#26 accepted
Virgil Dupras

Intelligent import autofill

Reported by Virgil Dupras | June 4th, 2009 @ 05:01 PM

When importing, it's always the same. There are some meaningless descriptions and they are always replaced by the same thing. There should be way to do that automatically.

First, for this feature to work, it must be possible to edit descriptions, payee and checkno in the import table. The moneyGuru document would maintain a list of all replacement that were made. For example, if, in the import table, I change "MEANINGLESS CRAP BLAH ** BLAH" to "Groceries", moneyGuru will remember it.

Then, there will be the "Smart Replace" (or some cleverer name) button in the import window that, as soon as there's one value that can be replaced, will be enabled. When clicked, a menu with all possible replacements will pop up (there will also be a "Perform all" item). When the user clicks on an item, a replacement occurs.

These replacements will be saved with the moneyGuru file.

Comments and changes to this ticket

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras September 5th, 2009 @ 07:10 PM

    • Tag changed from from-trac, suggestion to feature, from-trac

    [not-tagged:"suggestion" tagged:"feature" bulk edit command]

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras December 19th, 2009 @ 03:22 PM

    • State changed from “new” to “accepted”
    • Tag changed from feature, from-trac to big, feature, from-trac, import
  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras April 23rd, 2010 @ 08:39 AM

    There's a problem with the way I planned this. Smart replace should also cover account transfers, which rules out the edit-in-import-table concept. I haven't thought this through yet, but the first idea to come to mind would be to remember values at import for each imported transaction, so that we can identify them later and make correct replacements.

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras June 14th, 2010 @ 04:08 AM

    A request for this on GS

    Import rules would be very nice. I import all using CSV files, and most of the transactions are recurrent (groceries at the same store once a week for example), it would be nice to be able to automatically set the "To" here. It would be also nice to be able to set "From" and "Payee". The rules could be based on the "description", "payee", "to" and "from" field.

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras October 15th, 2010 @ 11:58 AM

    • Milestone order changed from “0” to “0”

    Another request on GS

    I like your program (MoneyGuru), but I think it may be improved by automatic assignment of categories based on descriptions. I import all my data from from CSV, and have to assign categories manually, which is very long and tiring. Is it possible to assign a category automatically to the same string? For example, if I once assigned category "salary" to the description string with my company details, the program "remembers" it and automatically assigns this category every time I import data. A further step could be regular expressions defined by user to assign categories to multiple transactions. For example, if I shopped in different Tesco's, the strings will contain this name (Tesco) and they can easily be assigned a user-defined category ("shopping" or "food" or whatever).

  • Gernaey Maarten

    Gernaey Maarten March 6th, 2011 @ 09:18 PM

    Smart replace should also cover account transfers ... the first idea to come to mind would be to remember values at import for each imported transaction, so that we can identify them later and make correct replacements.

    The CSV lists from my bank actually show a unique transaction ID.
    I tried feeding that column both to "Tansaction ID" and to "Check #".
    However, moneyGuru does not recognize transfers from my checkings account to my savings account as one single transfer. I end up with two disjunct transfers: one is going from my checkings account and the other is coming into my savings account.

    If this the feature you're contemplating, you could:

    • Add import support for a transaction identifier ("Tansaction ID" is there allready but what it is used for, actually?)

    • Simply check for unassigned transactions with same date and same amount on existing assets/liabilities during the import run, and (propose to) merge those transactions

    I guess such a simple check does the trick for a personal finance app.
    Your typical user would import transfers for two or three bank accounts only.
    Identifying transactions between those boils down to matching up the unassigned, no?

    Regexp replace for transfer targets would be just awesome. Ideally it would predict my success rate by telling me how many previously assigned transfers to my "groceries" account match the super fancy expression I am typing (and my failure rate, the matches with transfers assigned to other accounts).

    Really like your work. Keep it up!

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras March 7th, 2011 @ 05:41 PM

    The transaction ID is used for automatically "binding" transactions to existing ones during imports. This feature comes from OFX import where it's not possible to have the same transaction ID from two different accounts. I agree that in the case of CSV imports, it could also be used to connect transfer accounts. However, I'm afraid this new feature could bring all sorts of new complications. I'd have to think about it. Meanwhile, I created #233 for this feature.

  • Virgil Dupras

    Virgil Dupras June 7th, 2011 @ 02:17 PM

    • Tag changed from big, feature, from-trac, import to big, feature, import

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