[GNC] Proposed enhancement to OFX/QFX import

[Kalpesh Patel]

Hello Stephen -

I have been clamoring for similar "enhancements" for many moons 😊... with slight variation.

I would love a feature to move the description from the imported transaction into memo field (or notes field) of GNC. Here is my use case:

I am type of person who puts in a transaction in GNC that is scheduled for the future date, for example credit card payments, with liberal use of scheduled transactions. I also end up downloading data and importing for both sides of a transaction (this is after all double entry system) and do the reconciliation. For example payment from the bank account to a credit card account. For description I normally put down as something like "Payment Scheduled" which is common on both registers but once I download them and import, it normally gets over-written (I end up using U+C for transactions; there is an append function but it is not appealing since two sides gets concatenated, not sure if the consistency stays intact for entire  register whether same institution is on left side or right side of the pipe, and of course filled with financial institution's verbiage which most of the time is nonsensical void of any context - prime example is check whether manually written or sent by bill-pay). So in this case which ever one was downloaded last wins what is displayed. My need is that I want to keep the original description after the import but have the cryptic description listed by financial institution to be in the memo field so I can exactly match the transaction on both side if I need to review and reconcile it if there is a difference. When I do look at the details I look at it in split mode so in that all sides would show up from one place as to how multiple financial institution has accounted for portion of that transaction. 

In my cases, memo fields are not used by the financial institutions for which transactions are downloaded so below proposal is not going to help in the above need but I am sure others would welcome it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Cohoon <smcohoon at gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2023 8:50 PM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: [GNC] Proposed enhancement to OFX/QFX import

I have been using Gnucash for many years so I think it is time to contribute.  I have several credit card accounts from different banks that each take a different approach to how they populate the tags in the transaction download file.  When I import these files I often have to spend time cleaning up the description and notes fields, adding and deleting text.  In particular, one of my banks actually lets me set the memo field for a transaction through their web page and app.  I want this to appear in the transaction description.  I would like more control so I can specify more precisely how this data is imported for each account separately.

I propose adding 2 options to the account edit screen:
1. Append Memo - when set, if the memo tag is populated then append that text to the name tag and use that combined text to populate the transaction description field.  Default is off in which case the present logic is invoked.

2. Suppress Notes - when set, skip the logic that populates the notes field of the transaction. Default is off in which case the present logic is invoked.

These options function independently.

What does the community think about this?

-Stephen
--
Stephen Cohoon
smcohoon at gmail.com

If there's a problem that can't be solved with a clever program, is that problem really worth solving?