The merging of data tables with identical fields should be relatively straightforward, and I believe it would be very valuable.
The HAZARD is that when a user has data in two Accounts which should be reviewed in context together, if they are unable to merge accounts, they may either not attempt to do so, or attempt to do so manually with the associated risks. The HARMs are that the user will be frustrated if they can't, or suffer financial loss if they make an error during a manual process.
In implementation, there is a risk that the user will later realise that they should not have merged the accounts and wish to 'undo' the merge. There is a risk that when the accounts are merged, the user may need to know which items came from which source.
Thought should therefore go into warnings to users when merging accounts, there should be deduplication support during the process. There should be a visualisation of the before and after before confirmation. There should be an audit trail to demonstrate that a merge happened, and an 'undo merge' button would be ideal; it would need to consider how to approach the issue of post-merge changes.
After merging, the user should be able to identify easily that the account is one that has been previously merged, and a nice to have would be for the rows to have some indicator to surface which account they were originally from.
In my case, the issue was that one of my businesses closed, a new one opened, and I had to try and move the records from one XERO account to a second XERO account. 9 months later I'm still unpicking the transactions because multiple new Accounts were created because of new synchronisation to the various API sources.
Thomas Nichols
supported this idea
·
The merging of data tables with identical fields should be relatively straightforward, and I believe it would be very valuable.
The HAZARD is that when a user has data in two Accounts which should be reviewed in context together, if they are unable to merge accounts, they may either not attempt to do so, or attempt to do so manually with the associated risks. The HARMs are that the user will be frustrated if they can't, or suffer financial loss if they make an error during a manual process.
In implementation, there is a risk that the user will later realise that they should not have merged the accounts and wish to 'undo' the merge. There is a risk that when the accounts are merged, the user may need to know which items came from which source.
Thought should therefore go into warnings to users when merging accounts, there should be deduplication support during the process. There should be a visualisation of the before and after before confirmation. There should be an audit trail to demonstrate that a merge happened, and an 'undo merge' button would be ideal; it would need to consider how to approach the issue of post-merge changes.
After merging, the user should be able to identify easily that the account is one that has been previously merged, and a nice to have would be for the rows to have some indicator to surface which account they were originally from.
In my case, the issue was that one of my businesses closed, a new one opened, and I had to try and move the records from one XERO account to a second XERO account. 9 months later I'm still unpicking the transactions because multiple new Accounts were created because of new synchronisation to the various API sources.