How? Auto-matching Imported Transactions to Accounts

[Darren Merritt]

On 6/07/2013 11:42 PM, David Carlson wrote:
> On Saturday, 7/6/2013 6:55 AM, Darren Merritt wrote:
>> I'm fairly new to GnuCash.  I got started because I wanted to master
>> any benefits of importing OFX/QFX files which I can export from my
>> bank.  In addition they let me export QIF and CSV which was what I had
>> been importing into spreadsheets.  My first serious financial manager
>> is GnuCash and I don't think I need look any further
>>
>> I'm loving the extra functionality.  It's all working well here and I
>> think I've got the hang of the basics.. EXCEPT there's one thing I
>> can't figure out.
>>
>> When I import my banking data as CSV, QIF or OFX/QFX, I then have to
>> match transactions with different Accounts.
>>
>> I've spent a LOT of hours experimenting in the "Generic import
>> transaction matcher" and it seems to get progressively better at
>> auto-matching though I don't understand what mechanisim it is using or
>> how I can more deliberately train it hot to match transactions to
>> Accounts.  I do a little software coding so feel free to throw
>> developer terms at me.
>>
>> How do I tell it how to do matching accurately?   There has to be a
>> way, right?
>>
>> I see it can use bayesian matching and thresholds.  I'd rather just
>> give it the specific terms to match.  I have the terms ready to
>> enter.. somewhere.  I'd rather turn off it's own attempt to guess. No
>> need for any guessing, in fact, will be easier if it didn't try to
>> decide and just let me supply the matching criteria.
>>
>> I thought this line in Help docs might relate to how to do it:
>> "regex means regular expression text search as used in various
>> computer programs such as Perl"
>>
>> Can anyone put me out of my misery.  I hate to ask, being someone who
>> usually manages to figure stuff out, but I still don't even know if it
>> is possible.
>>
>> If it is simply not possible, I suppose I should familiarise myself
>> with the Dev list and repository.  Tell me it's already possible
>>
>> Thanks heaps.
>>
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> Results vary from bank to bank.  It works fairly well with some banks.
> Unfortunately, GnuCash works very poorly with OFX exports from the bank
> that otherwise is my favorite high quality community bank.  I have
> chosen to just live with it.  I think that the developers would welcome
> an offer to help improve it.
>
> David C
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Thanks.  This is where I'm at now... if it helps anyone else with the 
same desire.

I switched to working with QIF which is a start and discovered the 
process which is problematic.

Exact mapping is stored in file: qif-accounts-map but doesn't seem to 
support close matches, only exact transaction descriptions which won't 
help more than a little.

Exact matches to Payee data is used to match up splits, so I see why.  I 
want more fuzzy matching which only seems to happen on the fly according 
to the code written in Scheme in:

\gnucash\share\gnucash\scm\qif-import

I've done some programming in Scheme a long time ago.  Looking at the 
code in there, I'm tempted to leave it alone and try adding a memo field 
to my QIF files before importing them or somehow add the extra info into 
QIF files somehow before doing the import.  That might be easier 
short-cut than messing with the code that imports them.   That's where 
my thinking is up to.  Unfortunately, no other easy answers have 
appeared to me yet.  Sad to say, it isn't as simple as I had hoped

Darren