I'm spending too much time correcting the Bayesian transaction matcher

[makai]

> On Friday, March 01, 2013 2:00 PM John Ralls
> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 1, 2013, at 10:38 AM, Chris Lonsberry <chris.lonsberry at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Anyone? Am I the only person who has experienced the Bayesian matching
> > being mostly wrong? Is there an easier way to correct?
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM, Chris Lonsberry
> > <chris.lonsberry at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I am the type of user who imports all of my transactions rather than
> >> entering them by hand.
> >>
> >> I have been trying to train the Bayesian transaction matcher, but it
> >> is getting to be a rather painful process. It seems to match
> >> incorrectly about as often as it matches correctly.
> >>
> >> That wouldn't really be much of a problem if it were easy to fix. I
> >> don't mind categorizing my transactions by hand. BUT, the method I
> >> have been using to correct the imported transactions is painfully
> >> slow. I have to double click each one and then scroll to find the
> >> right expense account and click again to select it.
> >>
> >> If, on the other hand, I just let it import everything to Imbalance,
> >> I can move through the transactions on my keyboard and have them all
> >> properly categorized in about 1/10th the time.
> >>
> >> So, am I doing the corrections wrong? Is there a more efficient
> >> (ideally keyboard only) way to accomplish this task?
> >>
> >> If not, I might have to reset the Bayesian matching so that it always
> >> puts everything in Imbalance and accept the fact that I will need to
> >> manually assign them all.
> 
> No, you've got it about right. There's no other interface.
> 
> The bayesian matching works primarily off of the description field. Are
many
> of the descriptions supplied by your bank/credit card company similar?
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls

I'm in the same boat.  My bank puts transaction type in the description
field, and puts the details in the memo field.  When I import I get
something that looks like this:

     CHECK CARD PURCHASE
     OFX ext. info: |Trans type:Generic debit|Memo:CVS PHARMACY #1234 Q03 

So, the transaction matcher can't do much for me because it isn't looking in
the right place for the data.  

I dream of an import option dialog that lets me choose the mappings between
the OFX fields and the GnuCash fields.  It would also allow me to choose
which fields *don't* get mapped:  the " OFX ext. info: |Trans type:Generic
debit|" part is just noise.   

Regards,
Makai