Transaction balancing

[Benoit Grégoire]

On January 21, 2003 03:43 pm, Chris Morgan wrote:
> What happens if I import a years worth of transactions for credit
> card/savings/checking one right after the other.  They are all
> interdependent on each other for transactions, except for the credit card
> of course that may go into other accounts.  How should I handle that?  How
> does msmoney handle it?

Let's assume you import Credit Card/Savings/Checking in that order (3 
different imports), and your accounts start empty:

You will first have all new trans in Credit Card, some of which going into 
checking.  You then import Savings, which will also have misc trans, and 
presumably some going into Checking.  You then import Checking.  The matcher 
will then duplicate transactions in checking (Those who have a split in 
Credit Card and Savings), and will only clear the split in Checking for 
those.  The other transactions in savings will be imported as new.

What most people don't understand is that the are two different types of 
matches that can be done by the importer on a single transaction.  The first 
kind of match will determine if a duplicate of this transaction exists in 
GnuCash.  If that match determines that there isn't (or if the user 
overrides), a second match will be done to try and find the appropriate 
account if the transactions isn't already balanced.

Hopefully this is a little clearer. 
-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/