Splasm Software Discussions

I just got started using checkbook yesterday, I am switching from quicken 2003.
yesterday I downloaded and recorded the qif from my bank. Today I downloaded a new qif to record any new transactions and I noticed that checkbook did not exclude or match any existing transactions not even check numbers.
did I do something wrong when I recorded the transactions?

When you import a QIF file CheckBook will always present every transaction in the file for you to approve or deny via the checkbox on the far left side of the Import table, which we call the Import checkbox. QIF files typically do not contain information to uniquely identify every transaction, so CheckBook attempts to match incoming transactions against existing Entries by comparing Date, Amount, and either To/From or Description. If it believes it might be importing a duplicate transaction it will still show you the potential duplicate but will not enable the Import checkbox, leaving the final decision of whether to import up to you. If the Date, Amount, or To/From or Description in an imported Entry have changed since import then CheckBook won't have enough information to match against and may enable the Import checkbox so that the transaction is imported.

Is CheckBook presenting duplicate transactions and enabling the Import checkbox? If the Import checkbox is enabled for incoming transactions that you know are duplicates, can use the information above to tell if there's not enough information for CheckBook to use to determine whether the "new" transactions match existing Entries?

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Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

all the boxes are checked, but I did change the "to/from" field to something simpler when I added them. are what you saying is not to change any fields so the files match?
can additional fields be added to check book so I can see notes in the main window?

When CheckBook sees that an incoming transaction's Date and Amount match an existing Entry's Date and Amount it compares the incoming transaction's To/From with the existing Entry's To/From, but if it doesn't match it should go on to compare the incoming transaction's Description with the existing Entry's Description. That means only one or the other has to match for CheckBook to think it has a possible duplicate. If you change both the To/From and Description in your imported Entries then that will leave too little information to accurately guess whether a duplicate will occur, which will cause CheckBook to enable the Import checkbox for the incoming transactions.

We can make one small change to help in some cases. By extending the matching code to compare check numbers, which should be uniqiue in most cases, and not proceed to compare To/From and Description data if the check numbers match, we can catch more probable duplicates. We just made this change in the current build of CheckBook 1.6.2 and it looks like it's working well.

While it can be difficult for CheckBook to accurately guess when incoming transactions will duplicate existing Entries there may be additional strategies to deal with this. One way is to limit the statement date range at the online bank's website to prevent duplicate transactions from reaching CheckBook in the first place. Another way would be for CheckBook to allow users to modify or remove multiple incoming transactions in one action. That would mean you could visually spot a range of incoming transactions that you know will duplicate existing Entries, select that range and remove it from the list of incoming transactions. We're planning to review each part of CheckBook that could benefit from the ability to select, edit and/or remove multiple items simultaneously like this.

CheckBook does not provide a way to allow users to see an Entry's Notes in its tables. We expected Notes to extend for at least several words and possibly paragraphs or even a few pages. It would be impractical to try to view Notes of anything more than a few words in a single line item in a table, especially if the Notes contain multiple lines. We have received feedback requesting that CheckBook at least provide some visual clue that an Entry contains a Note. We're conceptualizing ways of conveying this information, possibly through a separate "Notes" column that will contain a Notes icon if an Entry contains Notes. The Notes column could be disabled/enabled through a general preference for disabling/enabling columns. Another strategy for providing more information without requiring the user to open an Entry and switch to the Notes tab would be to provide a tooltip-style display as the user moves their mouse over each Entry. The tooltip could be set to contain both vital Entry information and the first few lines of an Entry's Notes.

_________________
Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

thank you ~