On 12/13/2022 2:09 AM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
Someone mentioned reconciling their PayPal account. Is there a way to do
this for anything other than the last transaction? I don’t seem to be able
to display a balance at any point in the past. So if I wanted to know the
balance on the first of July, I don’t see a way of finding it.
???? ( I am trying to make sense of the question, so pardon me, but I
am guessing what the perceived problem might be)
Are you saying the situation is like THIS:
The last transaction in June was on 6/29 and after this transaction the
balance was vv.ww The next transaction was on 7/3 and after that
transaction the balance was xx.yy. You are asking "what was the balance
on 7/1?"
a) Fundamental concept involved. The balance of any account does not
change EXCEPT when there is a transaction for that account.
b) So the balance on 7/1 was vv.ww because there was no transaction
between 6/29 and 7/1. So the balance on must still be what it was on
6/29 In other words, to see the balance on any date in the past, go to
where that date would be in the ledger. If there is a transaction on
that date, the balance as of that date is the balance after the last
transaction on that date. If there is no transaction for that date, you
only see transactions after and before that date, go to the last
"before" transaction, and that was the balance on the date sought.
Michael D Novack
PS --- My "guess" is that you were referring to the balance as shown in
the tree of accounts. Yes, THAT only shows the balance as of after the
last transaction. But most of us are perhaps not thinking of doing
accounting in "real time". In other words, we are entering data and we
are running reports, etc. for some date in the past. When we are
reconciling against some statement we have received that is also for a
date in the past (and there well may be transactions for that account
after the effective date of the statement). In other words, we don't
ever expect the balance as show in the tree of accounts to be meaningful
except perhaps for those accounts for which transactions are rare.
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