old transactions when getting going

[jrgo...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I have 4 importers working now (1 core credit card, 2 banks, and 1 investment account) and these are all OFX files with balance assertions which is great. 

The main question I have is that I'm now about to try to get 2 years of data imported to make the data useful. What is the best way to efficiently assign the expense accounts to all those transactions? 

Should I, 

1. Push as many rules into each importer. For example, if $-amount equals = $2000 and/or description is "payment to ABC apts" then add label Expense:Rent..
2. or manually just use the tab-complete in emacs and do this even for the repeat purchases (e.g. 24 times for 2 years for rent)?
3. or create some of keyboard macros to search for the $-amount and next line add the right expense amount for the repeat transactions like rent. 
4. or try to label 2-3 months and then use the smart_importer. I was trying this approach but I couldn't get the smart_importer to work and I still don't know why (see this thread). The last message seemed to indicate that I may need more data which may be the case.
5. or some other approach?

I probably have 1500 bank transactions to work through and 3000 credit card transactions so trying figure out how best to get this all done and done quickly. I can see that as I do this regularly 1/month I can get this down to 5-10 minutes with scripts to fetch ofx files, script to call bean-extract, etc. 

My main question is what should I do now with the historical data to import? 

thanks,

Jonathan

[Martin Michlmayr]

* jrgo...@gmail.com <jrgo...@gmail.com> [2021-05-15 03:33]:
> 1. Push as many rules into each importer.

I wouldn't put the rules into each importer. I'd keep each importer
focussed on producing a basic transaction. I'd then have a second
stage importer which takes those transactions and amends them. This
way you don't need to replicate similar logic in each importer.

> For example, if $-amount
> equals = $2000 and/or description is "payment to ABC apts" then add label
> Expense:Rent.

I have an importer that does something like that. There are a number
of similar "rules-based" importers available. I was planning on
sending an email with an overview of each in the hope that we can
collaboratively work/agree on *one* solution, but I won't have time in
the next few weeks.

I can make my solution available with some examples if that'd be
useful, though.

> I probably have 1500 bank transactions to work through and 3000
> credit card transactions so trying figure out how best to get this
> all done and done quickly. I can see that as I do this regularly
> 1/month I can get this down to 5-10 minutes with scripts to fetch
> ofx files, script to call bean-extract, etc.
>
> My main question is what should I do now with the historical data to
> import?

You can always create opening balances for a specific point in time
and go back later and add more transactions.

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

[jrgo...@gmail.com]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the response. Yes a general rules framework/solution that can be easily configured would be great and save a lot of effort and happy to help think about how it might work. 

I like the suggestion of creating opening balances and adding data later. Goal should get something that is accurate now and I can add data to on a monthly basis going forward and then try to get 1-2 years of data to be accurate so it can help me with any tax issues.

thanks,

Jonathan

[redst...@gmail.com]

With that many transactions, (4) would be your easiest and  least effort, IMHO. Debugging that should give you a big payoff.