Auto Suggestions for Description

[killtux]

Hi!

I’d like to suggest a small but very useful feature for Pico:

Would it be possible to add auto-suggestions for the description field?
For example, when typing a few letters, Pico could suggest previously used descriptions that match the input - similar to how the Firefly III web interface or the iOS app “Abacus” handles this.

I already use templates for recurring descriptions, but for less frequently used ones this feature would be especially helpful.

This would help maintain consistent naming and avoid multiple variations of the same description (e.g., “Metro Supermarket” vs. “Supermarket Metro”), especially when users don’t remember exactly how they entered it before.

Thanks for considering this!

[cioraneanu]

Hi. Thanks for the feedback but this is not something that i'm a fan of. In my view the description field should not be the foundation of any reports/stats it should be free-form and it should help the user easily identify a transaction(this means sometimes writing 5-7 words)

As time grows the unique number of descriptions grows a lot so this becomes less useful.

[killtux]

Thanks for the reply. I understand your point that the description field should stay free-form and should not become the foundation for reports or statistics.

My use case is a bit different though: I mainly use the description field to quickly identify and later find recurring transactions. For that, consistency is really helpful. For example, when I enter the same merchant or recurring payment multiple times, I want to avoid small variations like “Metro Supermarket”, “Supermarket Metro”, “Metro Markt”, etc.

So I'm not suggesting to make descriptions more structured or mandatory. What I had in mind was more like an optional convenience feature:

• when typing a few characters, Pico could show the 5–10 most similar descriptions from existing transactions
• selecting one would simply fill the description field
• users who prefer completely free-form descriptions could leave this disabled
• the setting could be optional, e.g. “Enable description suggestions”

I really like Pico’s overall design and workflow, but this is one of the few points where I still often switch back to the original Firefly III interface, because it helps me keep recurring names consistent.

No worries if this doesn’t fit your vision for the app - I just wanted to clarify the use case a bit better.