Reconciliation

contributed principally by Richard Hyde

In Moneydance a transaction can be in one of three statuses, uncleared (No icon), cleared (orange diamond) and reconciled (green check).

Which means each account has three balances :- an uncleared balance (all transactions), a cleared balance (cleared and reconciled transactions) and a reconciled balance (reconciled transactions only).

What is that orange Diamond?

When you download/import your transactions from your bank you can mark the transactions as cleared by adding the diamond to the transaction, there are a number of people calling for Moneydance to do this automatically which we will hopefully see in the next release. Your cleared balance should then reflect your banks balance.

When the printed statement for the account arrives you can then reconcile these transactions via the reconcile process. You enter the ending balance from the statement and mark those transactions as cleared which appear on the statement. Any transactions marked as cleared from your download will be automatically marked as cleared when you start to reconcile. When you have completed your reconciliation and you click 'done' these cleared transaction are automatically switched to the reconciled state (green tick).

If you have no online access to see which transactions have cleared your account then you can leave the transactions as uncleared and when your statement arrives simply click on the cleared transactions from your statement during the reconciliation process. When you've completed the reconciliation the transactions will be marked with the green tick. The cleared state becomes pretty much irrelevent.

However you can still mark a transaction as cleared (diamond mark) when you know it has cleared from another source, say a mini statement from an ATM.