Bugs and GUI improvements

Discussions about iCompta on macOS
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dartar
Posts: 3
Joined: 29 April 2009, 16:26

Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by dartar »

Hi, I was skeptical about the usefulness of keeping track locally of my bank transactions. I gave a try to iCompta and I must say that you made me change my mind :) I am still testing it but I think I will end up using it regularly if I manage to adapt it to my needs. I'd like to report a few bugs and some general suggestions (mostly related to the GUI) -- apologies if any of these have already been reported. All in all, iCompta looks like a very promising application, kudos for the great job. Have you considered making it open source so as to allow other users to submit bugfixes and patches? ;)

BUGS
  • each time I reapply rules, the balance/income/expense figures on the status bar double!
  • each time I reapply rules (e.g. applying categories to specific items), transactions get labelled multiple times with the same category
MINOR ISSUES
Importing
  • my online banking service (Barclays UK) allows downloading transactions in a variety of Microsoft Money formats (.OFX) (from "99" to "2005") as well as CSV and a number of other less known formats. I tried using OFX, but (1) iCompta seems to truncate <NAME> fields that exceed a certain length and (2) is apparently unable to understand <TRNTYPE> fields (all transactions are listed as "Other" after an import) , so I ended up using a CSV and manually mapping the fields I am interested in.
  • I second the request someone posted to make the list of transaction kinds editable: I would love to be able to add "Direct Debit" or "PayPal" or anything else to this list instead of working with the default types (they may also vary from country to country, as direct debit is a UK-only transaction type as far as I know).
Rules
  • it took me a long time to figure out that I could reapply the rules by right-clicking on the transaction list. That's not very intuitive and I guess some users will miss this, maybe you could add an "Apply rules" button in a more prominent location (e.g. at the bottom of the rules dialog or in the menu bar)?
  • it would be great if rules had default field autocompletion as in Mail.app, extracting values from the currently selected item. This would save users the effort of going to and fro between the rules list and the transaction list when creating new rules
  • sometimes you want to create a rule for a new category, it'd be great to be able to create new categories from the rules form.
  • it is impossible to move the rules dialog to read what's behind it. Why not make it a standard window (movable/resizable)? I think this would definitely be more user friendly.
Smart folders
  • it would be great to have the possibility to search transactions on-the-fly matching specific criteria. These searches might then be saved as smart folders and listed in the left navigation bar as Mail.app does.
  • It would also be useful to have categories and transaction kinds directly accessible in the left navigation bar.
Transactions
  • the "Order" drop-down is useful but quite unusual, do you think it would be possible to use standard columns instead (i.e. allow sorting by clicking on the column header)
  • "highlighting transaction" would save a click if it had a dedicated column in the transaction list (such as Mail.app's flags or Gmail's stars)
  • finally, you may want to allow users to customize the look of the transaction list by selecting which columns to display (as Mail.app does)
Fonts
  • the font used on the axes of the Balance evolution plot is very tiny and not quite readable.
Animations
  • I find the animation that opens the left and bottom panels very slow
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Angeman
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Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by Angeman »

dartar wrote:BUGS
each time I reapply rules, the balance/income/expense figures on the status bar double!
each time I reapply rules (e.g. applying categories to specific items), transactions get labelled multiple times with the same category
Just add the "list of categories is empty" condition to your rule.
dartar wrote:Importing
my online banking service (Barclays UK) allows downloading transactions in a variety of Microsoft Money formats (.OFX) (from "99" to "2005") as well as CSV and a number of other less known formats. I tried using OFX, but (1) iCompta seems to truncate <NAME> fields that exceed a certain length and (2) is apparently unable to understand <TRNTYPE> fields (all transactions are listed as "Other" after an import) , so I ended up using a CSV and manually mapping the fields I am interested in.
I second the request someone posted to make the list of transaction kinds editable: I would love to be able to add "Direct Debit" or "PayPal" or anything else to this list instead of working with the default types (they may also vary from country to country, as direct debit is a UK-only transaction type as far as I know).
This will be part of version 4.
dartar wrote:Rules
it took me a long time to figure out that I could reapply the rules by right-clicking on the transaction list. That's not very intuitive and I guess some users will miss this, maybe you could add an "Apply rules" button in a more prominent location (e.g. at the bottom of the rules dialog or in the menu bar)?
it would be great if rules had default field autocompletion as in Mail.app, extracting values from the currently selected item. This would save users the effort of going to and fro between the rules list and the transaction list when creating new rules
sometimes you want to create a rule for a new category, it'd be great to be able to create new categories from the rules form.
it is impossible to move the rules dialog to read what's behind it. Why not make it a standard window (movable/resizable)? I think this would definitely be more user friendly.
Sure, I'll try to make that better.
dartar wrote:Smart folders
it would be great to have the possibility to search transactions on-the-fly matching specific criteria. These searches might then be saved as smart folders and listed in the left navigation bar as Mail.app does.
It would also be useful to have categories and transaction kinds directly accessible in the left navigation bar.
I don't know if you noticed but you can already save filters in the filters menu so this is kind of smart folders.
dartar wrote:Transactions
the "Order" drop-down is useful but quite unusual, do you think it would be possible to use standard columns instead (i.e. allow sorting by clicking on the column header)
"highlighting transaction" would save a click if it had a dedicated column in the transaction list (such as Mail.app's flags or Gmail's stars)
finally, you may want to allow users to customize the look of the transaction list by selecting which columns to display (as Mail.app does)
It's hard to do as the categories and participations are displayed over multiple columns.
dartar wrote:Fonts
the font used on the axes of the Balance evolution plot is very tiny and not quite readable.
Animations
I find the animation that opens the left and bottom panels very slow
Ok I will try to make this better as well.
dartar
Posts: 3
Joined: 29 April 2009, 16:26

Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by dartar »

thanks for your replies, I look forward to the next release!
Angeman wrote:Just add the "list of categories is empty" condition to your rule.
thanks, this looks to me like a temporary fix though as adding the same category multiple times is definitely not what one would expect from categories. Adding a condition each time a new category/rule is created is not very user-friendly, will this be patched in the next release?
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Angeman
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Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by Angeman »

Yes it will probably be.
ian
Posts: 3
Joined: 16 June 2009, 21:47

Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by ian »

BUGS
each time I reapply rules, the balance/income/expense figures on the status bar double!
each time I reapply rules (e.g. applying categories to specific items), transactions get labelled multiple times with the same category
Just add the "list of categories is empty" condition to your rule.
I'm just starting out setting up iCompta and I'm having this problem too. I want to automate stuff as much as possible the rules feature is awesome for that.

The fix you suggested only works if "All to following are true". I have a couple of rules that need to be "Any of the following are true", and that re-applies categories multiple times and messes the expenses/etc totals.

I'm wary this will mess up my numbers... :(

Can I urge you to fix this quickly, either by preventing the same category from being added multiple times or even better, allowing us to add (X AND (X OR X)) type of conditions? (Or both ;) )

Thanks for an awesome app.

Ian
ian
Posts: 3
Joined: 16 June 2009, 21:47

Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by ian »

Woah, I just realized that if "The categories list is empty" is used in conjunction with "Any of the following are true", all uncategorized transactions will get the rule applied! This makes me wish even more for a (X AND (X OR X)) type of condition...

Edit--

OK, I've found another post with the solution for this... Pas évident, but it works. Merci Cyril!
No you can just create a new compound row by clicking on the plus button with option key down in order to create something like that :

Code: Select all
All of the following are true
The category list is empty
Any of the following is true
...
Last edited by ian on 16 June 2009, 22:45, edited 1 time in total.
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Angeman
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Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by Angeman »

You can create a new compound row by clicking on the + button with alt key down.
dartar
Posts: 3
Joined: 29 April 2009, 16:26

Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by dartar »

A category that is applied multiple times is a design flaw. Complex conditionals would be a nice addition, but I hope this will not take priority over the category bug that really needs to be fixed.
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Angeman
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Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by Angeman »

dartar wrote:A category that is applied multiple times is a design flaw.
That's your opinion, but some might want to add the same category multiple times with different comments each time for example.
dartar wrote:Complex conditionals would be a nice addition, but I hope this will not take priority over the category bug that really needs to be fixed.
Complex conditionals already exist, see the above post, all you have to do is to hold alt key down while clicking the + button to add a new compund row.
ian
Posts: 3
Joined: 16 June 2009, 21:47

Re: Bugs and GUI improvements

Post by ian »

May I add, regarding the multiple categories per transaction, it should never be possible to add multiple categories and have them total up to more than 100% of the actual transaction.

Could we have the percentage split automatically if more than 1 category is added? Or at least a control preventing a transaction to total more than 100%?

Personally, I would rather have a way to split the actual transaction into multiple transactions and to be limited to only one category per transaction... It would also do away with all this multiple category problem. (Consider this a suggestion ;) )
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