transaction auto-completion

Jason Rennie jrennie@ai.mit.edu
Mon, 11 Dec 2000 09:31:14 -0500


dave@krondo.com said:
> For example, in my paycheck statment, the memo fields describe each of
> the different parts of my paycheck, including taxes, etc. So when I
> auto-complete that transaction, it makes perfect sense to retain the
> memo fields, because they apply in the same way. To me, that's what
> auto-completion is for.

Sorry to butt in, but isn't that what the account/category field is for?
When I have a paycheck entered, I have the money go to various accounts
including federal taxes, state taxes, social security, medicare,
retirement, health care, etc.  I generally use the memo field for
additional notes that I don't want to try to put in the account/category
field.  For example, if I use a credit card to buy a gift for someone, I'd
choose the Expenses:Gifts:Given expense category and then write "for John"
in the memo field.  Also, if I were to buy a couch, I'd set the category
to Expenses:Home:Furniture and write "couch" in the memo field.

I use the memo field as a note for the entire transaction rather than
being related to a particular split.  In fact, the UI isn't really
designed to align a memo field with each split since for N splits, there
are only N-1 memo fields; you can't see the memo field for the split
concerned with the currently viewed account...

Jason Rennie            www.ai.mit.edu/~jrennie/
MIT: (617) 253-5339           jrennie@ai.mit.edu