[GNC] De-Reconciliation Settings

Wed May 8 13:23:59 EDT 2019

I vote strongly that reconciliation status should never change without a
warning that's hard to ignore. That's safest for the users, especially
those of us with fat fingers, and easier to program.

Finding which transaction to re-reconcile can be difficult unless I catch
it right away. The only clue is the amount the new balance is off by, and
there might be many transactions with that amount.

The recommendation to make all changes from the account I'm reconciling
cannot be followed if the transaction involves two bank accounts, such as
chequing and line of credit.

I often change the description of a transaction. Dance becomes Jazz. I also
often recategorize. Class gets split to Class:Jazz, Class:Ballet, and
Class:Costume. Cheque #027 is still for $54.68, and the bank hasn't changed
its mind about whether it's come out or not, so the reconcilation status
hasn't changed.

"This split changed, do you want review reconciliation status?" gives us
the most flexibility, for what I hope is not too much programming. Or go
right to "This is the current reconciliation status. Please correct as
necessary and click OK."

Thinking ahead, if I wanted to review the reconciliation status, I'd like a
view showing all splits, that lets me jump to each account to check the
reconciled balances, then back to detailed transaction. This view might
already exist.

I like the option, well-protected, to change reconciliation status without
going through the reconciliation process. I sometimes, despite being as
careful as I can, reconcile the wrong transaction. (Club charges
registration fee and costume deposit, for the same amount. Deposits one
immediately, returns the other at the end of the year. I try to void the
costume deposit cheque, and see my mistake.) Or husband and I go to
different restaurants, each having $9.99 specials, near the credit card
statement cut-off date.)

Currently, in Quicken I manually de-reconcile one and reconcile the other.
It's not proper accounting, since it doesn't address the incorrect
reconciliation reports, but it works for me. I start by manually recording
the original reconciled balance of all affected accounts, and the last step
is making sure those balances haven't changed. That's too much to ask of
the program.

Sandy

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 11:22, David T. via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> John,
>
> I accept your points regarding the dialog. It would be nice still to see
> what those options might be.
>
> As for editing transaction-level data and having splits de-reconciled, it
> may be that changing the date makes sense, but I disagree when the
> description is edited. To be sure, it is unfortunate that the data elements
> in common usage do not fall into strictly acceptable boundaries;
> nonetheless, I think that the Description field should not be one of those
> transaction-level fields that forces a user to re-reconcile multiple
> accounts.
>
> Best,
> David
>
> > On Apr 29, 2019, at 8:28 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Apr 29, 2019, at 12:54 AM, David T. via gnucash-user <
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> It was pointed out to me in another thread that one can reset specific
> warnings flags using Action->Reset Warnings.
> >>
> >> I’d like to raise a couple of points with this dialog, now that I have
> been introduced to it…
> >>
> >> First off, the dialog is quite opaque, insofar as it is (apparently)
> only showing warnings for which I have selected options previously. There
> is no way for me to determine what (if any) other options I have here. I
> imagine it would be a whole lot clearer if I could have a listing of all
> the various options, along with their current setting. It is
> counterintuitive to me the way it is set up here.
> >>
> >> Be that as it may, I have three entries listed here: “Change contents
> of reconciled split”“Remove a split from a transaction”“Commit changes to a
> transaction”
> >>
> >> The first setting listed here refers to the behavior of de-reconciling
> a split in GnuCash. However, if a user changes Transaction-level data
> elements—such as the Description field—a split will become de-reconciled.
> Therefore, this preference is misnamed, and should be changed, since I
> should receive an alert if I change the description and the reconcile flag
> gets reset. Perhaps “Change reconcile flag upon edit” would be better?
> >>
> >> Second, it seems to me that the boundary for when a split becomes
> de-reconciled needs to be drawn differently. I know this issue was
> discussed recently, and there were reasons given for why the logic falls
> the way it does. However, reconciliation applies to the *split*, as shown
> by the fact that each split in a transaction can be separately reconciled
> in its own account. Changing the status of the split based on a change in
> the transaction is inconsistent and illogical to me.
> >>
> >> I have transactions with as many as ten splits, in which several splits
> are reconciled. If, for some reason, I then change the description of the
> transaction, then every one of those reconciled splits will get
> de-reconciled-- requiring me to reconcile every linked account.
> >>
> >> Finally, I will note that the program is at least consistent, in that
> when you change a description field, it does in fact change every cleared
> split in that transaction. I do, however, question whether that is the
> correct action to impose.
> >>
> >
> > David,
> >
> > Did you read the description at the top of the dialog? It says
> > "You have requested that the following warning dialogs not be presented.
> To re-enable any of these dialogs, select the check box next to the dialog,
> then click OK."
> >
> > What's unclear about that? It's not a "manage warning dialogs" dialog,
> but it doesn't claim to be. You can file an enhancement asking for one if
> you like.
> >
> > I agree that the "change reconciled splits" is a bit misleading. The
> actual dialog with the warning is called "Change transaction with a
> reconciled split". Both the setting and the tool-tip imply that it's
> per-split rather than per-transaction.
> >
> > I'm ambivalent about whether changing the transaction should
> de-reconcile a split, but it seems clear to me that changing the
> transaction date should as that affects the ordering of the split when
> calculating the balance, so ISTM that should continue to unreconcile all of
> the splits in the transaction.
> >
> > I also noticed while checking the reset warnings dialog that it doesn't
> take effect during the current session. I filed
> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797222 to track that.
> >
> > Regards,
> > John Ralls
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>

-- 
+++

Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.
-- Rudyard Kipling