[moneydance] post date on transfers

[Stan]

That's not a bad idea.  Something I've done is to create a "Hold" (or you
could call it a "Suspense") transaction -- actually, a pair of them.

I did this recently when the bank put a hold on part of a deposit.
Actually, they made $100 available right away, then part of the remainder
was held for two business days and the remainder was released after five
business days.

I don't remember the exact amounts, but let's say it was $5000.  I entered
the deposit as made, then on that same date, entered a $4900 "payment" (I
used the description "HOLD on deposit") so that my balance accurately
reflected *available* funds.  Two business days later, I had a "deposit"
transaction for another, say, $2000 (description "Release HOLD on
deposit"), and another three business days later, I had another one for the
remaining $2900.

I have used a "Suspense" account in the past, but it can get confusing to
follow the money, especially if this involves two "real" accounts, so that
you have to trace from the originating account through the suspense account
to the target account.

In the OP's situation, let's say it's a payment from Checking to Citibank.
Create the payment in Checking, then in the Citibank account, you could put
a "Hold" transaction with the credit, then a "Release Hold" transaction two
days later (or whatever the lag time is).  One nice thing about this is
that when you're in the Checking account and you look at the payment, the
"Category" column shows the Citibank account.  If all your payments to
other accounts are going to a Suspense account, then the Category column is
rendered effectively useless.  In this case, then, in the Citibank account,
you see the money coming in the same date that it leaves the Checking
account, but you also see an immediate hold on it, released later.  Of
course, you need to mark those pairs as "cleared" for reconciling.

I can see advantages to both ways, just thought I'd offer this as another
option.

Stan


On 4/9/2008 at 5:21 PM Anthony Bayer wrote:

>Create a "Suspense" account in your home currency (on the assumption  
>that at times you might do multi currency transactions).
>
>When you pay out the funds, transfer them to the suspense account.
>
>When the funds arrive in the destination account, pay the amount over  
>from the suspense account. If currency conversions need doing, do them  
>now.
>
>The only time I would do this for myself is when I send money via  
>draft or tt, or when I am physically travelling and carrying the cash  
>with me. For check (or cheque) and credit card transactions I just  
>enter the date as to when I initiated the transaction.
>
>Anthony
>
>
>On 2008 Apr 09, at 08:27, Tom Metro wrote:
>
>> I'm using Moneydance 2008 (build 603) and I'm wondering what the best
>> way is to record a transfer between two accounts where the date
>> different between the two sides of the transaction. This is pretty
>> common if you mail a check or if there is some clearing house in the
>> middle that holds the money while in transit. Moneydance wants the two
>> dates to be identical, yet one of them will have to be wrong.
>>
>> I'm wondering if the tax date feature might help here, though it  
>> doesn't
>> seem like the ideal approach.
>>
>> Another approach would be to create a transfer account, so you can
>> record the correct withdrawal date from account A to the transfer
>> account, and then record the correct date for the deposit to account B
>> from the transfer account. But that's a fair bit of overhead for  
>> just a
>> date skew problem.
>>
>>  -Tom
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