On Apr 4, 2009, at 3:00 PM, Lance wrote: > How do others use the various transaction statuses? > > This is my understanding of what they should mean, but MoneyWell seems > to interpret these slightly differently: > > Open: a manually entered transaction that has physically taken place > but not yet posted to your account ( > Cleared: A transaction that has posted to your account but not yet > been reconciled > Reconciled: A cleared transaction you have reconciled with your > statement at the end of the month > Pending: A transaction you plan to make, but has not physically taken > place yet > Lance,
This is pretty much correct. Cleared transactions are usually set by direct downloads and imports. > Here is where MoneyWell seems to have a different intepretation than > me: > > 1) It seems "Open" transactions are included in the daily balance > shown at the bottom of the window. I would expect these to be excluded > so that this balance would match up with the daily balance physically > in my bank account. Alternatively, MoneyWell could report a fourth > balance: the "cleared" balance, but does not. > You need open transactions to be counted because before your account is reconciled, you need to know that you've already spent the money and it's out of your account. > 2) "Cleared" transactions have a text box where you can enter the date > the transaction cleared, but the original date is still used in the > transaction listing and for the purpose of calculating daily balances. > It seems like there should actually be 2 date columns: one for > transaction date (used for bucket balances and tracking purposes), and > one for posted date (used for account balances and reconciling). > The reason your transaction date is used is because you need to consider this amount out of your account from the moment you write a check or, again, you could double-spend it. > 3) "Pending" transactions are included in the daily balance shown at > the bottom of the window once their date is in the past, but they do > not seem to ever affect the balances listed next to the account names > in the upper left of the window. This seems inconsistent. > The account balances in the upper left will never include pending transactions because they are not real until you tell MoneyWell that they are current. > As for workarounds, here is what I've figured out so far: > > For #1, if you ignore the "Cleared" status and mark anything that has > posted to your account as "Reconciled" you can now use the reconciled > balance at the bottom of the window to compare to your physical > account balance. But now the "Cleared" status seems completely > pointless. I'm not seeing how the daily balance currently displayed is > useful to anyone unless you never have open transactions. > As I stated, cleared is useful for downloads and imports so you know that a transaction has "cleared" your account. Once you reconcile it, you are confirming that the transaction in MoneyWell matches your bank statement. > For #2, when I have an "Open" transaction that has finally posted, I > change the date to be the cleared date so the balances will match. > But, since credit card purchases often post a few days after the > actual transaction, this has the unfortunate side effect of moving > many of my purchases near the end of the month into the next month. > This makes trying to see how well I followed my spending plan > difficult. I've also had to resort to using the Memo field to preserve > the original transaction date in case I want to look back on it later. > I prefer to keep their transaction date the same since it tells me when the transaction occurred. Many transactions clear later that they happen but I still want my account to show that the money is used as of that date. I don't believe Quicken does it any differently. > For #3, this happens frequently for scheduled transactions I've set up > where the bill doesn't get debited from my account on the same day > every month. I end up manually changing the transaction day to bump it > ahead a few day in the future until the transaction finally comes > through and posts to my account. This seems unnecessary since I've > marked the transaction as "Pending" - the date shouldn't matter, > right? > The daily balance at the bottom of the window is reporting the projected amount for the date of the transaction. > > These workarounds seem pretty ugly so I'm wondering if I am > misunderstanding how these statuses should be used. I found an older > thread from a year ago that seemed to suggest Kevin was considering > fixing some of these things, but I couldn't find any updates since > then: > http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software/browse_thread/thread/e5a40e9e58663bce/1934885729b15353?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=open+cleared+balance#1934885729b15353 > > Any feedback is appreciated. Let me know if my answers don't help please. Peace, Kevin Hoctor [email protected] No Thirst Software LLC http://nothirst.com http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
