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

Thu Oct 14 12:00:42 EDT 2021

Interesting questions, Kalpesh.

Not sure I fully understand your first question, so I'll answer the second
first, then tell you how I handle auto-pay situations at the bank that have
a corresponding scheduled transaction in GnuCash.

So for #2, I let the actual cash account prevail where the date is
concerned.  That's the date my bank tells me the funds left my account.  In
the case of a credit card payment, for instance, the payment they receive
falls within the statement cycle, so when reconciling the account the
payment is there and obvious even if slightly off in date.  That said, I
really think it's up to you to decide which date you want to honor.  You're
definately not alone, though, I see those same date differences in
reconciling my accounts, too.

For #1, I have many template transactions for auto-pay payments I've set up
with my bank, credit card companies, and even direct service providers like
Netflix that have an auto-bill.  These template transactions might even
have dummy amounts as place holders so that the transaction gets into the
registers.  For example:

Expenses:Utilities:Gas        DR 1.00
Expenses:Utilities:Electric   DR 1.00
Assets:Checking                                  CR 2.00

Once I get the actual bill, I adjust the numbers to actual.  When it comes
to reconciling, I probably go about it very differently than most people.
I have not bothered to set up online banking for direct transaction
download into GnuCash from my financial institutions.  Instead, I download
the transactions manually from each institution in Quicken format, then
import them into GnuCash.  In the import wizard, I set all imported
transactions to hit an account I call "Pending Distribution or Split" which
is a top-level Equity account just like "Orphan" or "Imbalance".  This puts
every transaction into one place for me to review and distribute.  In the
case of a general purchase from Amazon or a grocery store, I look up the
purchase and enter an accurate description and distribute to the proper
account.  If the transaction has a scheduled transaction entry in the
register already that corresponds with an imported transaction, I just
"jump" from the imported transaction to the register for the institution
where the transaction downloaded from.  It is usually within a transaction
or two, or often right next to the scheduled transaction.  So I check the
dates on the two, and adjust the GnuCash scheduled transaction date to
match the downloaded transaction date.  Then I delete the downloaded
transaction which takes it out of my "Pending" account as well as
eliminates the duplicate transaction in the institution's register.  The
order I process transactions in the "Pending" account is 1) general
purchases, 2) credit card reconciliations, and 3) bank account
reconciliations.  Payments made from checking to a credit card company will
have two transactions in the "Pending" account when I do all my imports,
one from the credit card company receiving a payment, and another from the
bank making the payment.  When I reconcile the credit card statement, it
will generate a new payment transaction which credits my checking account.
At this point, I delete the other two transactions.  They can be deleted
from the "Pending" account, or the institutions account, but I find it
easier to see a duplicated amount in the institutions account and delete
the one that's hitting the "Pending" account.

So basically, I'm driven by downloaded transactions.  GnuCash does a lot of
the work through scheduled transactions to at least get the known,
recurring transactions entered for me.  But for those scheduled
transactions that are variable from month to month (a utility bill, for
instance), I put in dummy transactions that gets adjusted to actual amounts
when I'm working my way through all the other downloaded transactions.
Importing everything into my "Pending" account gives me one place to go see
and review everything that's happened since I last downloaded everything.
A complete cycle is complete for me when my "Pending" account is empty.  I
use an Excel spreadsheet to track the beginning and ending dates for
transactions downloaded from each institution so I don't end up overlapping
downloads.

Hope that helps (someone, if not you, lol)
Tom

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 9:20 AM Kalpesh Patel <kalpesh.patel at usa.net> 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.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
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-- 
Tom
Thomas L. Forrester
3211 Patty Lane
Middleton, WI 53562-1652 USA
608-831-0769