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

[David Carlson]

To David T's point, when there are un-reconciled items in the register, the
reconciled balance will still match the bank statement if the
reconciliation was completed successfully. Where GnuCash appears to
disagree is in the fact that there is no reconciliation report kept in the
data file or option to display the reconciled balance in the register.
However, Alan is entering the value that GnuCash is displaying in the
register when the reconciliation is complete, or the technically
un-reconciled balance.  Any change in the history preceding that date
should show a disagreement between the note and the displayed balance.

I agree with Alan that often there are very few outstanding un-reconciled
items so it would not be a challenge to mentally adjust for that if even
necessary.  Also, one could show both reconciled balance and un-reconciled
balance in a manual entry used to track those numbers.

Personally, I have used a method similar to Alan's in my bank and credit
card accounts for years.  Most of the errors that I make are in transfers
between accounts where whichever transaction was entered last 'breaks' the
reconciliation of another account if the transaction is assigned to the
incorrect account or if it clears on a different date.  For those date
mismatches I just choose one and leave the other one incorrect unless I
really want to track that float for some reason.  I have a special account
for those cases.

David Carlson

On Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 8:20 AM AEG via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> My reconciliations normally match those of the bank unless I've made an
> error
> or, as you say, a transaction has not yet been presented to the bank. In
> the
> first case, I investigate and correct the error. In the second case, I
> enter
> the actual end-of-day balance in brackets after the statement amount. That
> way, I know both the statement amount and the balance amount on the date of
> the statement. That should never change unless extra transactions are
> inserted with earlier dates or others are deleted.
>
> Alan
>
>
>
> GnuCash - User mailing list wrote
> > This is interesting. Let's say that at a later point, a transaction were
> > added prior to one of these entries. How will this transaction help in a
> > way that looking at the statements wouldn't?
> > You see, one of the basic truisms of reconciliation is that your balance
> > as of a given date will differ from the bank's.  That's because you have
> > entered transactions that the bank won't know about. So, the account's
> > balance on the date of reconciliation *when correct* will not match the
> > bank's.  If at some later point, these change relative to one another,
> how
> > are you going to know?
> >
> >
> >   On Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 13:47, AEG via gnucash-user<
>
> > gnucash-user@
>
> > > wrote:   The way I deal with this is not entirely automatic as it
> > involves setting up
> > a scheduled transaction for every account that has a regular statement,
> > but
> > it does allow me to check back for errors later.
> >
> > For each of my bank or credit card accounts, the statements are normally
> > compiled on the same date every month so I set up a single line scheduled
> > transaction to trigger on that date in which the debit and credit cells
> > are
> > left blank. In the Description box I enter the name of the bank and in
> the
> > Notes box I enter the words "Statement:£" so that it is ready for me to
> > enter the statement total when it arrives. From this, I can check its
> > accuracy at the time of reconciliation and deal with any discrepancies I
> > find.
> >
> > In the future, if I notice a problem, I can look back through
> transactions
> > until I find the last time statements and balances matched, thereby
> > narrowing the dates to check for errors.
> >
> > Alan
> >
> >
> >
> > armanschwarz wrote
> >> Suppose on July 1, 2019 I get a statement that my account balance is
> >> $100.
> >> Since I know this is true and won't change in the future, I should be
> >> able
> >> to tell GnuCash that this is the expected balance, and for some kind of
> >> warning to appear if that condition is ever violated for the
> >> corresponding
> >> account in GnuCash (kind of like a unit test).
> >>
> >> Looking at the documentation for Reconciliation, it seems like this that
> >> feature more targeted at individual transactions rather than setting
> >> known
> >> values for balances at given points in time. If I reconcile an account
> >> for
> >> 12 months every month, and then stop reconciling it the year after,
> >> what's
> >> stopping all of those historic balances from getting thrown out of
> whack?
> >> Does GnuCash remember what the balances should be and prevent this?
> >>
> >> Also, if I accidentally enter a wrong date every 5% of the time, and I
> >> accidentally reconcile them incorrectly 5% of the time, then for a large
> >> number of transactions I'm virtually guaranteed to have my history
> >> broken,
> >> whereas remembering statement balances would avoid this problem.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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-- 
David Carlson