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

Di Mang di.mang.freetime at gmail.com
Wed Jul 25 18:12:15 EDT 2018


2018-07-25 5:10 GMT+02:00 John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us>:

>
> 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 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
>
>
>
>Hello John,

Thank you for your reply. I will file a bugs for items 1 and 2, and then
try to send PRs for it.

For item 2: Do you agree that it would be helpful to display the value date
additionally to booking date in the "list of downloaded transactions"
window?
​
​
Regards,
Di Mang ​


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