[GNC] How do you do this - differentiate scheduled transaction versus no scheduled one

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

On Thu, October 14, 2021 10:19 am, Kalpesh Patel wrote:
> A workflow questions for GNC users:
>
>
>
> 1 - My habits when it comes to payments for example credit card, mortgage,
> other bills, etc. is to scheduled it out in advance from the appropriate
> institutions that hold my bank accounts, such as checking, savings, etc.
> at
> a future date but within due date. In the sub-account register for the
> bank
> account, I like to some-how want to be able to differentiate that I have
> already scheduled up a transaction versus other transaction that is needed
> to be scheduled out. What I was hoping would be that is in the reconcile
> column there would be able to put user defined character, rather than just
> limited to 'y', 'c' and 'n' so that I can actually sort out and see what
> is
> actually scheduled out and what is not in that account. It seems that this
> is not possible so what would be the best way to differentiate between two
> in the register? I do use scheduling to auto enter certain transactions
> but
> I still verify with the bank that transaction is actually scheduled and
> want
> to mark that it has been confirmed as such.

I only enter transactions into GnuCash when I schedule them with the bank.
 So if they are not in the bank's billpay system then they are not in
GnuCash.


>
>
> 2 - How should I be handling a transactions where for example my credit
> card
> credits my payment today but bank doesn't show the corresponding
> withdrawal
> transaction until 3 days later when the funds are actually withdrawn from
> the account. Currently one transaction will accept only one date for both
> side of the transactions but during import and reconcile time if I update
> +
> reconcile then the timestamp changes to whoever's transactions are
> reconciled last from the two accounts. This is somewhat super annoying
> because it re-arranges things in register so when you try to find an
> erroneous transaction of small amount, you cannot compare against the
> running ledger from the institution's on-line portal against entries in
> the
> register or the running total in the register entailing lots of manual
> back-and-forth in the register and possibly updating reconciled
> transactions.

If the *exact date* is very important to you, then you need to use a
suspense account for the in-transit payments.  I'll just point out that
MANY types of transactions have unknown time order.  For example, when you
write a check, it could be a MONTH before it gets cashed, but you better
account for it when you write it to make sure there is always enough money
in the account for the check to clear!

The way I think about it is that I always want to be conservative in my
bank account, so I would date any credits (withdrawals) from my bank
account the day I schedule them to fire -- even if they only clear days
later.  For debits (deposits), I date them when I expect them to hit my
account (e.g. if I sell some stock, the money doesn't get to me for a few
days, so I date it a little in the future).

Personally, I don't care about the *exact* date -- it being close is "good
enough" for me.

I use the reconcile process to find missing or errored transactions.  It
happens, sometimes -- fat fingering a number, swapping digits, or just
missing a transaction.

Sometimes outside reconciliation I do try to go against the bank's
transaction list and look for matching balances.  I understand your
frustration when they don't line up!  So sometimes you (I!) need to just
do the mental matching to find what may be missing (often it's a
transaction my wife made and didn't tell me).

Regardless, forcing GnuCash to match all financial institutions leads to
madness.

> Thanks.

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant