OFX Transaction Matching [Was: Re: Another one unhappy with quickfill]

[Mike Leone]

On 1/17/2011 12:23 PM, Jeff Kletsky wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestions -- reports of any other annoyances would be 
> most welcome before I dive into the code in a few weeks.
> 
> One of the things that I am considering is improving the UI and code so 
> that potential matches are shown and can be selected.
> 
> I often have similar transactions for the same payee that are matched to 
> the same journal transaction. With parking meters taking credit cards 
> now in San Francisco, this is going to be even more of an issue.

I use my debit card to pay for most things in the same way. Saves me
from having to carry cash.

> Another problem is the "auto-match" matching something that isn't even 
> close to what it should be. I have a suspicion that some of it is that a 
> match on "Account unknown Bank unknown" is treated as a "positive match" 
> even though it is pretty meaningless.

In my case, I have a number of scheduled transfers that occur from my
local bank checking account to an account at ING Direct (an online bank)
- scheduled from my bank, not in GNUCash. And of course, the matcher has
no idea what to do, since all the transactions say "ING Direct" and
"Generic debit". That's understandable, since the OFX transaction
doesn't list the account number of the ING account, which would make the
job of transaction matching a lot easier.

But the amount is the same, week after week. Ideally, the matcher should
(hopefully) see that recently there was an transaction to ING for $11,
and that the account was "Savings for new TV", and suggest that. And
since the amounts vary, it shouldn't suggest that account if the amount
is $12 (since that's the weekly amount that transfers to the account
"Savings for new camera").

I realize that is almost certainly more difficult than it looks like
(most programming is, and I haven't done any programming since the early
90s). But it would help me a lot. Especially since I don't use GNUCash's
scheduled transactions.