Friday night I went to a neighborhood restaurant for dinner. I put the bill on my debit card and included a tip.
Saturday I stopped at an ATM to get some cash and asked for a balance also.
When I got home I updated my checkbook application* and things didn’t look right. The balance in my checkbook didn’t match the balance given by the ATM. I couldn’t find any sales slip that matched the discrepancy.
Today as I looked at my sales slips I recognized the discrepancy. It was the tip on the sales slip. When the restaurant takes my card, it puts a hold on the amount on the slip. When I add the tip, the hold isn’t taken off, but the total is submitted. Given that I was checking on Saturday, when my account would not be updated, I was unable to find the restaurant charge in the online list of transactions. But the ATM slip did show the balance with the hold on the printed sales slip.
I will get verification of this on Tuesday. Monday is Presidents’ Day and I assume the online data will not be updated during the day.
But it did spoil my Saturday evening as this control freak tried to get everything balanced.
*The checkbook application is Checkbook Tao for the Mac, no app version yet. You can find it in Apple’s App Store.
