[GNC] Import Matcher Comments and Questions

[David Carlson]

It would be helpful to know what release pf GnuCash you are on, which
import format you are using, and possibly which financial institution is
providing the import files.

If there is other informstion, possibly if you are using a certain report
or have a specific accounting structure, that may slso help.  Sorry about
my fat finger problem, my smartphone keyboard has tiiny keys and my cat is
tryong to help me.



On Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 12:18 PM Dale Alspach <alspachde at gmail.com> wrote:

> Recently there was some restructuring of some of my retirement accounts
> (still under control of my former employer). This caused problems with
> importing because the parent accounts of the securities were altered.
> This led to a lot of questions from the importer. This entailed a tedious
> process of selecting the correct "new" account. One particular difficulty
> is that the same security may be used in more than one branch of the
> account tree. Fortunately the importer actually supplies some detailed
> information which greatly helps identify the correct branch.
>
> 1. I discovered that the importer does not require uniqueness. That is,
> multiple accounts in the import file can be mapped to the same gnucash
> account. My accounting is strictly personal so the restructuring just meant
> creating an appropriate branch for each investment and reparenting the
> account. The nonuniqueness allowed me to point transactions corresponding
> to the old and new versions of the investment to the new one. *Thus for me
> the nonuniqueness is a desirable feature.*
>
> 2. The account selection process seems to make some unwarranted assumptions
> that resulted in extra steps and in some cases a difficult to resolve
> ambiguity.
> i. After I selected one branch for a matching account, the importer kept
> suggesting that same branch for all subsequent selections. This resulted in
> extra steps to select the correct branch. It  would have been better for
> the importer to suggest the branch of the last selection and not the very
> first one.
> ii. The ambiguity arose when the importer asked what income account to
> associate with a security. In my setup, the assignment of any income
> attributable to an investment depends on which branch of the accounts this
> particular investment occurs. (taxable or not?, IRA, 403b, brokerage?) The
> name/symbol of the security does not uniquely determine the branch. What I
> needed was that more detailed information that appears when the account
> corresponding to the investment is selected.
>
> Before I add a formal request for enhancement, I would be interested in
> knowing whether others have the same or similar concerns. I checked
> bugzilla and did not find anything.
> Dale
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