Add columns to the Generic import transaction matcher

[Benoit Grégoire]

On Sunday, May 7, 2017 11:28:09 AM EDT reaneyp wrote:
> Is there a way that I can add columns to the import matcher?  When i import
> OFX files from my bank, I'm doing it for several accounts at once.  The
> dialog box that pops up has a list of all the transactions and one of the
> columns is the 'destination' account (for example "Expenses:Auto:Gas"), but
> the 'source' account is not there.  This makes transfers between accounts
> difficult to figure out. I'm actually surprised that it can't figure that
> out by itself.

Historically (I wrote quite a bit of the initial UI code for the importer and 
the OFX import code way back), the reason the UX was done this way is that in 
most cases the transactions involve an expense or revenue account and the 
additional column would be wasted space.

The times it would be useful are, as you pointed out, when you have transfers 
between two accounts in the same file.

It turned out that there were more edge cases than I initially anticipated, 
and just never got around to writing the code to handle them.

Low hanging fruits:

- Adding a column should be really trivial as a workaround for now (no logic 
changes, just boilerplate).
- Proper handling of OFX transfers is off course ideal.  BUT:
	- Keep in mind that this assumes that the OFX account numbers match between 
the accounts.  One of the caveats I ran into is that this assumption wasn't 
always true.
	- You have to handle the annoying case where this is the first time gnucash 
sees the second account.    


-- 
Benoit Grégoire, ing., PMP, PSM III