On Apr 4, 1:33 pm, Kevin Hoctor <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. >
But isn't this the purpose of the buckets? If you respect your bucket balances when spending, why do you need to know your "projected" account balance? It seems like it would be more useful to know your actual balance. > 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. > Again, isn't this the purpose of buckets? Going back to the "Understanding MoneyWell" video tutorial, there are two distinct layers: the physical bank transactions and the non-physical money flows. It seems like in this instance, MoneyWell is combining these layers, which is somewhat confusing to me. > 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. > Yes, as they should. My point is that they should not affect the daily balance either, since this feels inconsistent. > 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. > Ok, so you essentially treat "Open" and "Cleared" as the same thing with the only difference being that "Cleared" means it was downloaded versus manually entered? If this is the case, it seems like there is no true "Open" status that fits the description in my original post. MoneyWell's "Open" and "Cleared" both follow my description of "Cleared". I guess this means we should always using "Pending" for transactions that have not yet posted if we want account balances to match up. > 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. > I'm not sure what Quicken does but if the date you enter for your transaction is not the date it posted to the account, how can you ever check that your account balance matches what you expect? Also, when I download transactions from my credit card, they show the posted date. Are you saying you would actually go through every downloaded transaction and manually change the date to actual transaction date? I have the same problem with using MoneyWell transfers for credit card payments. Typically the transfer on the CC side posts a few days before it does on the checking side, so I'm forced to use to 2 transactions rather than a linked transfer (otherwise my daily balances don't match). I assume you just do a transfer an deal with the fact that the balances don't match for a few days? > The daily balance at the bottom of the window is reporting the > projected amount for the date of the transaction. > Yes but I fail to see how this number is actually useful to anyone other than for ensuring it equals your bucket balance at all times (which you feel is actually unnecessary). If I want to know how much money I have available to spend, I look at my buckets. Why would I look at the account balance? If I'm looking at the account balances, I think I would be expecting to see some representation of the physical bank transactions layer. This is precisely what I need if I am trying to catch or correct any mistakes I have made. I guess I'm still not fully understanding something here. -Lance --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
