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One thing that irks me about banks is that checks don't appear on your balance sheet until they are cashed. More and more people these days aren't balancing th

One thing that irks me about banks is that checks don't appear on your balance sheet until they are cashed. More and more people these days aren't balancing their checkbooks and simply using the bank website's readout of available money to determine whether or not they have enough money in their account to pay for something. However, this is flawed for checks as they aren't logged until cashed. I've had more than one occasion where I got burned by this thinking I had more money in my account than I actually did because I had sent out a check that my landlord didn't get around to cashing for a few weeks. This seems like the way the world is headed and it still kind of boggles my mind as to why we have both the account ledger at the bank's website and a separate piece of software to balance our books. (Mint.com, Quicken, etc.) The only reason this dichotomy exists as far as I can tell is for things like checks which are outstanding and not debited against your account when you cut them. (Ok, obviously there are other things they do like budgeting, etc. but why can't that all be done with my bank's website?) My ideal Bank 2.0 would incorporate things so if I pay my rent with a check or send a check to someone through the web billpay, it is deducted from my account immediately so I cannot accidentally spend that money which is out there. Obviously it would take user interaction to log the check they wrote to someone in the case of a personal check, but with the web billpay it could be done automatically. By reducing the balance when that check is cut, it should do it throughout the system (aka not simply symbolically) so if I go to the store and make a purchase with my debit card, my balance with the check cut is taken into account and it doesn't allow me to spend the money for the check. In the event of a stop payment on the check or a lapse of a certain period of time, the money would be returned to my account, so a lost check wouldn't screw me over. This would eliminate this huge problem along with the pain of having to maintain an additional piece of software to monitor my account.

timf 17y ago
I've wanted the same thing, but I wanted to be able to view both numbers: the "real" balance and the "projected" one.
dkokelley 17y ago
I think most banks already set aside the money from online bill paying services, though it may only be symbolically like you said. You have a good point about letting customers enter manual checks before they clear to help keep track of how much money you really have.
kd5bjo 17y ago
ING Direct debits the money from your account when they cut the check, and then re-deposits it (without interest) if it hasn't been cashed in 90 days or has payment stopped. They also don't issue manual checks, so that isn't an issue. Anecdotally, it seems to work well. In regards to maintaining your own ledger instead of just using the bank's, the primary purpose is to help catch any errors that the bank makes with your account. Personally, I have few enough transactions that I can generally keep track of them in my head, but I could easily see how you might need some help with that if your finances were even a little more complicated than mine.

timf 17y ago

I've wanted the same thing, but I wanted to be able to view both numbers: the "real" balance and the "projected" one.

dkokelley 17y ago

I think most banks already set aside the money from online bill paying services, though it may only be symbolically like you said. You have a good point about letting customers enter manual checks before they clear to help keep track of how much money you really have.

kd5bjo 17y ago

ING Direct debits the money from your account when they cut the check, and then re-deposits it (without interest) if it hasn't been cashed in 90 days or has payment stopped. They also don't issue manual checks, so that isn't an issue. Anecdotally, it seems to work well. In regards to maintaining your own ledger instead of just using the bank's, the primary purpose is to help catch any errors that the bank makes with your account. Personally, I have few enough transactions that I can generally keep track of them in my head, but I could easily see how you might need some help with that if your finances were even a little more complicated than mine.