If a number can't be read, it asks, it doesn't guess
An import with a date it can't parse, or a transaction that doesn't balance, is a fork in the road. One path stops and asks you. The other guesses, or drops the row, or plugs it to Uncategorized to make the file go through. Only the first path leaves your books trustworthy.
A silent guess is worse than a stop
When software meets a number it can't read, the fast thing to do is guess and move on, so the import finishes and the screen looks tidy. The tidy screen is the problem. A wrong date filed silently, or a row quietly skipped, doesn't announce itself. It sits in your books looking exactly like a number you can trust.
You find it later, or you never find it, and either way the cost has been paid: you stopped being able to trust the whole set. One silent guess taints everything around it, because now you don't know which other numbers were guessed.
What asking looks like
A date that doesn't include a year is a question, not a guess. So is a date that lands in the wrong decade, the kind a mistyped cell or the wrong column produces. Rather than pick a year and hope, the import stops and asks you which one, because you know and it doesn't.
A transaction that doesn't balance gets the same treatment. Nothing is dropped to make the numbers add up, and nothing is plugged to Uncategorized to force the file through. The row waits for you to say what it is. It is slower for a moment, and correct for good.
Why this is the whole point
The value of a set of books is that you can trust it without re-checking it. That trust is fragile: it survives an error you can see and fix, and it does not survive an error the software hid from you. The moment you suspect a number might have been quietly invented, the ledger stops doing its job.
So the rule is to fail loudly and never silently. An import that stops and asks is not being fussy. It is refusing to hand you a number it isn't sure of, which is the one thing a system of record must never do.
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