[GNC] Credit Card Opening Balance

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2022-05-01 16:27, Smartner LLC wrote:

> …I tend to maintain the following structure for every credit card
>
> Liability:<Bank><Product>Credit Card
>     Liability:<Bank><ProductCreditCard:Statements
>     Liability:<Bank><ProductCreditCard:Transactions
>
> This helps me keep the transactions and statements separate and ensure 
> that I can track the expenses since the last generated statement 
> separately. Meanwhile, I can track total outstanding on the card  on 
> the rolled up balance for the liability account for the credit card.…

If that works for you, great. However, it is not the structure I use, 
and I don't understand how you use the separation between statements and 
transactions.

My structure is a single GnuCash "account" for 
Liability:<Bank><Product>Credit Card. I enter all transactions on that 
card in that account. When statements come in, I use the GnuCash 
"reconciliation" feature to mark the transactions which the card company 
confirms on its statement as "reconciled" in my GnuCash books. The 
expenses since the last generated statement are simply those which do 
not have the status of "reconciled". The View… Filter… dialogue allows 
me to hide all the reconciled transactions if I want.

What do you do with the transactions in your 
Liability:<Bank><Product>CreditCard:Transactions account when the 
following month's statement comes in?  Do you edit each transaction so 
that it moves to the Liability:<Bank><Product>CreditCard:Statements 
account instead?  That looks to me like more work than using the 
reconciliation feature, and I don't see what extra utility it would give 
you.

By the way, I am keeping books for my personal finances and a small 
self-proprietership business. My stakes are low, and I have no auditor 
to satisfy. I see no need to close my books at the end of the year; some 
of my account registers span 10-20 years.

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt