Re: GNUCash value proposition

[Adrien Monteleone]

I started out with GnuCash casually and quickly found that approach was going 
to get me in trouble. (or at least make the effort useless)

I now get receipts for everything possible and make it a point to enter them 
every day. (usually the next morning when my memory is fresh)

It really is not difficult or a pain since it is rarely I have to enter more 
than 3 or 4 transactions. Keeping current also prevents large accumulations to 
‘miscellaneous’ because I can’t remember where cash went.

Certainly a full mobile app would be nice, but the present situation is not 
impossible.

The only inconvenience is that suddenly (within the last 3 months) it seems 
there is a disease amongst cashiers to either not print, not offer, or throw 
away an auto-printed receipt. I’ve had to make the habit of asking for one for 
each transaction. While this has been an issue on rare occasion in the past, it 
seems some critical mass was reached this spring and now this is an issue in 
about 90%+ of all my transactions. It’s quite disconcerting.

As for downloading transactions from financial institutions, the best 
application I can see for this is NOT to have them entered into GnuCash for me, 
but rather to use in the reconciliation process. Instead of doing this on a 
periodic (monthly) basis, it could be done as transactions are posted by the 
bank. That way, there is a ‘running reconciliation’ always in progress. THAT I 
could see as taking full advantage of interconnectivity. Periodic reconciling 
against statements is to me, still the old ‘pen and paper’ mode of accounting 
that computers should be able to improve upon.

> On Jun 5, 2017, at 10:52 AM, John Morris  wrote:
> 
>> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
>> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
>> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
>> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
>> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
>> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
>> time of entering all the transactions.  
> 
>  To each his own. I enter every transaction just about as soon as possible: 
> usually when I get home to my computer. However, I often have the computer 
> with me and enter a gas purchase as we leave the gas station. I find this 
> much less tedious than trying to remember all our purchases and expected 
> credits from the last month or so. In addition, entering the transactions as 
> they come gives me a much closer approximation of our financial situation 
> that I could get from a monthly reconciliation.
> 
> Best,
> John
> 
>> On Jun 4, 2017, at 10:21 PM, Lincoln A Baxter  wrote:
>> 
>> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
>> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
>> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
>> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
>> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
>> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
>> time of entering all the transactions.  
>> 
>> That said, I review every transaction I import before I complete the
>> import.  If I don't recognize/remember a transaction, I research it to
>> verify if I (or my wife) made it and what it was for.  I do this as
>> part of assigning transactions to balancing accounts.  
>> 
>> I do this for both the Baysian matched tranactions (some transactions
>> it never gets right), and for the unmatched transactions.  When I find
>> things out of balance, it is almost always because a transaction was
>> not matched by the Baysian matcher, which then becomes a double
>> transaction in the account, or not imported. In the end I believe I
>> would catch fraud if it occurred. The Bank's math has never been wrong.
>> 
>> There are two wishes I have for the transaction import review window
>> that would improve this experience:
>> 
>> 1) I wish I could edit descriptions, this would be a HUGE improvement,
>> over trying to remember to go back and find them and edit them
>> afterwards.
>> 
>> 2) I could split transactions in the import window... Same reasons...
>> but if I could edit transaction descriptions, I would be able to find
>> them more easily after import, and then split them. I use the imbalance
>> account to do this when I have to, but it has the draw back of
>> confusing the Bayesian matcher. 
>> 
>> I'll bet the later (2) is harder than the former. The former would save
>> a bunch of time.
>> 
>> Lincoln
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Re: GNUCash value proposition

[John Morris]

> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
> time of entering all the transactions.  

  To each his own. I enter every transaction just about as soon as possible: 
usually when I get home to my computer. However, I often have the computer with 
me and enter a gas purchase as we leave the gas station. I find this much less 
tedious than trying to remember all our purchases and expected credits from the 
last month or so. In addition, entering the transactions as they come gives me 
a much closer approximation of our financial situation that I could get from a 
monthly reconciliation.

Best,
John

> On Jun 4, 2017, at 10:21 PM, Lincoln A Baxter  wrote:
> 
> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
> time of entering all the transactions.  
> 
> That said, I review every transaction I import before I complete the
> import.  If I don't recognize/remember a transaction, I research it to
> verify if I (or my wife) made it and what it was for.  I do this as
> part of assigning transactions to balancing accounts.  
> 
> I do this for both the Baysian matched tranactions (some transactions
> it never gets right), and for the unmatched transactions.  When I find
> things out of balance, it is almost always because a transaction was
> not matched by the Baysian matcher, which then becomes a double
> transaction in the account, or not imported. In the end I believe I
> would catch fraud if it occurred. The Bank's math has never been wrong.
> 
> There are two wishes I have for the transaction import review window
> that would improve this experience:
> 
> 1) I wish I could edit descriptions, this would be a HUGE improvement,
> over trying to remember to go back and find them and edit them
> afterwards.
> 
> 2) I could split transactions in the import window... Same reasons...
> but if I could edit transaction descriptions, I would be able to find
> them more easily after import, and then split them. I use the imbalance
> account to do this when I have to, but it has the draw back of
> confusing the Bayesian matcher. 
> 
> I'll bet the later (2) is harder than the former. The former would save
> a bunch of time.
> 
> Lincoln
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Re: GNUCash value proposition

