Newbie Thoughts

[Tom Browder]

After my first pass at starting a new gnucash data file importing from a 
QIF file, I see a couple of things that would help me:

   -If I read the converted file correctly, commodities are carried to 5 
decimal places by default.  Since several of my account sources are 
carried to  6 decimal places, I guess I can hand-manipulate that, but it 
seems that maybe more decimal places should be carried as a default, 
especially once the use-multiple-currencies thing is implemented.  Maybe 
it should be a configuration choice (I may have missed it).

   -Converting from the Quicken (ugh) style to the more rigid accounting 
structure of gnucash causes problems immediately since Quicken's 
categories are changed to accounts, but Quicken's top-level account 
structure is not imported (assets, cash accounts, investments, etc.)

     +It would be helpful to me to have a command-line conversion from 
the QIF to an intermediate file showing the initial account mapping 
suggested and allow the user to refine the choices before converting to 
the final form.

     I WILL WORK ON THIS IF THERE IS ANY INTEREST.  (If it were up to 
me, I would write it in C++ or Perl.)

     +It would be helpful to do a similar kind of thing for the initial 
setup of a scheduled transaction list.

By the way, I lost a lot of money upon conversion--maybe I can figure 
where it went while I work on my intermediate conversion tool.

Another tidbit: the two firms handling my investments are happy to 
provide QIF/OFX dumps of my complete account directly to a file so I 
don't have to do the GUI import thing if I want to fine-tune the process 
a little.

-Tom