On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 14:42, Benoit Gr�goire wrote:
> Ok, that would technically work. But the user would be presented with the
> exact same list of transactions twice. This just duplicates work for the
> user. He would have to first select or double check the auto-selection of
> the destination account (possibly by finding his sales receipt for several of
> the transactions) for every transaction. Then once done he would have to
> start again (again possibly refering again to paper receipts) to see if the
> transactions have to clear an existing transaction or be added.
>
> Even worse, if he decides to user CLEAR on a significant fraction of the
> transaction, a significant portion of his previous work is completely wasted.
>
> In short, I completely disagree that destination acount matching is a separate
> process from transaction matching for the user. There both part of the
> intellectual process "Here's is a downloaded transaction, what should I do
> with it".
>
> I'll send my proposed GUI in an other email.
>
You bring up a good point here, logically in the users mind when
manually comparing an online account to a GnuCash one they would want to
add the name of the destination account first then fill in the amount
they have (this goes right to left in adding a transaction in GnuCash).
If I was adding a transaction I had on paper (ie not in an app like
GnuCash)and also comparing it to what was in an account statement (paper
or online) Then I would first choose the account to add it to, then
write out the transaction amount then destination account and lastly
fill in the info in the destination account itself.
With that in mind, the two separated panes you have for the transaction
matcher would also to me cause a lot of confusion if you had, for
example, a lot of transactions on the left that are being imported and a
lot of matches on the right. You could easily get confused initially
about what you were looking at. In other words, I feel that the 'one
line per transaction' paradigm here would server to increase user
confusion, at least initially or if they were looking at it for the
first time. I believe druids are an attempt to make what you are looking
at a lot more certain, by limiting the amount of information you need to
deal with at any one time.
Now having said all this, I have to say that in my time of using MS
Money, I particularly liked how they implemented online transaction
matching and downloading (in spite of some bugs it had). It was
separated into two distinct phases and didn't involve a wizard at all.
The first phase was when you downloaded the file from a website, somehow
it sees that you are downloading a file associated with Money and pops
up an import dialog. This just asks what account you wish to use and
once it is done Money goes automatically to a page that lists accounts
that use online importing and tells you if there are imports that need
review. This part I dont care so much about
What they did was to implement it like this (my comments in
parentheses);
Num Date Payee Amount Category Status
02/21/2002 ATM Withdrawal $200 Match (or postpone,new)
o Matches the following transaction in my register:
02/21/2002 Cash $200 Cash Withdrawal (notice its lined up)
Choose Transaction from Register (pops up dialog below)
o This is a new transaction, add it to my register
(selecting this will allow you to either accept the
transaction as downloaded or edit it in a popup dialog)
o Review transaction later
(just changes match to postpone)
The transaction choosing dialog is like this;
Match Transaction
02/21/2002 ATM Withdrawal $200
(Listbox)
+ 02/21/2002 Cash $200 (actually its a tick not a plus)
(list of other transactions in register)
Done Cancel Edit Transaction
I dont like the dialog so much, but I do like how they have basically
the whole of the transaction match process in an easy to read list of
transactions. This way I can go down a page of imported transactions and
look quickly at if it matched anything and what it matched to.
What I think might work is a dialog sort of like this;
Status Date Description Amount Dest Account
Clear 02/21/2002 ATM Withdrawal $200
o This matches the following transaction;
02/21/2002 Cash $200 Expenses:Cash Withdrawal
o This is a new transaction
o Postpone this transaction
o Replace this transaction
And have the above for each transaction being imported. The right pane
could still list other possible matches (Though I would make it somewhat
smaller). The user is then certain what match has been picked, the top
line could be directly edited to create a new transaction (if This is a
new transaction is selected). It also gives a visual indication to the
user with the radio button selection of what exactly will happen to the
transaction. The Status can be used for the clear/reconcile decision.
I hope you'll consider this
Chris
--
RedHat Certified Engineer #807302549405490.
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