Thanks to all.

Yes, what Vadim says makes sense -- to narrow down an error.



"Vadim Rapp" wrote:

- quote -

a> What is the advantage of going thro the process of reconciling?

Reconciling fixes the date when the official statement last time matched
Money data. Sooner or later, your balance in Money won't match. When that
happens, you will know that the error can be only since the last
reconcilation. Without it, you will have to investigate the whole history -
and investigation will be in finding the statements and reconciling them
with Money data. So, sooner or later you will reconcile anyways.

You may find that both methods have their place. IF all you have are account
registers in Money that are 100% a reflection of downloaded data, I agree it
shouldn't matter. But many users have some accounts that have either a mix
of manually entered and downloaded transactions or all manually entered
transactions. The only way to keep these accounts reconciled to the banks is
to, well, reconcile them.

Archiving is a bad idea.

"ask" <ask[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C0D3DD0A-E8DC-4B2A-9CE3-D92BEEFAB352[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

ask wrote:

- quote -

I do both the match and the reconcile.

The reconcile makes sure that Money matches my monthly statement. I
occasionally find a transaction where either my wife or I have
accidentally changed a transaction amount. It only takes a couple of
minutes, and it give me peace of mind.

--
Steve Bell
New Life Home Improvement
Arlington, TX

Thanks very much, Cal. That was a very quick reply!

So there are no major issues with not changing the E (electronically
cleared) status of transactions to R (reconciled).

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, ask wrote:

- quote -

That is one of several viable options. There is a method to catch
up, and declare an account to be balanced.

In one paradigm, you would hand enter transactions, and then
reconcile/balance them to the bank statement to look for extra,
missing, or incorrect transactions, either by you or the bank.



- quote -

Now that is something I suggest to avoid. The tool for that in Money
is called "archive", and you will note that many people suggest that
it is a bad idea. Some others like it, primarily out of a sense of
neatness. Those who do that to make the Money file smaller or faster
are generally disappointed. Those who do it for their sense of order
might like the result.

I am new to personal finance software. I download transactions as ofx, match
and categorize them. I do make sure that the balance shown in money is same
as the paper statement I receive. What is the advantage of going thro the
process of reconciling? What if I just use Money without ever reconciling?
Will I have any problems later if I want to close and save previous years
data, etc?