the closing date as the reconciliation date for me. So I can’t reproduce that one either. (and I might perform the actual reconciliation on any old day of the month)

Regards,
Adrien

> On Aug 4, 2019, at 1:42 PM, Art Chimes <artsonline at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the responses.
> 
> Adrien asks, "why are you wanting this report?" Partly it's about
> having another piece of a paper trail, but mainly because it's what
> I've been doing in Quicken for a couple of decades.
> 
> To be clear, this is just about my personal finances: checking
> account, credit cards, and so on. Nothing that will be audited, nor
> likely requested by an accountant. What I am used to
> seeing in a reconciliation report is (a) a list of cleared
> transactions for the period covered by the current statement, the one
> I have just reconciled; and (b) a list of transactions that remain
> uncleared after the reconciliation process; and (c) various totals and
> summaries.
> 
> Item (b) would ideally consist of transactions since the statement
> closed, an uncashed check I wrote two months ago, etc.
> 
> When I specify a date range, Gnucash wants to look at both the
> transaction date AND the reconciliation date. So I am getting two
> months' transactions in the report, one of which is just clutter and
> will duplicate the prior month's reconciliation report.
> 
> If my latest statement includes 15 transactions between July 1 and
> July 31, when it closes, that time period will include the day (e.g.
> July 3) that I reconcile the June statement. But the June transactions
> are history; they have no business in the July reconciliation report.
> I'm not an accountant for sure, but if there is a reason for including
> in the report the June transactions *reconciled* in July along with
> the actual July transactions, I don't see it.
> 
> The suggestion that I filter for a date range (e.g. July 1-31) and for
> reconciled transactions, then generate an Account Report would give me
> a list of current reconciled transactions, but not the unreconciled
> ones. (Yes, I could generate a separate report with a filter, but that
> is an inelegant workaround, in my opinion.)
> 
> Regarding Christopher's reference to "standard accounting practice," I
> want to emphasize that I don't know what is standard, just what seems
> logical, familiar, and useful to me. Nevertheless, I am going to
> follow his suggestion and file a bug report suggesting an Enhancement
> to the reconciliation report dialog.
> 
> Thanks,
> Art