Auto-clear

[Cristian KLEIN]

Hello everybody,

Please review and give your opinions about a feature I would like to add 
to GnuCash called "auto-clear". [1]

Short description: I use GnuCash to keep my personal accounting and 
every few days I would like to clear my "bank" account (sorry, I only 
know the localised name), by checking my Internet Banking. As we all 
know, transactions arrive at the bank in a pseudo-random order. Since I 
use GnuCash only for personal accounting, it would be a waste of time to 
check and clear each transaction individually. Instead, I would like to 
tell GnuCash to automatically clear transactions, so that the cleared 
amount matches the one given by my Internet Banking.

Of course, it's possible that there is no unique solution, in which case 
GnuCash should just admit its inability to guess thoughts. However, 
since my transactions resemble this comic [2], this is rarely (never?) 
the case.

Example:
1) Say I have the following uncleared transactions: 10€ 20€ 40€ 80€, and 
I have to clear 120€. Without doubt the 40€ and 80€ transactions should 
be cleared.

2) Say I have the following uncleared transactions: -15€, -40€, -38€, 
-16.6€, -17.01€. My currently cleared amount is 112.54€ and my Internet 
Bank says 38.93€. I type the last number in GnuCash and it automagically 
clear the -40€, -16.6€ and -17.01€ transactions.

I opened a bug [1] which contains a patch to implement this feature. 
Please test, comment and eventually check-in. :)

Cristi.

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608436
[2] http://xkcd.com/287/