Remember that your books are supposed to reflect your view of the transactions you are making, not those of other entities.
Instead of a credit card payment or an account-to-account transfer, consider the more traditional case of paying a vendor with a check. On January 1st, you buy a CD from a folk musician at a concert, and you write them a check for $15.00. You put that into GnuCash as "Tanglefoot CD, Db. Exp:Music $15, Cr. Ass:Bank $15 (check #1423)". On January 15th, you check your balance online, and see that the check cleared on the 10th. You go into GnuCash, pull up your register for Ass:Bank, find the transaction for buying the CD, and tick the cleared column so it shows a "c". On January 28th, you get your bank statements, and reconcile it against Ass:Bank, and change the "c" in the cleared column to an "r", for reconciled. As far as you were concerned, the transaction happened on the 1st; the fact that the bank didn't register it until the 10th is "recorded" only in so much as in the time frame between when the transaction was put into GnuCash (on the 1st) and when it was noticed (on the 15th), the transaction was not marked "cleared". There is one slight complication: *transactions* are not marked as "cleared" or "reconciled". The part of the transaction associated with a particular account (what GnuCash calls a *split*) is "cleared" or "reconciled". So it is possible, and in many cases common, for only parts of a transaction to be reconciled. For instance, in the above example, it makes no sense to reconcile the $15 cebit to Exp:Music. Reconciliation is a comparison against someone else's record of the transaction, and there isn't another record to reconcile against. So to get back to your situation; Let's deal with a complicated credit card payment setup I'll likely have to deal with tomorrow. On Friday, Sep29, I get paid by my client, and I deposit the check into my bank. That evening, I go online and I schedule an "immediate" payment to my CC for $500. Because it is Friday night, the CC company doesn't process the payment until Monday. It takes a day for the request to get processed by my bank, and two more days for the payment to wend its way through the clearinghouse systems to the CC company. At which point, the CC company lists the transaction on my statement as happening on Friday, Sep29, but before then, it didn't appear. So how should this be modeled in GnuCash? Sep29 Payment of Invoice #2345 by XYZCo, Db: Ass:Bank $1000, Cr: Inc:Services $1000 Sep29 Pay Visa, Db: Lia:Visa $500, Cr: Ass:Bank $500 Then on Oct03, I notice that the bank has processed it, and mark the Cr::Ass:Bank $500 as "cleared". On Oct05, I notice that Visa has processed it, and mark the Db: Lia:Visa $500 as "cleared". I believe that GnuCash has modes for showing the "cleared" balances on accounts, which is what you should really be looking at when comparing statement (or online) balances with GnuCash balances. On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 9:00 AM replicon <repli...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey all, > > I've been using/loving GNUCash for almost a year now, and one thing I'm > sure > I'm doing wrong is how I'm showing credit card payments. > > For paying credit card bills, I just use my bank's bill pay. The bank is > different from the credit card provider, so there's some "in-flight" time > for that money. The day the withdrawal shows up on my checking account is > not the same as the day the payment shows up when I login to my credit card > provider and check transactions there. > > Right now, in GNUCash, I just do a transaction from checking account to > credit card, and by convention, always adjust the time to reflect checking > account, but I wonder if there's a more correct way to do it. > > The best I can think of is to have a separate account for "in-flight" > transactions between establishments, and turn the credit card payment into > two transactions that go through this account. Is that the best way to do > it? If so, what account type would that be? Would it be an asset, because > in > a way, it's like I'm loaning money to some imaginary entity for a while, > which it will repay to my other account a day or two later? :) > > Thanks! > > > > -- > Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
