GB and Real Life

It would be nice if dates on account transfers were independent of one another because that’s what happens in real life. The only time a transfer occurs on the same day is if I make a transfer between accounts in the same bank, eg. checking to savings. But with any outside transfers, such as credit card payments the dates between the accounts are always several days later. It would be good if GB could have the date of the transfer be set to what the statement would actually be. This is by no means a deal breaker, but at the same time I would think it would be easy enough to implement.

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Thanks for your feedback! I can’t speak to how easy or hard that would be to change, but you bring up a good point.

(P.S. If you want to make an official request, follow Alex’s prompts here.)

Official request done!

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I’d never really thought about this before. All of my transfers show as the same day regardless of the bank. Different banking systems I guess (New Zealand here.)

There’s a workaround you could use. I have a “fake” account in GB called “Clearing House”. I use it to split transactions up in ways that GB can’t do on its own. You could use something similar to separate your transfer dates. If you have a transfer from your check account to a savings account and it left the check account on the 15th and arrives in the savings account on the 18th, you can transfer from the check account to the clearing house account on the 15th and then from the clearing house to the savings on the 18th. A bit more busy work but at least your primary accounts would have the correct dates.

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Thanks @Dexter. That’s definitely a viable workaround. With my OCD I want my dates correct, but I’m all about efficiency also. So I have quite the internal conflict going on. I better get a glass of wine and find out what part of me will win out :joy:

… efficiency won, will stick with less work and live with wrong dates … until GB fixes it :slightly_smiling_face:

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I do something like that for my credit card purchases - I transfer the money charged to a credit card payment account so that my account balances still line up with what I have in the bank, then transfer out a payment to the credit card company when I actually submit the payment. This way I can also easily see what I owe on that card. I pay in full every month, so this makes more sense to my brain than having a debt account set up for it.

I guess I think of dates in terms of a old-fashioned checking account ledger - I use the date when I actually take action on something, even if it won’t clear for a couple of days. I think I want my balance to reflect what I have available in my checking account in practical terms, so if I set a transfer that is still processing, I don’t have that money “available” to spend elsewhere.

If you set the credit card up as a “paid in full” credit card, it doesn’t go in as a debt account and you can always see what is owing on it.

If I understand you correctly, how do you reconcile your account? Do you just add the balances of the “real” account and the “credit card” account to get the expected bank total?

I use the free version, so I can’t add a credit card account - this is my work around. At first I was just entering purchases immediately against my budgeted envelopes, but I found that frustrating since that money was still hanging out in my checking account but was already gone from my monthly budget. So I just created a credit card hold envelope, and when I charge I enter it as a transfer between envelopes instead of an expense. I only use 2 credit cards, and I use the one envelope for both - so I know what money is still under my control (in case of emergency, for example, I could choose to make the minimum payment), but also know that it isn’t actually available. I did try it as a debt envelope once, but I don’t think of it as debt - since I pay in full, I’m really just using the credit card as a convenience to avoid cash/checks.

I could avoid all this by paying for the Plus version - I’m just cheap! But I’ve thought about it, since as it now stands I also have my savings account set as an envelope instead of an account. I may be almost ready to be a real grown up with all the bells and whistles!

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Ah, I see! I have the paid version and currently track 28 envelopes and 24 accounts lol—I could never imagine going back to the free version! :blush:

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