[David T. via gnucash-user]

I won’t tell you how much trouble I had years ago when a bank employee 
accidentally keyed in the dollar portion of a check twice, and instead of a 
$621 check, I got tagged for $621,621. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my 
account was overdrawn by some $600,000…

David

> On Jun 5, 2017, at 1:47 PM, prl  wrote:
> 
> On 5/06/2017 18:24, Colin Law wrote:
>> On 5 June 2017 at 03:21, Lincoln A Baxter  wrote:
>>> If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
>>> was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
>>> very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
>>> impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
>>> Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
>>> reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
>>> time of entering all the transactions.
>> It depends on whether you trust your bank and, for example, its OCR
>> cheque reader. I keep all my receipts then it is easy to enter the
>> transactions. A little tedious I agree but for most using this for
>> personal accounts I imagine it is only a handful a day.  For business
>> users I would have thought that keeping receipts and entering
>> transactions manually is mandatory.  For cash I enter significant
>> items (that I have kept receipts for) then balance the cash in hand
>> with GC once a week or so, assigning the missing cash to
>> Expenses:misc.
>> 
>> Colin
> It's not just the bank that can be the source of erroneous transactions. I've 
> had instances where I was double charged on a credit card (the same charge 
> twice for a single restaurant meal), and I was once double charged for my 
> home and contents insurance (again two transactions on the account for the 
> same amount for a single premium). In both cases it wasn't the "banks 
> application" that had made the error, it was the business making the charges. 
> The bank had done nothing wrong.
> 
> Peter
> 
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Re: GNUCash value proposition

[prl]

On 5/06/2017 18:24, Colin Law wrote:

On 5 June 2017 at 03:21, Lincoln A Baxter  wrote:

If we all had the time and discipline to enter every transaction as it
was made, this is all true. Entering transactions as they are made is
very hard, and without a client that you carry with you it is virtually
impossible, even if one existed, it would be tedious. The fact is the
Bank is that application, they do it for you.  They HAVE to!  The
reason import exists and is widely used (I do), is that it saves the
time of entering all the transactions.

It depends on whether you trust your bank and, for example, its OCR
cheque reader. I keep all my receipts then it is easy to enter the
transactions. A little tedious I agree but for most using this for
personal accounts I imagine it is only a handful a day.  For business
users I would have thought that keeping receipts and entering
transactions manually is mandatory.  For cash I enter significant
items (that I have kept receipts for) then balance the cash in hand
with GC once a week or so, assigning the missing cash to
Expenses:misc.

Colin
It's not just the bank that can be the source of erroneous transactions. 
I've had instances where I was double charged on a credit card (the same 
charge twice for a single restaurant meal), and I was once double 
charged for my home and contents insurance (again two transactions on 
the account for the same amount for a single premium). In both cases it 
wasn't the "banks application" that had made the error, it was the 
business making the charges. The bank had done nothing wrong.


Peter

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Re: GNUCash value proposition

[Abhijit Kshirsagar]

This is a superb note about how reconciliations should be used.
Abhijit

On 24 April 2017 at 12:02, Buddha Buck  wrote:
> I am not a Quicken convert, but I'll point out a benefit of entering your
> transactions manually as Russell and CM suggest: It gives you a point of
> comparison when doing a bank reconciliation.
>
> The purpose of an account reconciliation is to make sure that your view of
> your accounts with an outside entity match their view of your accounts with
> them. If you think you deposited $500 into your bank account, you want to
> be sure the bank thinks the same thing. If the bank thinks you paid $354
> via a debit card, you want to be sure that you agree. If you don't agree,
> then there's a problem -- either the bank made an error, you made an error,
> or something nefarious is going on.
>
> If you import transactions that your bank says you did, then that
> fraudulent $354 debit card transaction will become part of your personal
> record of what happened in your account. You won't catch it unless you
> review your transactions. Reconciliation will say "Yep, the bank says I
> spent $354, my records says I spent $354, so OK, everything's good". And
> you're out $354.
>
> On the other hand, if you manually enter your transactions, then do a
> reconciliation, then you will see the $354 transaction from the bank, but
> not in your records, and you have an opportunity to go "wait, what's up
> here?" and catch the fraud. You would also catch the $25 birthday check you
> gave your nephew that he hasn't cashed yet, and the $25 birthday check to
> your niece that you forgot to record that she *has* cashed. None of those
> would be noticed if you imported your transaction report from the bank.
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