Feature request: Transaction Matcher

[Hallvard Lærum]

Just a short tip about transaction matcher. You've probably thought of it  
already, but here goes:

1. Imported transactions from netbank accounts are easily and reliably  
mapped against expense categories by simple character pattern recognition.

Recently, I programmed an expense tracker based on imported transactions  
 from my bank account on the internet. Soon it appeared that the title of  
each transaction corresponded quite nicely to a certain expense category.  
I just had to selected what part of the title provided enough information  
to make the match pattern unique. The idea saved me loads of data entry,  
eliminating 80% of the categorization I used to do. It worked so well that  
I (almost) forced the user to input a match pattern every time an unknown  
transaction was categorized. The only exception to this was expenses  
related to time spans, eg. vacation or travel expenses. I used pseudo-SQL  
patterns, regex will certainly expand this possibility even more.

As I said, you probably though of this already. If not, please consider  
it. It really works, and helps the user tremendously.

Regards,

Hallvard Laerum
Oslo

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[Thomas Baumgart]

On Sunday 28 September 2008 19:00:15 Hallvard Lærum wrote:

> Just a short tip about transaction matcher. You've probably thought of it
> already, but here goes:

Please find my comments merged. Not knowing which version of KMyMoney you are
referring to it is hard to give good comments.

> 1. Imported transactions from netbank accounts are easily and reliably
> mapped against expense categories by simple character pattern recognition.
>
> Recently, I programmed an expense tracker based on imported transactions
>  from my bank account on the internet.

Which protocol/file format did you use for downloading?

>  Soon it appeared that the title of
> each transaction corresponded quite nicely to a certain expense category.
> I just had to selected what part of the title provided enough information
> to make the match pattern unique.

Which field of the transaction do you refer to as 'title'?

> The idea saved me loads of data entry,
> eliminating 80% of the categorization I used to do. It worked so well that
> I (almost) forced the user to input a match pattern every time an unknown
> transaction was categorized. The only exception to this was expenses
> related to time spans, eg. vacation or travel expenses. I used pseudo-SQL
> patterns, regex will certainly expand this possibility even more.
>
> As I said, you probably though of this already. If not, please consider
> it. It really works, and helps the user tremendously.

Yes, we have some sort of transaction matching implemented in the latest
versions of KMyMoney. Again, not knowing which version you base your comments
and suggestions is a problem for me.


--

Regards

Thomas Baumgart

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[José Jorge-4]

A Sunday 28 September 2008 19:00:15, Hallvard Lærum escreveu:
> Just a short tip about transaction matcher. You've probably thought of it
> already, but here goes:
>
> 1. Imported transactions from netbank accounts are easily and reliably
> mapped against expense categories by simple character pattern recognition.

Well, even if I know it already exists, this idea is much more friendly : at
import time suggest a pattern match to users.

I say that because I still could not use pattern matching when importing OFX
local files : it simply doens't match anything...

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[Thomas Baumgart]

On Monday 29 September 2008 23:08:02 you wrote:

please always CC the developer list so others can follow the discussion as
well. TIA.

> Hello again. I've been studying KMyMoney 0.8.8-CVS. I'm not using it yet,
> partly
> due to lack of the functionality I'm describing here.

This is a somewhat outdated version of the project. We are now up to 0.9.2
which uses an extensively overhauled codebase with a wealth of additional
features.

> > Which protocol/file format did you use for downloading?
>
> I simply exported the transactions as excel files, using the functionality
> of Handelsbanken.no,
> and then imported the files. An example is included. ("Dato" - date,
> "Forklaring" - Title (or explanation,
> directly translated), "Ut av konto" - Withdrawals, "Inn på konto" -
> Deposits)
>
> > Which field of the transaction do you refer to as 'title'?
>
> "Forklaring". It contains a lot of concatenated information, including the
> name of the
> shop receiving the payment.

This is more or less what we refer to as memo. Unfortunately, the payee is
mixed in.

> I see you have pattern matching for payee,
> which I admit
> provides a more accurate matching than assigning the transaction to some
> broad category.
> It depends on how often you go shopping in supermarkets versus how often
> you select
> specialized stores for particular products (from other categories). Still,
> for my use in
> Norway it provided a suitable degree of control, as I don't buy TVs or
> computers from
> the same shops as I buy my groceries from. In those cases, I could have
> split the
> transactions manually, as they are not too common in my data. Financially,
> I just need
> some overview of where the money go, and I am not willing to sit for hours
> entering
> and categorizing the transactions by hand.
>
> Assigning categories to payees could also work well, as the reduced degree
> of accuracy
> would be both clear to the user as well as reversible. But then you'd
> loose the ability to
> compensate for "multi-category shopping" by splitting transactions.
>
> > Yes, we have some sort of transaction matching implemented in the latest
> > versions of KMyMoney. Again, not knowing which version you base your
> > comments and suggestions is a problem for me.

Throughout KMyMoney the term 'transaction matching' is used to match an
imported transaction with an existing one in KMyMoney to avoid duplicates. So
if you have entered a transaction manually and download it later from the
bank chances are that it gets matched and you only end up with a single
transaction.

> I'm sorry for not being clear enough. I could described the suggestion in
> much greater detail,
> but I'd like to know if you might considering it first. If you've grasped
> the idea, and
> already find it unsuitable for KMyMoney, just let me know. On the other
> hand, if you think
> this might benefit the user, I'd love to help developing it (by describing
> it, that is, my
> coding skills are not high enough)

AqBanking - which is available as a plugin for KMyMoney - supports a list of
CSV filters/profiles for various banks. I don't know, if it is feasible to
create such a profile for your bank.  This way, you would have the capability
to import the CSV file directly into KMyMoney.

I did not find any specific information about the CSV importer, but you might
want to check on http://www2.aquamaniac.de/sites/aqbanking/index.php

--

Regards

Thomas Baumgart

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