First impressions, thoughts and some questions
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:41 pm
Hello,
I just discovered MMex (1.5.1, 64bit, installed from a .deb package) and I must say I'm quite relieved that there is an open source finance app with this feature set, after considering other options like Moneydance, KmyMoney and Firefly. I'm now trying to get this to work with me, or vice versa, and have some quetions. Maybe somebody can help getting me started?
Please note that I'd be perfectly happy to help implement these features if they aren't planned yet, but may need some guidance on how to get started. I do some software development, but so far none in C++.
First things first, I run KDE Neon (based on Ubuntu) with a dark theme. I understand the themes support a "dark mode", but this seems not to work with KDE, at least Money Manager still has a bright background in the sidebar and main view and also white text, which makes both unuseable. Can I force "dark mode" to be used? If not, what exactly is MMEX looking for to enable Dark Mode?
Second: Currently MMEX crashes on every single report as soon as I open it, due to an exception in WebKit.
Is this a known issue? If not, how can we trace it?
Third: Categories.
* MMEX seems to support hierarchical categories, but not when importing. Is this correct? It would be really good if users could specify a character (e.g. ":" or "|") to convert CSV values like "Home|Rent", "Home|Heating", Home|Repairs" into one "Home" category with three subcategories during import.
* Can MMEX autoassign categories to transactions when they are loaded / imported or manually, based on keywords in the description, the amount (equal, larger, smaller) or keywords in the recipient/sender?
* Can MMEX assign colors (background/foreground) to categories so that transactions get colored appropriately? That could help a lot when browsing the transactions view. Alternatively, or in addition, category icons?
* How do I reorganize / regroup categories? I first tried to use drag & drop in the categories view, but this doesn't work.
Next up: transactions view:
* Can I customize the order of the columns in the transactions view?
* Can I add additional custom columns and import CSV data into them?
My transactions have a description (supplied by the bank) AND a comment (supplied by me when checking).
* Also it would be very useful to have an "Active" checkbox besides each transaction to be able to (temporarily) disable this transaction, which would make it invisible to reports and summaries, but still existing in the database. This is very useful to search for inconsistencies during bookkeeping.
* When selecting several transactions, a summary display above or below would be very good (number of transactions, total sum, date range, etc).
* It seems to be possible to color code certain transactions.
Finally, import:
* I read on the Github issues that online connections to banks are planned. This is a killer must-have feature for me since I do everything online and regularly downloading a dozen CSV files to update my transactions is completely impossible. If this is planned, can we pretty please implement a "one-button sync" solution which simply iterates through all online accouns and downloads all new transactions, and maybe even does this automatically in a configurable interval, e.g. every X hours, daily, or once on startup?
* As long as this isn't yet available, can I script the import process on the commandline, i.e. something like `mmex --import myfile.csv --config 1`, or (alternatively) can I directly populate the SQLite table CHECKINGACCOUNT_V1? Any pitfalls I should expect?
* when importing from a CSV file, how must the CSV file be formatted for split transactions? Is this even possible yet? I have several such transactions saved in a legacy app (which, incidentally, also uses SQLite as backend) and I'd like to export this data in a suitable format.
I think that was all - so far
Again - I'm willing to help implement these things, if you think they make sense for MMEX.
Hoping for some positive answers.
Thank you!
I just discovered MMex (1.5.1, 64bit, installed from a .deb package) and I must say I'm quite relieved that there is an open source finance app with this feature set, after considering other options like Moneydance, KmyMoney and Firefly. I'm now trying to get this to work with me, or vice versa, and have some quetions. Maybe somebody can help getting me started?
Please note that I'd be perfectly happy to help implement these features if they aren't planned yet, but may need some guidance on how to get started. I do some software development, but so far none in C++.
First things first, I run KDE Neon (based on Ubuntu) with a dark theme. I understand the themes support a "dark mode", but this seems not to work with KDE, at least Money Manager still has a bright background in the sidebar and main view and also white text, which makes both unuseable. Can I force "dark mode" to be used? If not, what exactly is MMEX looking for to enable Dark Mode?
Second: Currently MMEX crashes on every single report as soon as I open it, due to an exception in WebKit.
Is this a known issue? If not, how can we trace it?
Third: Categories.
* MMEX seems to support hierarchical categories, but not when importing. Is this correct? It would be really good if users could specify a character (e.g. ":" or "|") to convert CSV values like "Home|Rent", "Home|Heating", Home|Repairs" into one "Home" category with three subcategories during import.
* Can MMEX autoassign categories to transactions when they are loaded / imported or manually, based on keywords in the description, the amount (equal, larger, smaller) or keywords in the recipient/sender?
* Can MMEX assign colors (background/foreground) to categories so that transactions get colored appropriately? That could help a lot when browsing the transactions view. Alternatively, or in addition, category icons?
* How do I reorganize / regroup categories? I first tried to use drag & drop in the categories view, but this doesn't work.
Next up: transactions view:
* Can I customize the order of the columns in the transactions view?
* Can I add additional custom columns and import CSV data into them?
My transactions have a description (supplied by the bank) AND a comment (supplied by me when checking).
* Also it would be very useful to have an "Active" checkbox besides each transaction to be able to (temporarily) disable this transaction, which would make it invisible to reports and summaries, but still existing in the database. This is very useful to search for inconsistencies during bookkeeping.
* When selecting several transactions, a summary display above or below would be very good (number of transactions, total sum, date range, etc).
* It seems to be possible to color code certain transactions.
Finally, import:
* I read on the Github issues that online connections to banks are planned. This is a killer must-have feature for me since I do everything online and regularly downloading a dozen CSV files to update my transactions is completely impossible. If this is planned, can we pretty please implement a "one-button sync" solution which simply iterates through all online accouns and downloads all new transactions, and maybe even does this automatically in a configurable interval, e.g. every X hours, daily, or once on startup?
* As long as this isn't yet available, can I script the import process on the commandline, i.e. something like `mmex --import myfile.csv --config 1`, or (alternatively) can I directly populate the SQLite table CHECKINGACCOUNT_V1? Any pitfalls I should expect?
* when importing from a CSV file, how must the CSV file be formatted for split transactions? Is this even possible yet? I have several such transactions saved in a legacy app (which, incidentally, also uses SQLite as backend) and I'd like to export this data in a suitable format.
I think that was all - so far
Again - I'm willing to help implement these things, if you think they make sense for MMEX.
Hoping for some positive answers.
Thank you!