[GNC] How can I add statement balances to my accounts as checks?

[John Ralls]

> On Oct 6, 2019, at 5:48 AM, armanschwarz <armanschwarz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Adrien Monteleone-2 wrote
>> Software can’t fix you. Only you can fix you. You shouldn’t do the
>> reconciliation till you have time not to rush it. The software won’t
>> explode if you don’t reconcile by a certain date.
> 
> Yeah I fundamentally disagree with this, almost at a philosophical level. If
> we take the view that mistakes are symptomatic of broken users we'll never
> make software that's actually useful to anyone.
> 
> I also think there's a bit of irony as you seem to be suggesting that in
> order to use a feature designed to correct for human errors, we should just
> not make human errors. I don't get it.
> 

Reconciliation is a manual process because GnuCash has no way to parse your bank statement into a form that it can compare with your book, and even were the bank statement presented to GnuCash there's no code in GnuCash to make the comparison and flag any issues. Adding those capabilities isn't one of the core team's current priorities and isn't likely to be any time soon, but if you'd like to make it your priority and can write clear, maintainable modern C++ we'd be happy to consider a pull request. If you want to take that on please start a new thread in gnucash-devel to discuss your proposed design before you start coding.

In the meantime, Adrien is quite right: If you want to ensure that both your book and your bank's records of your account are correct then you need to do a proper job of comparing them. The reconcile window is an aid, not an AI. If you don't care about ensuring that both are correct and agree, don't bother reconciling. The choice is yours.

To answer your earlier question, "if I'm reconciling a July 2019 statement against my accounts, why should I be given the option of using a July 1010 transaction to reconcile against? ": Because it's in the account and hasn't yet been marked reconciled. That's the sole criterion for what you get presented for reconciliation. Setting aside that a 1010 transaction is outside of the date range that GnuCash can handle (that currently starts in 1400), a 1009 year old unreconciled transaction is an obvious error. I'd think most users would like to have it flagged. Note as well that you can set a limit to how old a transaction you can enter or edit in File>Properties on the Accounts tab.

Regards,
John Ralls