Dario,
I have worked with CT a LOT during the past several days and have learned some things the hard way that I wish I could have read about instead. Perhaps you could create a “READ THIS FIRST” file. I think it would cut down on questions here in BitCoinTalk and also improve user experience. There are probably more ideas that could be include, but these are things that I think should be in such a file:
• CoinTracking assumes all Buy/Sell and transfer amounts are the Gross cost of the transaction. This means the Buy/Sell amounts should include all exchange and network fees. This way it shows you the Profit and Loss after expenses. If you believe an exchange or wallet is sending Net values in the amounts columns, please let us know so we can investigate and correct the issue.
• The Fee column, together with the underlying Currency the fee is reported in is there to help you keep track of expenses. What you put in these columns has NO effect on your balances. There is a reporting function called Trading Fees where CoinTracking converts all the fees to USD for you. Be sure that the underlying currency column has a currency listed or CoinTracking will ignore that transaction cost. This is easy to check. Simply sort the table by Fee and then look at all the transactions with an associated fee that don’t have a currency reported.
• When CoinTracking does an import from anywhere, it looks to see if there are any transactions were already imported and ignores them. It is important that you NOT edit any imported field values. CoinTracking will re-import any transactions that you may have edited and then you have duplicate transactions.
• ShapeShifter allows one to exchange coins without having to move the funds to an exchange and then back to your wallet afterward. Many users find this a good approach to keeping their currencies safe. Shapeshift doesn’t require the user to provide any personal information to execute the trade. Because of this, you need to either write down or take screenshots of the information about the exchange as it happens. If you don’t, you will have no record of what was exchanged for what or what the fees were.
Moving on, I have some ideas that I think will help users maintain their data.
• The “Table Backup” function should be somewhere on the menu structure. Right now, it’s just buried as a link on an import page.
• I see a fair amount of dialog in BitCoinTalk about needing to change the table to Extended View to perform certain functions. I suggest you simplify by eliminating the choice and just have an Extended View.
• The advanced search function is awesome. The link should be a bit more prominent. I didn’t know it was there for quite a while. Using it from the beginning could have saved me a lot of time.
• One thing I do when trying to figure out what might be wrong about a transaction is use the filter to find a transaction. Then I want to see the transactions around that transaction, so I turn off the filter. Then, of course I have no idea where the transaction actually was that I just found. You could solve this by numbering all the rows of transactions. These numbers shouldn’t change when filtering is done. That way, the user can go right to the transaction after turning off the filter.
• When working with CoinTracking, I discovered that the Bulk Delete button doesn’t do anything. It brings up a dialog that allows some customization of the bulk delete, but once the selections are made, nothing is deleted.
• In the section above, I recommended cautioning users about editing imported transactions. You could aid in that by somehow highlighting the rows that were imported vs manual entries. You could either bold the imported rows or put an asterisk on the imported rows.
Sorry this turned into such a book, but I had a lot of ideas.
Steve