On Mar 6, 5:37�pm, Jewel Moyer <JewelMo...[at]discussions.microsoft.comwrote:
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Jewel,
Yes I was annoyed, but not at YOU. I read the entire thread
thinking it all had been posted in the past few days. As a retired
accountant who knows something about balancing accounts it bothered me
(and it shouldn"t have) that some people expect MONEY to work for them
based on how THEY decide to do things. If they don't balance for a few
months and then decide to balance a little bit at a time, MONEY should
be able to figure it all out. The only one who can figure it out is
the person doing the balancing and they do that by using their own
BRAIN.
I'm not a big advocate of all these download things
because most people have a hard time figuring what to do. If you do a
monthly download it is easy to forget what happened three weeks ago.
That is why I enter all my transactions manually in MONEY and check
the bank and credit card balances daily over the phone to the bank. I
could do it online also, but it is easier on the phone.
Now as far as your reconciliations are concerned, the
first thing you MUST have is a starting balance. It can be the balance
from the first statement from the bank you have on hand, or the
balance from the last statement, whichever you chose. You need to make
an adjustment to the account for the difference MONEY shows at that
date and the starting balance. If the difference is less than $500 I
would say just expense it off to reconciliation. If it is much larger,
then check some of the MONEY numbers against the statement numbers to
find the big missing item. Once you have a reconciled starting
balance, then the MONEY balancing procedure should work well. You
should try to do it regularly every month.
As far as your daughters allowance account, the reconciliation is to
compare MONEY to the actual money your daughter has remaining at month
end. I do it with my Cash on Hand account. I credit that account every
time I get Money at the ATM and charge the account for normal monthly
spending for things like household expenses-miscellaneous or Food-
Dining out (when I don't use a credit card.) Of course, I don't
attempt to capture every cash purchase. At the month end
reconciliation I count the cash I have and my wife has, compare to
MONEY and adjust up or down to make MONEY agree with the real numbers.
Hope this all makes sense to you. Good luck. Steve

Steve - I do balance my real bank, investment, credit card, etc accounts
monthly or more frequently. However, I have numerous other accounts such as
my children's allowance/spending accounts. I check what they actually have
in hand at the end of the month against what the Money account carries but I
haven't used the balance function. Then one day, as I try to figure out for
the nth time what I did to adjust the account at some earlier point, I'll
decide that I should use the balance function so that any new "problem" is
isolated. Having made the deciision to start formally balancing the account,
I wish for the ability to check everything.

And... it is fun. I love counting the beans!

PS: You don't sound humble about your opinion; you sound annoyed.

"Steve" wrote:
I've done this now for 12 years because it is FUN and informative. Make sure
whatever you do is also FUN or just don't do it. JMHO. Steve

On Mar 5, 8:15�pm, Jewel Moyer <Jewel M...[at]discussions.microsoft.comwrote:
- quote -

When I read discussions like this I have to wonder WHY people are
attempting to reconcile accounts in MONEY in the first place. It is
apparently not that important to do the chore monthly. Why use Money?
It is a personal financial program. Your finances are effected daily.
If you don't record your data regularly thru MONEY, why do it at all?
To work with a small part of your financial world like a checking
account doesn't tell you about your credit purchases, your
investments, your assets, your mortgage payments, your NET WORTH? So
doing a bank reconciliation "when I get around to it" really means
that you trust the information the bank provides. Why not just record
your monthly statement balance on a worksheet. Look at the numbers
from month to month and if there is a BIG change up or down one month,
do a mental check on what it could be. Did you transfer $10k from an
investment to the bank? If the mental check clicks then all is well.

Let's face it. Not a lot of people are financial guru's. Try to
rationalize WHY you might be willing to spend 10 minutes or 1 hour or
10 hours each month dealing with finances in Money. Is it really worth
it to you? I spend maybe three hours a month maintaining my MONEY data
via manual entry. I keep accurate investment and other financial
information for future planning as well as spending and budgets. I've
done this now for 12 years because it is FUN and informative. Make
sure whatever you do is also FUN or just don't do it. JMHO. Steve

Let me belatedly echo these sentiments about the bothersomeness of having
entries automatically checked. I wish there were a button to check/uncheck
everything and/or a way to highlight a bunch of lines with SHIFT or CTRL then
check/uncheck all of them.

