imported transactions

[Beverly Compere]

Thanks again!  You guessed almost right on the "rigging" issue.  My issues
were with transactions with a net value of zero.  We issue advances to
employees, who then settle up with us.  I don't remember why, but there was
something in Quicken that didn't come out right in my reports years ago if I
didn't run these through a cash account, even if there was  not money that
changed hands.  So I processed these through a cash account, but often the
net was a zero value.  Also we use a credit card that gives us Amazon
certificates.  Since we purchase some books for business, some for our
children's education, and some for personal use, I wanted to be able to
track these, yet find the transactions if needed, especially for books for
business use.  So I began to input these in our credit card account for ease
in finding them, even though there was often no net charge.  These were the
types of transactions that were coming in "backwards".  Thankfully, there
weren't so many that I couldn't just fix them.  

 

After your help on figuring out who to find and edit the exchange rate, I
set out to edit the rate on this year's transactions.  To my dismay, I found
that the register won't let me edit the exchange rate on the transactions I
imported from Quicken.  (We live in China, which is a cash-based society at
present, so we have LOTS of these.)  I can edit the exchange rate in the
screen and save the changes to the transaction, but the changes won't
actually "take" or save.  I have tried it on both sides of the transaction
(i.e. from my Cash-RMB account and from my offset account, such as
Personal-Food), but to no avail.  Just in case it's useful, I have copied a
few of the transactions from my .qif file if they are helpful to anyone if
looking at the problem.  Here they are:

 

!Type:Cash 

^

D1/ 5' 8

U-150.00

T-150.00

PWicker Basket

LPersonal spending:Food - home

^

D1/ 5' 8

U-6.50

T-6.50

PHealth Drug Store

Mstomach med - 6.5 RMB

LPersonal spending:Medical:Prescription Medicines

^

D1/ 5' 8

U-9.80

T-9.80

LPersonal spending:Food - home

^

D1/ 5' 8

U-15.70

T-15.70

Mbatteries

LPersonal spending:Household

^

 

Very appreciative of the help!

 

Beverly C

 

From: Charles Day [mailto:cedayiv at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 10:18 PM
To: Beverly Compere; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: imported transactions

 

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Beverly Compere <ufichina at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks so much for your email!

 

Your questions caused me to look closely at my transactions.  Since Quicken
isn't a double-entry program, I had "rigged" it to make it do some things I
wanted (I'm sure you've heard that before!).  My problems were related to
that.  I think if I fiddle with the QIF file, it will all work fine.  Also,
I had understood the concept of all imported transactions coming in with a
1:1 ratio, but still couldn't make it work.  After your email, I went back
to my accounts and tried again.  I had been trying to edit the wrong line of
the split, so of course it wasn't working.  Thanks to you, I've got it 

What did you "rig" in Quicken exactly? My guess: You couldn't make a deposit
directly into a retirement account so you deposited it in another account
with an equal transfer, leaving a transaction value of zero. (That's the
only one I know.)

The register could be more forgiving about the "edit exchange rate" thing,
like automatically applying your request to the other line if there are only
two. I think there is already a bug report for this, but I'm not sure.

now.

 

Thanks again for a great program.  I've plugged along with Quicken for
years, but it just doesn't do what I need (which was really double-entry
accounting).  QuickBooks won't track investments, making it worthless for
someone trying to keep track of personal and business finance together.
When I first downloaded GnuCash, I wasn't impressed, but the more I work
with it, the more I like it.  It's really got powerful and useful features.
I've recommended it to accountant friends.  Keep up the great work!

 

Thanks again for taking time to answer my questions.

 

Beverly C

 

You're welcome,
Charles 

 

From: Charles Day [mailto:cedayiv at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11:21 PM
To: Beverly Compere; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: imported transactions

 

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Beverly Compere <ufichina at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your help several weeks ago.  I've run into another snag.  After
importing a number of years of Quicken info into GnuCash, there were some
problems (not surprising, as I am working with multiple currencies).  Some
of my transactions came in "backwards" (credits when they should be debits
and debits where there should be credits).   I also have some multi-currency
transactions that didn't work right.  I would like to edit both of these
types of transactions to correct them.  However for some reason, the program
won't let me edit these transaction that were brought in from Quicken.  If I
make a new transaction, editing is easy, but not for these old ones.  For
example, if I go into one of these imported transactions and try to move the
credit amount to the debit column (deleting the amount from the credit
column) and correcting the rest of the transaction in this way, when hitting
the "enter" key, it all reverts to the original amounts, not keeping the
edits.  These imported transactions will also not let me change the exchange
rate (that option won't even show up when right-clicking on the
transaction).  Do you have any suggestions, or could you point me someplace
for help.  I have searched on the web and through all the GnuCash
documentation I could find.  

 

Can you give an example of a transaction with backwards credits/debits? And
what do the QIF lines look like for that transaction?

For the exchange rates, have you already corrected the currency settings on
all the accounts? The QIF importer would have assumed that all imported
accounts and transactions used the same currency, exchange rates on all
imported splits were set to 1. Now that you want to correct them, remember
that all amounts you see in a particular account register are in terms of
the currency of that account. So.you can't edit the exchange rate of a split
line for that same account since it is 1:1 by definition. You would have to
be change the rate on one of the other split lines.

Thank you!

Beverly C


Cheers,
Charles 

P.S. Remember to CC the list on your reply.