[GNC-dev] some proposals to improve the dialog "Get Transaction ..."

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 24, 2018, at 2:31 PM, Di Mang <di.mang.freetime at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> while testing the functionality for online banking, I have found a few
> places that I think can be improved. See corresponding discussion on
> gnucash-de mailing list:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-de/2018-July/010419.html
> 
> 
> == (A) handling invalid date range in "get transaction..." ==
> 
> The GnuCash attempts to get the transactions from the online bank even
> though the date range entered is incorrect.
> 
> Examples for incorrect user inputs:
> 1) "to"-date is smaller than "from"-date
> 2) "to"-date is in the future
> 
> In both cases GnuCash tries to get a connection to the online bank. It
> takes a while.
> After that GnuCash shows an error message: "Error on executing job. Status:
> error - job contains errors". The error message is very general and does
> not say what is wrong.
> 
> It would be better to check the user inputs *before* the request will be
> send to
> the bank, and to show a error message if the entered date range is wrong,
> *without* creating the connection to the online bank.
> 
> examples error messages for invalid user data:
> for (1): The date range is wrong. "To"-date cann't be smaller than the
> "from"-date.
> for (2): The date range is wrong. "To"-date cann't be in the future.
> 
> 
> 
> == (B) show additionally *booking date* in "List of downloaded
> transactions" ==
> 
> If I try to get the transactions from my online bank only for the day
> 2018-07-16 (date range: 07/16/2018 - 07/16/2018) I see the following
> transactions in window "List of downloaded transations":
> 
> Date         Account Amount     Description ...
> 07/14/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 07/16/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 07/16/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 07/17/2018    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 
> At first time I was wondering, why I got the transactions for the days out
> of the entered date range. After a reconciliation with a csv export from my
> bank I founded, that all these transactions have a booking date
> "2018-07-16":
> 
> Booking Date     Value Date    Account Amount     Description ...
> 2018-07-16     2018-07-14    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 2018-07-16    2018-07-16    xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 2018-07-16    2018-07-16     xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 2018-07-16    2018-07-17     xxxx    xxx    xxx
> 
> GnuCash and AqBanking request the transations with the "booking date",
> but show it only with "value date" in "list of downloaded transactions" or
> in a "account register".
> 
> This behavior can confuse some users. For me, it was also initially not
> clear why GnuCash gets transactions outside the requested date range.
> 
> Would it be possible to add "booking date" field additionaly to the list of
> downloaded transactions? Or as an option in GnuCash Preferences?
> 
> 
> 
> == (C) size of "Certificate Received" window ==
> 
> The GnuCash shows a window with the certificate when I start retrieving the
> transactions from the bank. In this window are displayed the different
> properties of the certificate. Among other things also SHA512 hash. It
> takes up a lot of space on the window. The window has a size of 1231 x 321
> px and cann't be resized.
> 
> Would it be possible to redesign this GUI element, so that it get an area
> with a horizontal scroll bar?
> 
> 
> 
> For more details see images in attachment.
> 
> What do you think about this points? Any other ideas, how we can imporove
> it?
> Should I create bug reports for A, B and C?
> 

Dimang,

Mechtilde already filed https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=796779 <https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=796779> that includes your item 3.

Please file bugs (or do PRs if you’re up for it)  for the other two, they’ll just get lost here.

A commentary, though, on item 2: Of course the date range is going to be the bank’s dates, it’s expecting rather much of them to expect that they’d be able to filter on the date you posted a transaction to GnuCash. If you’re downloading credit card transactions then you might reasonably expect the bank to filter on the charge date, and I expect that you’d find some that do. That will be the date that the merchant processes the charge to the bank, of course, not necessarily the date that the transaction took place.

Regards,
John Ralls