How to handle bank transfer delays

[Matthias Ehret]

Hi there,

I just started with ledger and came across one problem i'm not sure how to solve it.

f.e. I transfer money from one bank to another bank and there is a transfer delay of 3 days how do i handle this in ledger without having inconsistent data in the register view?

Create a dummy place were I park the money for 3 days or is there a better solution?

Matthias

[Jacob MacDonald]

I'm no accountant or Ledger expert, but as I understand it, this is why Ledger supports cleared, uncleared, and pending transactions.

See http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Transactions-and-Comments for details on how it works. Personally, I don't find the full spectrum of markings to be necessary; I just add a transaction when I initiate it and update it with the asterisk at the end of the week.

(DATE ACCOUNT etc. -> DATE * ACCOUNT etc.)

There are commands to display balances of only cleared amounts, etc. I don't use them much, but you can read about them here: http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html#Cleared-Report.

Jacob.

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[Martin Blais]

That problem has been discussed before on the list; look for "settlement date" in the archives, both in the context of Ledger and Beancount. 

There's no implicit solution, but you can explicitly move the funds "virtually" to a temporary account as you describe, that works, it's a bit verbose. The technical name for this is a "transfer account."

You could also use Ledger's effective date feature, but the problem with that at the moment is that it could leave you with a balance that doesn't sum to zero. The right solution would be for the software to automatically generate transfer account transactions for you. There's some ongoing discussion in the context of developing an implicit solution to this problem (for Beancount) here:

http://furius.ca/beancount/doc/proposal-dates

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[Matthias Ehret]

Hi Martin,

tanks for the references, I think i'll try with the transfer account, seems to be the most "correct" but verbose solution so far. Problem only occurs if I transfer money within the scope of my own finances Bank1:account1 -> Bank2:account2, not with the outside world so hopefully there is not so much additional work neccessary.

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[Martin Blais]

That works. Another approach is to just choose one of the two dates (and manually combine the two transactions into one); that's what I do so far. This can occasionally screw up balance assertions; when that happens I'll comment one out and trust that the next one will pass, or just fudge the date of the balance. It's not rigorous in that the posting history of one account doesn't always have all correct dates, but it works. I think that eventually one way to solve well this will be to provide an optional date on each posting and to automatically expand that one input/ into multiple transactions, to transfer accounts with names inferred automatically.

If you look carefully at your credit card transactions, it's likely you will also find a discrepancy between the date you used the card (the transaction date) and the date it posts on your statement (the settlement date).

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[Simon Michael]

I use posting dates, which I think is the most direct solution. With Ledger:

2016/9/10 cinema
expenses:entertainment $15
assets:bank:checking ; [9/12]

$ ledger -f t.j reg
16-Sep-10 cinema expenses:entertainment $15 $15
16-Sep-12 cinema assets:bank:checking $-15 0

[Martin Blais]

As mentioned previously, this may leave one with a non-zero trial balance at date 9/11. Some people may not care.  I don't like the idea of a balance sheet with missing amounts, especially on days with large transfers.

[Simon Michael]

I see what you mean, that's true.

It's still true if you move the funds into a temporary holding account,
I think ? But probably that's easier to ignore if checking the trial
balance.

I don't mind trial balance being non-zero for a couple of days, if it
means I can have accurate dates and balance assertions with no fudging
required.

On 9/14/16 7:18 AM, Martin Blais wrote:
> As mentioned previously, this may leave one with a non-zero trial balance
> at date 9/11. Some people may not care. I don't like the idea of a balance
> sheet with missing amounts, especially on days with large transfers.
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Simon Michael <si...@joyful.com> wrote:
>
>> I use posting dates, which I think is the most direct solution. With
>> Ledger:
>>
>> 2016/9/10 cinema
>> expenses:entertainment $15
>> assets:bank:checking ; [9/12]
>>
>> $ ledger -f t.j reg
>> 16-Sep-10 cinema expenses:entertainment $15 $15
>> 16-Sep-12 cinema assets:bank:checking $-15 0
>>
>>
>>
>>
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[Martin Blais]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Simon Michael <si...@joyful.com> wrote:

I see what you mean, that's true.

It's still true if you move the funds into a temporary holding account, I think ?

Not true.

The temporary account will show the value in limbo.

 

But probably that's easier to ignore if checking the trial balance.

I don't mind trial balance being non-zero for a couple of days, if it means I can have accurate dates and balance assertions with no fudging required.

I think we can do better. All that's needed is for the software to support a simple automatic scheme for moving things to temporary accounts and some syntax support for it. We can have our cake and eat it too.

On 9/14/16 7:18 AM, Martin Blais wrote:

As mentioned previously, this may leave one with a non-zero trial balance
at date 9/11. Some people may not care.  I don't like the idea of a balance
sheet with missing amounts, especially on days with large transfers.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Simon Michael <si...@joyful.com> wrote:

I use posting dates, which I think is the most direct solution. With
Ledger:

2016/9/10 cinema
  expenses:entertainment  $15
  assets:bank:checking        ; [9/12]

$ ledger -f t.j reg
16-Sep-10 cinema  expenses:entertainment  $15  $15
16-Sep-12 cinema  assets:bank:checking   $-15    0




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[Jim Robinson]

I just use cleared vs uncleared transactions.  My reasoning is that my local ledger shows the state of the accounts as they are supposed to be, with the ones that are in-flight marked as pending.  E.g., if I initiated a bank transfer then the money is no longer in account A and ought to be in account B.  Using cleared vs uncleared transactions let me easily see the state of accounts both as they actually are (fully settled) and as they are supposed to be (potentially fully or partially unsettled).

[Silas Baronda]

I use cleared / pending / uncleared pretty much daily. I reconcile my accounts everyday.

One issue that I have is coming up with a query that will show me all accounts that have transactions that aren't 'settled'.

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "SB" == Silas Baronda <silas....@gmail.com> writes:

SB> One issue that I have is coming up with a query that will show me all
SB> accounts that have transactions that aren't 'settled'.

What about a balance report (or register -n) for uncleared postings? That
should show you every account containing such postings.

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