Since there seems to be some appetite (and I guess need) for me to “prove” that this is possible, and since the example from QuickBooks wasn’t enough, let me give an example of this workflow in GnuCash.
I want to be crystal clear: I think that focusing on the details of the UI in these other apps is completely beside the point. Manager’s developers should follow their own UI principles and make the UI how they want it to work; they’re under no obligation to slavishly copy the UI of any other program. What I think IS at issue is this idea that categorizing transfers during import is somehow black magic, or impossible in accounting, or even particularly difficult. It’s not. It’s boring, standard, and should not be surprising to anyone. Pick whatever UI you want around this feature, but please just support the workflow.
Here’s a (trivial) statement imported into a savings account. I choose the file to import and am presented with the two transactions in that file:
The transaction in green happened to have been entered, manually, and thus has already been matched (worth pointing out: the description of the transaction in the bank statement and the transaction entered by hand differ! The Bayesian classifier, though, had no trouble correctly identifying this as a match; in Manager this would have been incorrectly imported as a new transaction). The transfer in yellow needs to be categorized. If I were to click “OK” at this point, that other side of that deposit would be put into GnuCash’s equivalent of the Suspense account. But instead, I double-click on it…
…and I’m asked to choose what account should be used for the other side of the entry. I do so and click OK, and…
…the transaction is actually put on the ledger (and it is not on the ledger UNTIL I click ok.)
And of course a matching entry has appeared on the other ledger (I realize the screen shot looks pretty much the same - that’s the point - but believe me, I navigated to the register for the counter-account to take it.)
If I were to import a statement for the brokerage account next, GnuCash would trivially recognize the matching transaction for the transfer as a match. GnuCash uses a Bayesian algorithm to determine when transactions match; it is certainly not perfect, but in practice is pretty good; I generally only have to touch about 5% of my imported transactions.
I don’t have access to MoneyWorks from the desk I’m at at the moment, but within a day or so I’ll post a walkthrough of how that app enables a similar workflow (although of course it’s different in the details.)