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

[Di Mang]

I meant: Do you agree that it would be helpful to display the "booking
date" additionally to "value date" in the "list of downloaded transactions"
window?

2018-07-26 0:12 GMT+02:00 Di Mang <di.mang.freetime at gmail.com>:

>
> 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 ​
>
>
>