In my experience, my bank uses the word 'check' to describe every check that clears my bank account and my credit card company describes every purchase at Amazon as 'Amazon'. I could continue, but I certainly do not want all transactions with those descriptions transferring to the same respective accounts. I think very few users of GnuCash would want that. The GnuCash import wizards have been working for many years with Bayesian matching giving varying results attempting to automatically match imported transactions with existing transactions and to assign transfer accounts to unmatched transactions. The imported transactions often have intentionally vague descriptions describing, at best, the method of payment rather than the purpose of the payment. That fact makes the Bayesian matching extremely difficult to accomplish accurately but with sufficient training it eventually starts to work reasonably well.
If you really want Gnucash to transfer every 'check' to the same transfer account, you can use Bayesian matching to train it eventually to do that in most cases. With the new Import Map editor you can improve the training to work even more to your liking. I think that would be adequate for most users. On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 9:31 PM David Cousens <davidcous...@bigpond.com> wrote: > > For the transfer account, the second account in a transaction being > imported, GnuCash does in fact work that way, i.e. it imports all > transactions in which the transfer account has not been specified to an > Imbalance account for the currency of the primary account in the > transaction. The presence of transactions in the Imbalance accounts is > intended to trigger users that the transaction description is incomplete > and > that the correct account should be selected to replace the Imbalance > account > for the transaction. In the majority of cases the transfer account is > going > to be an Income or Expense account. Where a transfer account is specified > though, the label has to have been previously mapped onto an internal > account or a new internal account created and specified for it to be > imported. The transaction record to be imported must specify a primary > account label which is usually an asset or liability account and that label > has to be mapped to an internal asset/liability account otherwise it does > not know where to import it to. > > You could have an option whereby if a matching account label does not exist > for the primary account for a transaction, GnuCash creates an account with > the name. In the majority of cases for imported transactions, the primary > account is going to be an asset or liability account. However, account > structures in accounting have a structure which reflects how the business > (even where it is simply personal accounting) operates and is financed and > the asset and liability account structures are fairly strictly defined by > the assets and liabilities you actually have. I would not want to have > myaccounting program randomly creating new accounts in these categories > every time it came across a label which had not been assigned to an > existing > internal account and I suspect that after experiencing it you may not > either. > > A first time user new to accounting is always going to have trouble working > out what goes where and why which is why the GnuCash guide has a very > brief > introduction to accounting basics but nothing really replaces making > mistakes. Unfortunately most of us don't consult the documentation until > we > strike a problem, me included. The beauty of GnuCash is that if you do > stuff > it up you can at least correct it once your knowledge has built up. > > > > ----- > David Cousens > -- > Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > -- David Carlson _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
