OFX Import problems

[David Carlson]

On 6/29/2011 1:49 PM, David Reiser wrote:
> On Jun 29, 2011, at 12:52 PM, David Carlson wrote:
>
>> I am trying to import transactions into a data file.  I am using Gnucash
>> 2.4.6.  One issue is that one transaction of four dated June 1, 2011 is
>> missing from the register.  The transaction is definitely in the OFX
>> file, and the scheme that this bank uses for FITID's appears to be
>> generating unique numbers.  When I repeat the import, the missing
>> transaction still does not appear. Neither do any of the others, of
>> course.  If I create a new test data file, I can make the missing
>> transaction appear in an import to that file.
>>
>> I suppose that I can manually create this missing transaction, but what
>> if several transactions failed to appear?  Is it possible that I
>> accidentally deleted this transaction or edited it into a different
>> account?  If I had, wouldn't it import in a second try?  In this case, I
>> cannot find it in the transfer account either.
>>
>> My second problem is that the OFX importer is sometimes matching an
>> imported transaction to the wrong pre-existing transaction and not
>> allowing me to un-match it or match it to the correct transaction during
>> the import.  It used to let me do that, but not lately.
>>
>> David
> I believe you've hit a hole in the transaction matcher logic. I'm fairly certain it only shows up if you have a mixture of entered vs. new transactions in the incoming ofx data stream. For example:
> On Wednesday, I take some money out of an account at an ATM.
> On Friday, my wife takes the same amount out of the same account from another ATM.
> I'm likely to enter my withdrawal in gnucash within a couple days before I get around to downloading ofx transactions. I'm not likely to enter my wife's withdrawal manually because she's not too concerned about my recording such information in a timely fashion.
> On the following Tuesday, I download an ofx file with the transactions in it.
> What the transaction matcher shows is that both withdrawals have a potential match with an existing transaction. What it doesn't tell you is that both those transactions are a potential match for the same existing transaction already in gnucash. If you check the 'R' for both transactions, what gnucash does is accept one of the transactions as a match for the already entered transaction and throws the other away. (I don't know if it matches the first, and then tosses the second because it already has a match; or if it accepts both one at a time resulting in the first 'match' being discarded when it also matches the second incoming potential match.)
> The transactions don't have to be on the same day -- just within the transaction date-matching window (14 days, I think). They also don't have to be exactly the same amount -- just within whatever the matching delta is.
>
> Dave
> --
> David Reiser
> dbreiser at earthlink.net
>
>
>
>
>
Thanks.  This is another reason that the whole process needs to be
restructured so that we can tell which transaction is which, and have a
way to manually override any and all 'automatic' decisions on a per
transaction basis without being overwhelmed when there are more than
three transactions in an ofx import file.
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