How To Do My Own Transaction Matching

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Thu Dec 12 00:10:18 EST 2013


On 11 December 2013 15:48, Tommy Trussell <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Michael Iles <michael.iles at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>> I would like to be able to do my own transaction matching and I'm
>> looking for advice on the easiest way to do it.
>>
>> (I find that with the built-in Bayesian matching I still have to
>> inspect every match, many matches aren't automatically made, sometimes
>> the matching history gets lost and I have to start over, etc.)
>>
>> My goal is to automate all of the regular transactions that happen in
>> my account, using heuristics like: (1) if a transaction labeled
>> 'insurance' is in one range then it's my car insurance, if it's in a
>> different range then it's home insurance; (2) utility bills usually
>> have extra numbers so I would look for substrings to match them; etc.
>>
>> (Aside: in my opinion, the perfect system for GnuCash would be the
>> ability to provide a list of regular expressions, along with the
>> destination account to use if the regex matches.)
>>
>
> I see that you have started some excellent and detailed discussion about
the
> QIF and/or OFX importers and the Python, Guile and C bindings. However I
> would like to go back to your original statement and throw out one more
> observation --
>
> If your goal is to "automate regular transactions," why not use the
> Scheduled Transactions feature?
>
> It seems like you could have GnuCash automatically create ALL automatic
> regular transactions. (For example insurance, levelized utilities, and
> recurring service charges are three that tend to be very predictable.)
Then
> if you choose to import OFX or QIF transactions from the bank, you would
> need only to ensure the automatic transactions match imported ones
correctly
> to avoid duplicates.

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Michael Iles <michael.iles at gmail.com>wrote:

> That's a good question. I've always discounted scheduled transactions
> as not useful (in Quicken, GnuCash) but I'm willing to reconsider. My
> reasons are:
>
> 1. Doesn't seem flexible enough. I don't usually know the exact date
> that a transaction will happen on, e.g. an insurance payment comes out
> once per month... is it always on the same day? I'm not sure. I often
> don't know the amount either, e.g. for a payment on a line of credit:
> the amount depends on the balance of the line of credit.


Fortunately, most billing systems are extremely predictable. Customers
usually get assigned a date in the billing queue, and weekends are usually
handled in a predictable way, too. The SX (scheduled transaction) system in
GnuCash can be set to automatically enter scheduled transactions before or
after weekends.

When I have a scheduled transaction for a variable bill (utility, credit
card) GnuCash allows EITHER use a variable for the amount and the system
will prompt for it when the transaction gets created, or one can enter a
"typical" or "placeholder" amount in the transaction, and edit it after the
transaction gets created.

In either case, I use the online notice or statement I receive from the
company to enter the correct amount on the correct date. (Just like I did
when I got paper bills.) I use the Scheduled Transaction "notify in
advance" feature so I know to watch for the transaction about the time I
usually get the bill, and I have the transaction pre-set for the date it
usually gets drafted. However I can examine the bill and adjust the date
the company says they plan to draft the account.


> Or I have
> transactions that aren't scheduled but I still want to match, e.g. I
> visit the grocery store once or twice a week and I want to
> automatically match those against my grocery account in GnuCash, but I
> don't know the date or the amount in advance.
>

I don't use scheduled transactions for these -- I key them in individually.
If I were more habitual about going to the grocery store on a certain day
every week I suppose I might consider doing this, too. Scheduled
transactions are very helpful for watching known recurring transactions.
One always has the choice to ignore and/or modify the ones the system
generates.


> 2. Seems like it's the wrong way around. I would rather spend my time
> categorizing existing transactions rather than proactively making
> rules for future transactions. I don't want to spend time trying to
> discern the rules the bank is following for their automatic payments,
> e.g. same date every month, or every 14 days, or first business day
> after a certain date, or whatever.
>

I can understand how you might feel this way -- I spend some number of
minutes every week chasing down bills and receipts to enter into GnuCash.
HOWEVER if I just relied upon the imported transactions as they came
through the bank, I might not catch any fraudulent or erroneous ones.
Fortunately I haven't had many over the years, but there have been a few.

Personally, I am not ready to rely on imported transactions and stop keying
in my receipts and bills to assign accounts and amounts. With the
reconciling process I catch monetary mistakes, then at tax time I catch
errors in the accounts assignments. I believe I would have a lot harder
time getting the accounts right via imported transactions for my credit
card, for example. (I often have more than one type of transaction from the
same store.)

But I believe I understand what you're hoping to achieve with the
transaction importer, and that's the point of this thread.


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list