How to deduplicate 2 transactions that are really one transfer from one bank account to another about hledger-flow HOT 3 CLOSED

Thanks for raising this @lestephane, I think this is mostly a gap in our documentation at the moment.

The solution is to change your rules files to introduce an intermediate account as soon as you start importing statements for both accounts.

I use Assets:Transfers:*.

In your example bank1 would move money into something like Assets:Transfers:Bank1Bank2, and bank2 would use the same transfer account to fetch the money from.

Any posting to Assets:Transfers:* indicates in "in-flight" amount, and you would expect the balance of Assets:Transfers to be zero most of the time.
Whenever it isn't zero it means that you either don't yet have the other side of the transfer, or that something is wrong in your rules.

You can just use Assets:Transfers without any subaccounts, but I found it useful to use subaccounts, because I monitor Assets:Transfers in my reports, and then the subaccounts shows me where I should look for the missing transfer transaction.

I typically use the sorted account names as the subaccount (Python code sample):

"Assets:Transfers:" + "".join(sorted(["Bank2", "Bank1"]))

This approach is based on what is described in Full-fledged hledger:
https://github.com/adept/full-fledged-hledger/wiki/Adding-more-accounts#lets-make-sure-that-transfers-are-not-double-counted

from hledger-flow.

Thanks for the explanation and the full-fledged hledger page (which somehow passed me by),
it's a saner way of handling it.

I want the directionality of the transfer to be apparent without digging in the journal,
so I settled for a ":TopUp" prefix to my "Assets:" accounts. So if you have regular transfers
between two accounts in both directions, you'll have a pair of transfer accounts.

Example:
You want to buy and sell stocks regularly

• Bank -> Depot (for a buy order) uses Assets:Broker:Depot:TopUp
• Depot -> Bank (for a sell order) uses Assets:Bank:Girokonto:TopUp

I think this issue can be closed for now, as the problem seems well known, has a solution,
and the solution is well documented in the full-fledged hledger page.

from hledger-flow.

I've updated the FAQ with this solution:
https://github.com/apauley/hledger-flow#faq

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