usage questions

[The Surprises]

Hi,
I just started using gnucash and have a couple questions I haven't found
answers to yet.  When I import transactions from my checking account,
some of the accounts are always slightly different each month, like:

    PGE 000010101012
    PGE 001012002002

Gnucash doesn't recognize these as equivalent, so I have to manually
specify the expense account.  Is there any way to provide an advanced
option for searching, so that you can use regular expressions to match
various accounts?

>From my checking account import, I receive salary, mortgage and school
loans.  What I do now is manually enter the split transaction
information for each of these after I've imported them.  For example,
opening up the latest paycheck import, then splitting it, and manually
entering in the tax info, etc.  Is there a more automated way of doing
this?

Thanks in advance for any help!
Jason