It doesn't add up
4 February 2024 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have been putting some sustained work into trying to update my accounts, which had not been transferred from my paper records into the computer since last June. Somewhere around October it became clear that my system of recording cash expenditure had gone wrong, because my calculated running totals on that side of the account book (thanks to my laziness I didn't have any accurate record of actual cash in hand, which I had when doing them monthly!) were going negative; I had detailed records of more cash spent than had been actually withdrawn from my bank account.
But I *do* have accurate totals of cash withdrawals, because I get printed bank statements posted to me every month, and keep them. And I was adding up separately and cross-checking my records of total expenditure against the monthly change in my bank balance, and chasing down every last penny of discrepancy as I went; I was calculating exactly how much money I had withdrawn as cash every month and how much I had spent in total in the form of cash, and comparing that difference to the (hand-calculated) monthly fluctuations in the cash-in-hand balance, and always got them to match. (Except that... well, they would, even in the case of 'temporary negatives', because those expenditure totals in the computer calculations consist largely of numbers transferred from my portable pocket notebook in the first place...)
One of the things that is clouding the matter is that I withdrew two large sums in anticipation of paying for items that cost less than I was expecting or were unavailable, and then ended up using that money instead to pay for everyday expenses for the next couple of months, so any error during that period won't show up until long afterwards, because I had a much larger positive cash balance floating around than usual. Another problem is that I didn't record any dates (as this was only ever intended as an extreme short-term list, not one extending over an eventual period of *months* before transfer!) -- only a chronological list of expenditure, which mostly follows a repetitive weekly pattern but occasionally skips a week altogether when I didn't do any shopping, and didn't write anything down as a result. So I can guess from external evidence at the dates of certain purchases, and then have to insert the neighbouring records forwards or backwards as appropriate :-p
But what I do not see is how I could end up spending more cash than the known quantity that I actually withdrew. Short of someone coming and giving me pound notes under the counter (I know I received, and paid in, money on two occasions, which are recorded) I can't understand where the money could *come* from. It's not as if the records show that I 'ought' to have more cash than I actually do -- that would simply imply that I had been short-changed and/or forgotten to write down some purchase. But the fact that I have very detailed itemisations of everything I ever bought at the market or in the shops that add up to more than the recorded amount that left my bank account over that period is what is puzzling me.
I suppose I need to pull out the vast heap of receipts recorded and then discarded month by month into the wastepaper basket over the last week, and double-check the figures on every last one of them... except that I have already *done* that for several individual months that *didn't* add up, where I successfully detected the transcription errors that were causing the discrepancy! I have been through my portable notebook several times and cross-checked the figures there, which only resulting in my turning up an extra cash payment at the top of a page that had indeed been missed out -- which simply increased the net negative balance :-(
The obvious explanation would be if I had missed out a withdrawal (or failed to record it on both sides, i.e. minus to bank balance and plus to cash), but if I had done the former it would immediately have shown up as a surplus in my bank balance for that month. And I cannot see that I have done the latter; indeed, every non-standard withdrawal corresponds to a specific following item of expenditure. And the running balances look reasonable, with a steady pattern of cash reducing to a few pounds, followed by a further withdrawal... up to mid-October, when for no clear reason they go negative, and on subsequent occasions can be clearly proved wrong even when positive, e.g. when a till receipt records that I paid with a twenty pound note and received change, although my supposed cash balance at that date was less than ten pounds!
It all boils down to the fact that while I can easily imagine accidentally failing to record spending money, I cannot imagine how it is possible to record a breakdown of total expenditure that happens to exceed by a significant sum the amount of money leaving your account... (The only obvious explanation I can think of would be if I had paid for some item by card machine, but recorded it on auto-pilot as an ordinary cash payment, but then that ought to show up as a mysterious extra bank account debit for the month in question.)
Sigh. I'm going to have to pull out and re-sort all those old receipts, aren't I? And I still have no idea what I'm looking for, because the actual bank statements all added up.
