v5.8 New Transfer Selection Dialogue Appears For Every Transfer Even If No Transactions

[Shannon Brown]

The New Transfer Selection Dialogue for Internal Transfers in v.5.8 displays the Target Transaction Association every time even if no transactions. This conflicts with the documentation:
https://www.gethomebank.org/help/index.html
"HomeBank will check if there is some existing transaction into the target account that match the source transfer and if there is at least one, this dialog will popup and let you choose what to do." The important part is "if there is at least one."

Until recently, one just specified the source and target accounts and transferred the money. Works as expected. I used this regularly to pay a credit card bill by transferring funds from a bank to the credit card. This is not Income or Expense but simply moving money around.

With 5.8, instead, I specify the source and target as before using the same dialogue for a new transfer. When I try to Add the transfer, I get an odd new prompt that seems to look for something called a Target Association.

This seems a bug. The Target Association dialogue pops up EVERY time with no apparent way to dismiss such as Cancel. Instead, I need to Create New and then cancel from that third dialogue to get the dialogues to disappear.

There are no transactions (I don't even understand what this is trying to do in a normal simple transfer from account X to account Y) so there should be no dialogue. Instead, Homebank seems to be forcing one to create a new transaction. This for me (grateful for the software) is a pain with three dialogues and a cancel just to do a simple transfer.

[Sunmoon51 (sunmoon51)]

Agreed. Even more, if there are existing transactions, they are not shown in the dialog.

Looks like things became more complicated in 5.8 then they really are. What is really meaningful in transfer transactions, it is presence of two dates: when money leaves the source account and when it arrives to the target one.

YMMV

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

you may probably didn't read the changelog (well or not)

this is, clearly announced a new preference:
#2044601 preference to always prompt for a target txn when adding xfer

preferences, means you can uncheck it
for new users it was decided to set this new preference to true by default

yes doc might be not completely up to date on some points, I don't always think to change everything

[Sunmoon51 (sunmoon51)]

Let's assume Preferences/Transactions/Transfer behaviour is NOT checked. Then transfer selection dialog is NEVER shown. This is correct. I like to have this option unchecked.

But let's assume Preferences/Transactions/Transfer behaviour is checked. The transfer selection dialog is ALWAYS shown (according to the manual). This is correct, too. I'd like to set this option but I can't. Because ...

... because target association suggested list is then ALWAYS empty even if there are similar transfer transactions in ledger book. This is not correct and it is the point of the bug (at least for me).

[Shannon Brown (ubuntuoce)]

First, thank you Maxime for your hard work on Homebank.

Thank you for the reference to the Wish/Enhancement:
#2044601 preference to always prompt for a target txn when adding xfer.
I just do simple transfers so never encountered this before and thus my confusion.

I read #2044601 and understand the use case now (thanks for the enhancement tracking number). It looks like a variation on this feature has been part of Homebank for quite some time. The recent change made the behavior default now in 5.8. This is why I never saw it before and thus my confusion after updating to 5.8.

I agree, however, that even when on, I am not seeing anything. Also, the dialogue forces you to Create transaction at that point if there are no transactions. That is, if there are no matching transactions per the new feature, the dialogue might have a Cancel option to just perform the transfer without a target. However, I do NOT use this feature so turning it off is fine for me.

For others who may be encountering this situation involving a new dialogue showing target transactions when doing a Transfer in Homebank 5.8....

You can turn off this new default feature in Homebank 5.8 for Transactions by:
--opening Homebank
--select EDIT...PREFERENCES...TRANSACTIONS
--then scroll down to see Transfer behavior
--then UNCHECK the "Show action for target creation dialogue for Add"
--click OK to save the setting

As Maxime notes, the 5.8 release notes at https://www.gethomebank.org/ChangeLog have the Transfer change noted at::
wish : #2044601 preference to always prompt for a target txn when adding xfer.
This appears a requested wish/enhancement. See the original wish/request use case at https://bugs.launchpad.net/homebank/+bug/2044601

The documentation covers the transfers change at
https://www.gethomebank.org/help/index.html
"HomeBank will check if there is some existing transaction into the target account that match the source transfer and if there is at least one, this dialog will popup and let you choose what to do."

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

@all:
that's the feature asked: not create anything without user agreement.
in the past I got tickets were users complaine that target xfer was automatically inserted faulty because of wrong target or other bad in the source.
so it make sense to put this option as default for consistency and new users, as you can quickly disabled it.

> doc is not up to date, I will update, but other than that there seems no bug.

match criteria to find a match target txn:
- not already a xfer
- dst account
- date +/-daygap in settings
- amount: opposite sign if same currency
- amount: +/-opposite sign 10% gap for != currency

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

doc updated
- online already https://www.gethomebank.org/help/index.html
- will be with 5.8.1