[GNC] What accounts should I reconcile?

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Tue Dec 20 01:06:59 EST 2022


This was what I was going to mention; it can also be used to track reimbursed expense accounts.

⁣David T. ​

On Dec 20, 2022, 6:54 AM, at 6:54 AM, Paul Kroitor <paul at kroitor.ca> wrote:
>I use the reconcile feature in at least two other ways:
>
>1. I keep current accounts with a lot of other parties -- four adult
>children, parents, in-laws, my sister's farm operation, our condo
>association, and at least a half-dozen more. Most of them don't do
>formal accounting and rely on me to know how much they owe me (or
>occasionally I owe them). Things go in and out in various ways, but
>either way they repay me (using Canadian Interac transfers, an email
>thing) item for item, or I print them a list of open transactions and
>ask them to pay me the balance. In either case the account should total
>zero, but because of timing it often doesn't actually come to zero (for
>example, when more debits are entered before their payment arrives).
>
>In this case, some entries must be reconciled to zero, and it's often
>not trivial to see which. So I start Gnucash's reconcile and enter a
>balance of zero. Then I can simply tick off debits and credits that add
>to zero and I'm done. Much easier and more verifiable than manually
>changing reconcile status line by line.
>
>2. For those of the above parties that do have their own formal
>accounting -- done, invariably, by me -- I have to reconcile my version
>of what they owe me with their version of what I owe them. For example,
>they might have sent 12 organic chickens over the last few months and I
>might have bought them a new microwave, phone battery, and furnace
>filters (they're not very technical -- I order these things for them
>with delivery there). For these current accounts I reconcile one
>against the other, starting from a situation where neither is complete.
>Easier to do than explain, but the idea is that you have two Gnucashs
>open side by side (one in a VM) and tick off matching entries, leaving
>entries only in one set of books. You enter those in the opposite books
>and repeat until everything is reconciled. Not the original intension
>of the system, but it's far faster than other ways I've tried (and I've
>been using variations of this for 25+ years).
>
>Paul  
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+paul=kroitor.ca at gnucash.org>
>On Behalf Of David Cousens
>Sent: December 19, 2022 9:27 PM
>To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>Subject: Re: [GNC] What accounts should I reconcile?
>
>Dave
>
>Reconiliation requires an independent statement of the account (e.g.
>from the bank's perspective) against which to reconcile the account.
>You generally don't have that with an expense account. I have had to
>investigate discrepancies between  what I thought I owed a vendor and
>what they claimed I owed them which involved them supplying a statement
>of account detailing all purchases from and all payments I had made
>from them for a specific period against which I coud perform a partial
>reconciliation This wa s before the business customer /vendor reports
>existed
>
>David Cousens
>On Tue, 2022-12-20 at 01:21 +0000, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
>> For simplicity assume that I havé the following two accounts, all in
>GBP.
>> 
>> Assets -> Bank
>> Assets > PayPal
>> 
>> I can reconcile those, and I find the process useful.
>> 
>> However, I noticed that it is possible to reconcile most, if not all 
>> other accounts. Is there any point in reconciling the other accounts,
>
>> such as
>> 
>> Expenses > Office supplies?
>> 
>> 
>> Dave
>
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