I could just ignore the whole thing, because I know how much money has gone into and out of my bank account in the course of the year, and how much cash I have on hand at the present moment (£2.93 -- whereas the figures say I should have a sizeable negative balance, a concept not in fact physically attainable in terms of coin of the realm :-p) But it rather makes nonsense of all my attempts to break down what the money is being spent *on* if the detailed breakdown then proceeds to record that I have spent more money than is represented by those figures :-(
But I *do* have accurate totals of cash withdrawals, because I get printed bank statements posted to me every month, and keep them. And I was adding up separately and cross-checking my records of total expenditure against the monthly change in my bank balance, and chasing down every last penny of discrepancy as I went; I was calculating exactly how much money I had withdrawn as cash every month and how much I had spent in total in the form of cash, and comparing that difference to the (hand-calculated) monthly fluctuations in the cash-in-hand balance, and always got them to match. (Except that... well, they would, even in the case of 'temporary negatives', because those expenditure totals in the computer calculations consist largely of numbers transferred from my portable pocket notebook in the first place...)
One of the things that is clouding the matter is that I withdrew two large sums in anticipation of paying for items that cost less than I was expecting or were unavailable, and then ended up using that money instead to pay for everyday expenses for the next couple of months, so any error during that period won't show up until long afterwards, because I had a much larger positive cash balance floating around than usual. Another problem is that I didn't record any dates (as this was only ever intended as an extreme short-term list, not one extending over an eventual period of *months* before transfer!) -- only a chronological list of expenditure, which mostly follows a repetitive weekly pattern but occasionally skips a week altogether when I didn't do any shopping, and didn't write anything down as a result. So I can guess from external evidence at the dates of certain purchases, and then have to insert the neighbouring records forwards or backwards as appropriate :-p
But what I do not see is how I could end up spending more cash than the known quantity that I actually withdrew. Short of someone coming and giving me pound notes under the counter (I know I received, and paid in, money on two occasions, which are recorded) I can't understand where the money could *come* from. It's not as if the records show that I 'ought' to have more cash than I actually do -- that would simply imply that I had been short-changed and/or forgotten to write down some purchase. But the fact that I have very detailed itemisations of everything I ever bought at the market or in the shops that add up to more than the recorded amount that left my bank account over that period is what is puzzling me.
I suppose I need to pull out the vast heap of receipts recorded and then discarded month by month into the wastepaper basket over the last week, and double-check the figures on every last one of them... except that I have already *done* that for several individual months that *didn't* add up, where I successfully detected the transcription errors that were causing the discrepancy! I have been through my portable notebook several times and cross-checked the figures there, which only resulting in my turning up an extra cash payment at the top of a page that had indeed been missed out -- which simply increased the net negative balance :-(
The obvious explanation would be if I had missed out a withdrawal (or failed to record it on both sides, i.e. minus to bank balance and plus to cash), but if I had done the former it would immediately have shown up as a surplus in my bank balance for that month. And I cannot see that I have done the latter; indeed, every non-standard withdrawal corresponds to a specific following item of expenditure. And the running balances look reasonable, with a steady pattern of cash reducing to a few pounds, followed by a further withdrawal... up to mid-October, when for no clear reason they go negative, and on subsequent occasions can be clearly proved wrong even when positive, e.g. when a till receipt records that I paid with a twenty pound note and received change, although my supposed cash balance at that date was less than ten pounds!
It all boils down to the fact that while I can easily imagine accidentally failing to record spending money, I cannot imagine how it is possible to record a breakdown of total expenditure that happens to exceed by a significant sum the amount of money leaving your account... (The only obvious explanation I can think of would be if I had paid for some item by card machine, but recorded it on auto-pilot as an ordinary cash payment, but then that ought to show up as a mysterious extra bank account debit for the month in question.)
Sigh. I'm going to have to pull out and re-sort all those old receipts, aren't I? And I still have no idea what I'm looking for, because the actual bank statements all added up.
I could just ignore the whole thing, because I know how much money has gone into and out of my bank account in the course of the year, and how much cash I have on hand at the present moment (£2.93 -- whereas the figures say I should have a sizeable negative balance, a concept not in fact physically attainable in terms of coin of the realm :-p) But it rather makes nonsense of all my attempts to break down what the money is being spent *on* if the detailed breakdown then proceeds to record that I have spent more money than is represented by those figures :-(
