Generic Transaction import discussion

[John P. New]

Christian, 


On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 06:23, Christian Stimming wrote: 
 
> * Currently imported transactions are created as transactions with one 
> split (haven't checked this week, though). IMHO this is a BAD THING 
> (tm). I would *very, very much* prefer the way this was handled in the 
> QIF importer, where by default any transaction was created with one 
> split in the imported account and the other split into some default 
> account. This way, at least we end up with correct double-entry 
> transactions. Additionally, the QIF importer presented the list of 
> transactions to the user, showing also the "other" account. Then the 
> user could either leave that "other" account to be the default one, or 
> could choose a different "other" account. Yet additionally, the QIF 
> importer remembered the choice of the other account (very much similar 
> to the auto-completion features in the register), and tried to fill in 
> the remembered other accounts for all transactions possible. This is 
> very much the same thing I would eventually like to have in the generic 
> importer.

I agree with you here, but with a caution. As you say, imported OFX
transactions are created with one split, but gnucash conveniently flags
such transactions in the importing account. If the OFX module put the
other split into a 'default account', the imported transactions would
balance and no such flags would occur; this means you will have to hunt
for them in the importing account. I realize that opening the other
'default account' would bring up all these transactions, but that isn't
intuitive: I would instinctively open the importing account to deal with
these transactions, rather than the 'default account'. In short, I agree
with you, but home users coming from a Quicken-style environment might
get confused and/or frustrated. 

> * The GUI shows the list of imported transactions in the listView 
> top-left. Each time a transaction is selected in the listview, the state 
> of the transaction can be chosen by the buttons lower-left. IMHO that's 
> not a good thing but is rather confusing. If the GUI wants to present a 
> choice of different states for each transaction, then this should be 
> presented right next to each transaction -- not "first click on 
> transaction, then choose among one out of several buttons somewhere else 
> in this window". I would very much prefer e.g. something like a 
> drop-down list right next to each transaction. Or maybe even some of 
> these choices aren't needed at all. IIRC in the QIF importer there was 
> only one of these choices available, "Transaction is a duplicate of 
> existing Transaction", which was a simple flag in each line of the 
> listview... if I recall correctly. Anyway, all other choices didn't have 
> to be chosen by the user but were rather derived implicitly one way or 
> another. Anyway, I think this GUI probably can still be improved. But 
> the matching itself is already really good. Keep up the good work.

If the GUI of the transaction matcher must be kept in its current
format, I think the button issue can be resolved. First, the default for
each transaction should be 'Reconciled', not 'Ignore'; I think Benoit is
aware of this, but just has to overcome some programming to make it
work. Second, if the transaction is marked as 'Reconcile' (or
'Replace'), the OFX module should highlight the highest-confidence .ofx
file transaction in the right-window; if the transaction is marked
'Ignore' or 'Add', the highest-confidence transaction in the .ofx file
would not be highlighted. The highlighting is done now, just not
automatically when the left-window transaction is chosen. 

Here is where I would change things: First, a left mouse click (and
spacebar press?) on the .ofx file transaction (right window) would
toggle between 'Reconcile' and 'Add'; a right (or modified)(and modified
spacebar?) mouse click would toggle between 'Replace' and 'Ignore'. This
would toggle the highlight on and off with each mouse click, while
toggling the options. I think the two most used options are 'Reconcile'
and 'Add' (I never use Replace or Ignore), so they are the most
accessible with the left mouse click. Thus, if a transaction is wrongly
marked as 'Reconcile', one click would un-highlight the right-window
transaction and change the status to 'Add', and vica versa; with similar
behaviour for the Replace/Ignore pair. Alternatively, add a context menu
with the four choices, available when the right-window transaction is
right-clicked. If the context menu were added in conjunction with the
mouse-clicks above, then you would have to use a modified left click for
the Replace/Ignore toggle.

I have GUI suggestions that will largely take care of these two
problems, and I will be posting these and other suggestions today. 

> Christian
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-devel mailing list
> gnucash-devel@lists.gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel