Conflict between main and savings account, when downloading both

[gbonnema]

Problem
The problem occurs when you download your main account and your savings account transactions and process them in the same bookkeeping program. Chances are your bookkeeping program will register the transfers between you main and savings account twice. The consequence is an incorrect status of both the main and the savings account. For my account management program (GnuCash) this is certainly true. I would like to hear from other users how their account management program processes these transfers.

Solution
There is no solution that would satisfy everyone and is watertight in its recognition of a transfer.

Having said that, there is a way to guess, but it depends on both transactions being available in the same file.

So:

• either both transactions are downloaded simultaneously and end up in the same file,
• or we store all transactions in a database, that can produce all ofx records and thus recognize transfers.
• or we exclude transfers from the download file (manually).

Except for the cumbersome manual solution, I do not know a simple way to solve this automatically. Both solutions require an overhaul and saving transactions in a database make for a much more complex program. Also it gets more dependencies.

The manual solution in the case of a savings account implies downloading only interest and bank cost transactions and leaving all other transactions out. For 2 different main accounts it may be more complex.

Rabo
The rabo could simply solve it, because the Rabo knows it is a transfer. Especially when transferring from main to savings account and back, they could prevent misunderstandings by making sure I can recognize transfers. Currently they don't. I will bring this issue to their attention, but don't expect them to respond any time soon with any significant response.

When dealing with the Rabo most responses include: "we have sent your request to the IT department" and "sorry, we do not track progress on the issue".

Decision
I am still to decide what to do.

[gbonnema]

The current version (2.11) solved this problem with a config in the directory you execute the program. I added a manpage, explaining how the config works.