improve transaction ordering

[Michael Rooney]

Filing a bug as a result of: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/wxbanker/+spec/list-positive-transactions-first/

When a user enters a transaction, that transaction should be inserted so that positive transactions come first for any given day. When I enter a purchase on the same day as a deposit, it shouldn't show my account having a negative balance as a result of the purchase being listed before the deposit.

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

The way it currently should work is that if the dates are the same, they are sorted by the order in which they were entered. So if I have $25 in my account, then I spent $50 then deposited $100 (and enter them in that order), it actually was true that my balance was -$25 for a short period of time so it should show that, even if possibly not important to the bank.

If the deposit occurred first and was entered first, which seems logical, then you shouldn't see a negative balance.

Are you finding that the described behavior isn't the case, or do you find that entering transactions in the order in which they occurred is not reasonable and would rather have wxBanker make guesses? I'm just a little worried about hiding information; if it puts positive amounts first for the same date, let's say in the above case I DID actually overdraw my account before depositing, but checking wxBanker and seeing that might make me realize that and give my bank a call to remove any potential fees.

[spencerrecneps (spencerjgardner)]

The way you describe it is the way that it works for me, so it isn't really a bug. For the case that you mentioned, this kind of behavior makes sense. In my case, I don't track my transactions on a daily basis - I always keep enough of a cushion that I'm never really concerned with overdrawing. I also tend to add transactions in large batches at the end of the week, so there's no guarantee that I'm adding a day's transactions in the order in which it actually occurred.

I guess it's really an aesthetic preference - it looks cleaner to me to have all deposits listed first and then withdrawals following. I should also note that there is almost always a lag between the moment of the purchase and the transaction being posted to your bank account. Here's an example: I have $50 in my account and submit an online payment of $60 for my electric bill. I then stop at the bank later in the day to deposit $100 to cover the bill. Entering the transactions in chronological order, my wxBanker account briefly shows a -$10 balance until I deposit the money, but the bank doesn't see the transaction until the next day.

Like I said, it's more an aesthetic thing. Given that my financial habits are probably different from most people's, I wouldn't necessarily expect this to be default behavior, but it would be nice as a configurable option.