Comments / Suggestions / a couple minor bugs in 1.7.5

[Brian Smith]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 13:31:25 -0500
  Benoit Grégoire <bock@step.polymtl.ca> wrote:
>The transaction import has been massively improved in 
>1.7.6 (unfortunately 
>delayed because of a problem in a missing dependency). 
> Many of these 
>usability issues may have been soved.  It's not really 
>done the same way as 
>Quicken however.  I would really like you to comment 
>again once you try it.

Cool, I will do that when 1.7.6 is released. I assume by 
the fact that it's not released yet, that I'll be biting 
off more than I can chew if I attempt to build from CVS?

>One feature still missing (but in the pipeline for 1.8.1) 
>is manually editing 
>an imported transaction in a register during import. 
> However, it will 
>probably never change the transaction description and 
>split memo 
>automatically, as that would assume that the memo and 
>description ARE the 
>payee, and that the both don't contain usefull 
>information.  Both can be 
>false.  The new importer does however auto-select a 
>destination account for 
>new transaction based on the previous selections.

That's fine, as long as it can be edited during import, 
and if I start typing in the Description field if it'll 
auto-fill like any other transaction.

>Assuming I understand your problem, no, you don't need 
>multiple transactions!  
>I think what you call the payee is actually the 
>transaction's Description 
>(one per transaction) and the split's Memo (one per 
>split).  They are all 
>independent.  Is because of the info your bank provide, 
>Deposit end's up in 
>every field.  However, you can change the Memo in the 
>register (eventually 
>during import also).  

Yeah, the Description field is really what I meant. 
Fiddling with Q* got my terminology all con-fuzzled. 
Anyway, I wasn't necessarily referring to imported 
transactions. Let's say I have two checks, from different 
people for different things (different Income accounts). I 
deposit them both in the bank. I'd like to be able to 
enter it as one transaction so it will reconcile with the 
bank (whether I use ofx or just reconcile with the paper 
statement at end-of-month). If I use just 'Deposit' as the 
description, then if I look at either of the income 
accounts, I'll see just 'Deposit' as the description. I 
could put the people's names in the Memo fields of each 
split, but in my mind having a Description field for each 
split would be better. Especially if I need to keep some 
other information in the memo field for each of these 
checks.

>Humm, I don't understand what you mean, the splits have 
>two descriptive 
>fields.  One is the Memo, which can be freely edited, the 
>other is the 
>account, which can't.  

Right, what I meant was it would be nice if each split 
could have a separate Description field too, so when I 
look at my Checking register I see 'Transfer to Savings' 
as a description, but on my Savings register I would see 
'Transfer from Checking'. This isn't really a good 
example, because the description might just as well be 
simply 'Transfer' since the account field tells you where 
the money is going to / coming from.

Perhaps a better example would be a credit card payment. 
In my Checking register the description should be the name 
of the bank. In the credit card's account register the 
description could just read 'Payment' or some such.

I hope that made more sense.