Thank you everyone for responses. Just to clarify a little, I am not interested here in the "transfer" usecase which can be solved with limbo account very cleanly as mentioned here and there is indeed a lot of discussions on this topic (I think it would be useful to collect all the information / idea on this topic in one place, but let's leave it for a separate thread for now). Here I was mostly interested in very simple transactions from debit / credit cards e.g. a grocery or train tickets (let's also ignore trading accounts). Or am I splitting hair here and it does not matter in the long term which date is actually being used?
On Friday, April 2, 2021 at 11:08:11 AM UTC+2 bl...@furius.ca wrote: > This is a known issue, see the settlement dates proposal, is being handled > in the c++ rewrite, see v3 design doc. Also lots of history on the mailing > list. > > Currently you either fudge the dates or skip the occasional balance > assertion that doesn't want to cooperate. It's unsatisfying but I've been > living with it for ten years now > > Eventually the solution will allow you to provide both dates and the > transaction will be split to two with a transfer account where the funds > will transit through an account where the amounts in limbo sit. > > This could be handled by a simple plugin in you feel like it. Use metadata > for the second date and split the transactions in the plugin. Should be > core functionality though > > > On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, 02:35 Tomasz Zurkowski <tomasz.z...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> >> I am still pretty new to beancount (I started my adventure around a month >> ago) and I am still tuning my importers and my ledger. >> >> When writing importers for my banks, I realized that they often provide >> multiple dates for one transaction, e.g. "booking date" and "purchase >> date"), and I was wondering which I should choose as the date for the >> transaction entry. Also, I was wondering if one of them is better, or >> whether it is just a preference (e.g. if I would like to open source / >> share the importers, should it be an option to choose one or the other, or >> can I just choose one of them). >> >> Let me describe situation with UBS bank statement - they provide 3 dates: >> "booking date", "trade date", "value date". Here is my current >> understanding of them: >> >> - booking date - a day when bank puts a transaction into their books. >> Most of the time (always?) it is greater or equal to the other two dates. >> I >> also believe it has the nice property that once there is a transaction >> with >> date X, then later imports (new transactions) will never have a date X or >> before (which makes "balance" entries stable and never brake). >> - trade/value date - I believe this is the date when the trade >> actually occurred. For example if I bought something on Saturday, the day >> will be Saturday but it can be booked on following Monday. The only >> difference between trade and value date I found was when there is a >> "e-bill" (a way in Switzerland to automatically pay bills). In this case >> "trade date" will have a date when the transaction first shows in the >> bank >> account "e.g. 2021-01-29", but then the value date is when the >> transaction >> was scheduled for (e.g. first of the month, 2021-02-01). Booking date >> seems >> to also match 2021-02-01 for those transactions (but I only have few of >> those, so I am not sure if they will always match). There is one more >> difference, when importing transaction, one can choose them to sort them >> either by "booking date" or "trade date" - there is no way to sort them >> by >> "value date" (import contains the "balance" column, that I could use to >> generate automatic "balance" entry). >> >> Currently, I am using "value date" because it represents the actual date >> of the trade (which helps me to remember what the transaction was for, if >> the default bank transaction description is not clear), and it also >> properly dates the periodic transactions that happen on e.g. first of the >> month (makes sure there is always 1 transaction for rent in a given month). >> >> I am also consider using "booking date" (and saving "value date" >> somewhere in the default description), so that I can automatically insert >> "balance" entries, and those entries should almost never break with the new >> import. >> >> UBS credit card importer has very similar issue, the data contains two >> dates: "booking date" and "purchase date" that have similar properties to >> the above one. Small note I want to add here is a refund scenario. If I >> purchased something on 2021-03-15, and then I return it, it is possible >> that return will be processed much later (even 2 months later), so it could >> be booked on "2021-05-15", but it would still have purchase date >> "2021-03-15" (which means if I have any "balance" entries in my ledger, >> they all break and I have to manually adjust them). >> >> Does anyone has similar issues? Any recommendations? Is it a personal >> decision (some people prefer one or the other), or is there a better choice >> (or something that should be at least considered a default / best >> practice)? I would love to hear from others! >> >> Thanks, >> Tomasz >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Beancount" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to beancount+...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/d2d384f1-8658-4268-9b66-ba5e63d13433n%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/d2d384f1-8658-4268-9b66-ba5e63d13433n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/116c7d39-de4c-4c85-a1e9-a55b1e3e5617n%40googlegroups.com.
