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.pa...@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. > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > -- Tom Thomas L. Forrester 3211 Patty Lane Middleton, WI 53562-1652 USA 608-831-0769 _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