When I haven't bothered balancing an account for a long time then decide I'm
going to do it regularly, I'd like to be able to check everything at once on
the first go-round which is probably phony anyway. On the other hand, when I
can't get an account to balance, I'd like to clear everything to do it
manually. I find that even if I manually clear all of the marks then have to
"postpone" the balancing to do research, when I come back to resume
balancing, the stuff is AGAIN automatically checked. It's maddening.

"Cindy Conover" wrote:

- quote -

You can uncheck the "E" transactions, they will change from C to E and be
available for the next balancing.
So, yes, you must be sure to uncheck any Electronically cleared items that
were not on the paper statement that you are reconciling against.

-Mark

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:OUKmleBPHHA.4244[at]TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
- quote -

But if he is balancing to a paper statement pre- any number of "E"
transactions subsequently downloaded, using the balance genie, can't he
"uncheck" the ones that are "E" already in the register but post-date the
statement he is trying to balance to? If he doesn't do this, he will never
balance to the statement and letting the genie mark them all R will just
make matters worse next statement as the beginning balance will be
hose-ola-cola.

"Mark" <abcd[at]abcd.com> wrote in message
news:eY4beWBPHHA.1604[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

When you "balance" your account any items in the register that are currently
marked C (cleared) or E (electronically cleared/downloade) will be checked.

Once you finish the Balancing, those "cleared" items and any that you added
as cleared during the balancing steps will change to R (Reconciled).
The Reconciled items will not show up the next time you balance, since the
view is set to "unreconciled".

-Mark

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:eek45TBPHHA.3316[at]TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
- quote -

That sheds a lot more light on your issue/concern. Sadly, I'm not sure I can
help. I don't do the downloaded transactions thing.

My suspicion--I will look to see what others who know more have to say--is
that the downloaded transactions are going to be assumed as cleared--the
check mark--since you downloaded them ("E") from the bank. If you elect to
balance for several months back but have downloaded since that statement was
generated, there will be more cleared transactions ("E") in the account than
are reflected on the several months old statement. I suspect there is no way
to avoid this and no way to avoid having to uncheck them until you balance
to the statement that reflects them. I'm not sure if I were the Money team I
would do this any different way.

"longleggedy" <longleggedy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:48262488-8647-49DE-808A-F628DDF52C8B[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I enter each transaction manually, but I also download from various FI's
just to double check. I too have problems with the "E" transactions
clearing themselves during balancing. sometimes that transaction will be on
the next statement. I just manually clear the check.

Cindy


"longleggedy" <longleggedy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:48262488-8647-49DE-808A-F628DDF52C8B[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

And if you are saying that the checked items are the E items, but you have
to uncheck them because they are wrong, then we are in pretty deep since the
E items are, by some definitions, the truth by definition. They are data you
downloaded. The data you download essentially can't be wrong since it
reflects the bank's view of reality.

That's not to say that downloaded data doesn't get mangled between the bank
and you. Is the FI a "direct connect" FI or a "direct connect* ... *but not
really since a third party intercepts the data in the middle" FI?

I don't download transaction data. I get the data right and my way the first
time (almost) every time and skip all of the hassle.

"longleggedy" <longleggedy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:33DBF1A4-612C-44F4-9FD9-EFC9F2DAA4D3[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

The entries that will already have a check mark when balancing are the
entries that have an "E" in the column before balancing. Downloaded
transactions.

I am not sure if there is a way to stop this.

"longleggedy" <longleggedy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EFF523B9-D53A-493F-B690-A337AFE6EABA[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

When I balance some of my accounts, I need to check an empty box next to each
item listed for a particular monthly period. For other accounts, the software
automatically checks a group of items, and then I need to revise as required.
I prefer the first method, because the second is never accurate, so that I
usually start by un-checking each check items, and then re-checking as
required.
I cannot find a place within the account preferences which allows me to
choose, or specify, which of these setups to allow. Can anyone enlighten me
on this?