Automatic Reconcilliation using MT940 or OFX

[Egbert van der Wal]

On 02/12/13 18:02, David Carlson wrote:
> Are you sure that the transaction import assistant actually matched 
> every incoming transaction correctly to it's respective existing 
> transaction when there was one? I have found that when there are 
> somewhat similar looking transactions (the amounts may even differ by 
> a small amount) the import assistant mistakenly matches to the wrong 
> one. I double click every incoming transaction to check which existing 
> one is matched, and too often I need to change the choice that the 
> import assistant made. For the transaction mix that I typically see, 
> it errs this way about 3 to 5 % of the time. I can imagine that in 
> some cases the error rate would be much higher. Then, once a match 
> error is made, the incoming transaction will not appear in a 
> subsequent import because it was already matched to something. The 
> easiest work-around is to click the 'R' box to change the status to 
> 'c' instead of 'n'. The other result of a mismatch is that some 
> transaction does not get imported. This is harder to fix. 

You are right, the matching was incorrect. There are several 
transactions that have an equal amount of money, a very similar 
description and the same date, this is were it got mixed up. Apparently, 
several of the transactions were matched to the same expense. This is 
still weird of course, wouldn't it make sense that whenever the 
transaction matcher finds a match, this match is no longer a candidate 
for following matches?

There was no issue in fixing it, since I was still experimenting with 
the import function, I worked only on a backup file. No harm done.

Anyway when fixing this, all transactions get cleared for reconcillation.


On 02/12/13 16:27, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
> Yes, because reconciliation is about making sure that your accounts
> match the bank accounts at well defined boundaries.  This is done by
> going through your bank statement and "reconciling" your accounts to the
> bank's view of your accounts.  All that an import proves is that your
> transaction has cleared the bank, which is why it gets marked as C.
>
> This is by all design.
>
Your argument does make some sense, however, I do not get any paper 
statements at all, so there's nothing I can compare the account in 
GnuCash with that gives me more information than the MT940 file. This 
file is the only view of the bank on the account that I have. If all the 
transactions are cleared when doing an import from OFX / MT940, this 
means that the view of the bank and the register in GnuCash match, so it 
should be considered reconciled, in my opinion.

Anyway, now that at least all the transaction clear after the import, 
the reconcilliation process is just a matter of 3 clicks, so it's doable.

Thanks for the help!

Regards,

Egbert van der Wal