[GNC] Reconciliation Changes

Thu Oct 14 07:26:51 EDT 2021

Chris, 

I believe she's implementing envelope budgeting (https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-envelope-budgeting-1293682) using sub accounts. A fair number of users of Gnucash do this, which has been discussed on the lists over the years. 

David T. 

-------- Original Message --------
From: Chris Good <goodchris96 at gmail.com>
Sent: Thu Oct 14 03:11:57 EDT 2021
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC] Reconciliation Changes

Hi Lisa,

This change was done under https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797648
for reasons explained in the bug.
The first fix went live in 3.9 which forced all splits in a transaction to
the new selected reconciled state when one of them was changed, rather than
just toggling the reconciliation status of all the splits for the account
being reconciled.
This was deemed incorrect, so a change was made in 3.11 where changing the
reconciliation status of a split in a transaction had no effect of other
splits in the transaction for the account being reconciled.

I wouldn't recommend running an old version like 3.10. Never upgrading until
you have to greatly increases your risk of falling foul of a security issue
(or just a bug) that may have already been fixed.

I don't upgrade immediately a new version is available, but I do after a
little while so it is likely that any major problems with a new release will
have been found and probably fixed.

It seems unusual to create different subaccounts in a bank account for
different types of expenses.
I believe it is more usual to split your income and expenses into different
income and expense accounts, and do your budgeting based on the totals of
those accounts.

Regards,
Chris Good

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2021 20:31:44 -0700
From: Lisa Reynoso <mrs.reynoso at gmail.com>
To: David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
Cc: DaveC49 <davidcousens49 at gmail.com>, Gnucash Users
	<gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Reconciliation Changes
Message-ID: <916D45E4-A319-4AB9-BFB9-FD7A6557F4C8 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8

Well, my computer reformatted, so I had to start over. But in almost two
decades, I started over several times, and this last time is the only time
this problem occurred. I can?t imagine that had anything to do with it. 

I?m going to look at an old hard drive I saved from a couple computers back
and see if I have an old installation file and see what it does if I do. Or
what happens if I import old files from years back (if they are still
there). I?ll let you know how it goes. 

Lisa

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 12, 2021, at 5:35 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> ?
> Sub accounts under the same bank account are not the same as transfer s to
outside accounts. 
> 
> If I recall correctly, they must be of the same type as the parent
account.  I think that should still work as before in reconciliations.  Were
you able to import your table of accounts from an old file or did you start
over, possibly different somehow this time?
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 7:18 PM Lisa Reynoso <mrs.reynoso at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Okay, first, I don?t know what version I had before. It was about 2 years
ago that I downloaded it, and my hard drive was wiped, so I have no idea. 
>> 
>> Second, you completely misunderstood my problem. I understand the
reconciliation process intricately; I?ve been using it for a decade and a
half. I understand about clicking the ?include sub accounts? box; it?s the
sub account feature that turned me on to the program, since I was doing that
on paper as my mother did; a computer was so much faster, since it did most
of the math for me. I like math, but it gets tedious entering numbers in a
calculator. But I digress. 
>> 
>> There are two basic examples to illustrate. I have a checking account,
divided into various sub accounts, such as gas, groceries, clothing, school
bill, etc. When I deposit a paycheck, I split the deposit into various
accounts. Likewise when i purchase both food and toothpaste at the grocery
store; toothpaste doesn?t come from the food budget. When I want to
reconcile the checking, I used to be able to check one of those splits and
have them all highlight. So if I checked the toothpaste transaction, the
grocery charge would check as well. Of course the expense account wouldn?t
reconcile; I wasn?t referring to that. 
>> 
>> But the other example is when I transfer money within the checking
account from one sub account to another. Like my original gas to groceries
(or vice versa) analogy. In that case, when I would check the credit, the
debit would check automatically as well, and the balance on the
reconciliation would not change, because no money actually entered or left
the checking. It was just moved around within it. Now I have to check one
and then scroll down to find the other. I make several dozen of these
transactions every month, and it is tedious to have to check them both. 
>> 
>> I downloaded version 4.4 when this problem first made itself felt. I
downloaded 3.11 today, and it still doesn?t do what it used to. I have
Windows 10; I don?t know if an earlier version will work or not. 
>> 
>> Lisa
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> > On Oct 12, 2021, at 2:09 PM, davidcousens49 at gmail.com wrote:
>> > 
>> > ?Lisa
>> > 
>> > It may help if you can tell us what the previous version was and 
>> > which version you have now upgraded to.
>> > 
>> > On the reconciliation setup dialog under the Ending Balance entry 
>> > there is a checkbox "Include subaccounts" which AFAIK by default is 
>> > not checked. Try selecting that when starting the reconciliation 
>> > and see if that restores some of the functionality you are used to. 
>> > As far as I can tell once you have selected that option in the 
>> > dialog for a given account it remains in force for subsequent 
>> > reconciliations until you unselect it again but I am not completely
sure how sticky that option is and whether it does set a flag in the account
structure.
>> > 
>> > Any reconciliation process only acts on a single account and as 
>> > such only marks the splits of a transaction into that that account. 
>> > You do not reconcile a whole transaction unless you have 
>> > individually reconciled  all accounts that the transaction has 
>> > splits to. Splits to an account which has not been reconciled will 
>> > generally be marked with a "n" ( and maybe a "c" in some cases) and 
>> > splits to a reconciled account with a "y". If a previous version of 
>> > GNuCash did do this then that behaviour was incorrect. I have been 
>> > using GnuCash for a similar period of time and I can't recall any
version in which a whole transaction not just the split was reconciled.
>> > 
>> > David Cousens
>> > 
>> >> On Tue, 2021-10-12 at 12:29 -0700, Lisa Reynoso wrote:
>> >> I've used GNU cash for years. Like, over 15 years. I used it 
>> >> before I was married, so it's definitely been more than 15 years.
>> >> 
>> >> Anyway, I never upgrade except when I get a new computer, and then 
>> >> I install whatever is the latest, and transfer the files from the 
>> >> old version (or in my most recent case, I just started over, 
>> >> because the computer reformatted without my permission--yeah, that 
>> >> was a nightmare!). When this latest install happened, something 
>> >> had changed about how the reconciliation works. Always before when 
>> >> I had a transfer from one subaccount within an account to another, 
>> >> or if it was a split transaction, when I would check one box in 
>> >> the reconciliation window, all boxes pertaining to that 
>> >> transaction would check. For example, suppose I had extra gas 
>> >> money at the end of the month, but had overspent my grocery fund. 
>> >> I could transfer from the gas to the grocery subaccounts, and when 
>> >> I reconciled, I could check one box and it would mark them on both 
>> >> the credit and debit sides, without me having to hunt for the 
>> >> opposite transaction. Likewise, when I deposit a check, I usually 
>> >> divide it among various accounts, and all I had to do was click 
>> >> one of the subaccount deposits, and all the other deposits from 
>> >> the same check would be marked as well. Now, that's not the case. 
>> >> And I can't find an old enough version for Windows 10 that does 
>> >> that anymore. Anyone have any ideas? It now takes almost twice as long
for me to reconcile, since I have a lot of subaccounts and do a lot of
internal transferring within my checking account that doesn't show up on my
bank statement.
>> >> Having to look for the parallel transactions or figuring out which 
>> >> split transactions go together takes more time. I'm almost ready 
>> >> to try to find some other software, but I've used this for so long 
>> >> I really don't want to switch.
>> >> 
>> >> Lisa
>> >> 

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