Improve sidebar matching
I've used the new sidebar in 2011 preview a few times, and I see some room for improvement. The main trouble I'm having with the sidebar is that most of the "similar" payees aren't similar at all, e.g. I have a transaction "purchase with pin value village" and it's suggesting "top food", "purchase with pin 76", "safeway", etc. -- looks like it thinks that any "purchase with pin" in the description or memo is potentially the same payee, when clearly that's a common element that should be factored out before comparing.
Or the matching routine ought to simply exclude common banking phrases when comparing. IIRC this is how Money did it in v2003.
There ought to be some kind of scoring threshold -- I have a transaction "CHECK" that is apparently similar to "nikki b", "runners world", PURCHASE WITH PIN 76", "customer withdrawal", etc. -- these are so different that I shouldn't even have to look at them in the list. If you're going to show me those then at least change the heading to "Dissimilar Payees".
Also, I see a lot of repeats in the Similar Payees list. No reason to present more than one option that does the same thing.
Thanks for putting this preview out there for feedback.
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1 Posted by Ben Spencer on 19 Mar, 2011 03:03 PM
Hi Mark
When you download a transaction from the bank it already has a description/payee. If you then manually change this description/payee Moneydance remembers the original even though it doesn't display it. You can see this original by right clicking on a transaciton and selecting "Show Transaction Details" the field is called " ol.orig-payee.
The matching algorithm compares the elements in a number of fields to determine how good a match is which is to say it does use a scoring threshold. One of the fields that it looks at is the original description/payee that was on the transaciton when it was downloaded.
I suspect what is happening in your case is that many of your transactions had the original description/payee of "CHECK" and are getting a perfect match on that field. This would explain why they are being offered as similar payees.
We could modify the matching algorithm to exclude common banking phrases and that would have to be done with significant caution. One persons common banking phrase may well be another persons actual payee name. I have crated a suggestion ticket and attached it to this discussion.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 03:32 PM.