These are nice examples but I think are still formally assets and liabilities. e.g. I buy dinner for myself and sibling
Asset:Bank -$50 Asset:Sibling $25 Expense:Restaurant $25 Later hopefully sibling pays back Asset:Sibling -$25 Asset:Bank +$25 The original question was IIUC about reconciling Income & Expense accounts. It's perfectly fine to reconcile expense accounts, e.g. we could reconcile the Expenses:Fuel against Fuel card statements. FWIW the first example (temporary loans, or suspense accounts) aim to have zero balance, and there's upcoming work to better highlight them. https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1480 -- the highlight is a warning to show the balance is outside a user specified range. It can also be useful to highlight e.g. credit card or HELOC balance is exceeding a limit. On Tue, 20 Dec 2022 at 11:53, Paul Kroitor <[email protected]> wrote: > I use the reconcile feature in at least two other ways: > > 1. I keep current accounts with a lot of other parties -- four adult > children, parents, in-laws, my sister's farm operation, our condo > association, and at least a half-dozen more. Most of them don't do formal > accounting and rely on me to know how much they owe me (or occasionally I > owe them). Things go in and out in various ways, but either way they repay > me (using Canadian Interac transfers, an email thing) item for item, or I > print them a list of open transactions and ask them to pay me the balance. > In either case the account should total zero, but because of timing it > often doesn't actually come to zero (for example, when more debits are > entered before their payment arrives). > > In this case, some entries must be reconciled to zero, and it's often not > trivial to see which. So I start Gnucash's reconcile and enter a balance of > zero. Then I can simply tick off debits and credits that add to zero and > I'm done. Much easier and more verifiable than manually changing reconcile > status line by line. > > 2. For those of the above parties that do have their own formal accounting > -- done, invariably, by me -- I have to reconcile my version of what they > owe me with their version of what I owe them. For example, they might have > sent 12 organic chickens over the last few months and I might have bought > them a new microwave, phone battery, and furnace filters (they're not very > technical -- I order these things for them with delivery there). For these > current accounts I reconcile one against the other, starting from a > situation where neither is complete. Easier to do than explain, but the > idea is that you have two Gnucashs open side by side (one in a VM) and tick > off matching entries, leaving entries only in one set of books. You enter > those in the opposite books and repeat until everything is reconciled. Not > the original intension of the system, but it's far faster than other ways > I've tried (and I've been using variations of this for 25+ years). > > Paul > > -----Original Message----- > From: gnucash-user <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of David Cousens > Sent: December 19, 2022 9:27 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [GNC] What accounts should I reconcile? > > Dave > > Reconiliation requires an independent statement of the account (e.g. from > the bank's perspective) against which to reconcile the account. You > generally don't have that with an expense account. I have had to > investigate discrepancies between what I thought I owed a vendor and what > they claimed I owed them which involved them supplying a statement of > account detailing all purchases from and all payments I had made from them > for a specific period against which I coud perform a partial reconciliation > This wa s before the business customer /vendor reports existed > > David Cousens > On Tue, 2022-12-20 at 01:21 +0000, Dr. David Kirkby wrote: > > For simplicity assume that I havé the following two accounts, all in GBP. > > > > Assets -> Bank > > Assets > PayPal > > > > I can reconcile those, and I find the process useful. > > > > However, I noticed that it is possible to reconcile most, if not all > > other accounts. Is there any point in reconciling the other accounts, > > such as > > > > Expenses > Office supplies? > > > > > > Dave > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > 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 > [email protected] > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > 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 [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. 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