aqbanking info

[Martin Preuss]

Hi,

please have a look at 
"http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings"
and
"http://www2.aquamaniac.de/sites/aqbanking/manual5/setup_ofx_user.php"
(the latter is for AqBanking5 only).

Beyond that there is not too much I can tell you since I don't really 
understand how bank customers in the US/CA specify their account. I've been 
told once that US customers in most cases don't know the routing number of 
their bank (because they don't need it as it seems, while this information is 
quite vital to bank customers in most European countries).

On Dienstag 25 Januar 2011, Paul Abrahams wrote:
[...]
> User name -- can this be anything?  Does the financial institution use it
> at all?
[...]
This is *your* name, e.g. the name your bank knows you by. With German 
protocols this is needed for transfer orders. We don't support transfers for 
OFX ATM, but this field is still required.

[...] 
> User ID/ Customer ID: how do these match up with my account number and
> login name at the financial institution, i.e.,which is which?  In my
> experience, just about every institution uses these two pieces of identity
> information and nothing else.
[...]

AqBanking5's dialogs don't have the customer id field anymore, however, since 
the old AqBanking4 dialogs were more or less generic that field was still there 
for other protocols (like HBCI which differentiates between user and customer). 
For OFX you should enter the login name into both fields.

[...] 
> Bank ID -- Is this always the 10-digit routing number?  What is it
> generally for credit cards or brokerage accounts?
[...]

Well, earlier versions of AqBanking used the routing number and account id to 
uniquely identify an account. This is because in the beginning I thought every 
country uses such a scheme to identify accounts (and most European countries 
do, BTW). Here this routing number is essential for national transfers (for 
internation transfers the IBAN is used, at least on this side of the pond).

So if you have the routing number of your bank handy you should enter it into 
this field. Otherwise any other number will do (since we don't support 
transfers via OFX this number is currently useless to us).

[...]
> What is the Broker ID?
[...]

This is one of the fields specified by the OFX specs and sometimes needed by OFX 
servers. OFXBlog and OFXHome provide those for many banks (it seems this id is 
not used by every bank).

[...] 
> Expert Settings - how would these ordinarily be generated by, say, a
> Quicken user?  Or would they need to be?  And what is the CLIENTUID all
> about?
[...]

These are some more special OFX fields which are - well - expert settings. If 
you are intimate with the details of the OFX protocol (which I'm not, BTW) you 
can use those settings to tweak your OFX setup... In the past we needed to 
modify those special settings to make some of the banks work...

[...] 
> What is the purpose of the button with three dots next to the FID field?
[...]

I don't know if it was ever implemented, but that should show you a list of 
banks (did you try clicking on it?).

[...]
> Account Configuration / General
> 
> Name - is this the name of the financial institution?  Does it have to be
> exactly right (since sometimes the institutions add little bits of
> information like "N.A.")?
[...]

Currently this field is not really used by Aqbanking with OFX because we don't 
support transfers ATM. However, as soon as we do this field might be needed to 
identify your account for transfers... Again, in Germany an account is 
uniquely identified by the combination of routing number and account number, 
but if in your country the name of the bank is used instead this field might be 
necessary in later versions.

[...] 
> Number - Is this the same as either the customer ID or the user ID in the
> User setup?
[...]

Since it's the account tab it is the *account number*. Again, something used 
with European banks.

[...] 
> IBAN - what is this all about?
[...]

See google... Something like "internation bank account number" (used at least 
within the EC to identify bank accounts internationally).

[...] 
> Owner name - is this the same as any of the fields in the User Settings?
[...]
Yes, the name of the account owner as registered with the bank.

[...] 
> Bank Settings - BIC - what is this?
[...]

Again google is your friend. It's the SWIFT code of your bank (used for 
international transfers).

[...] 
> Bank Settings - Name -- Is this the name of the bank?  Again, does it have
> to be exactly right?
[...]

See above: Currently this isn't used for OFX, but if the bank name is used to 
identify an account in your country then it should be exact.

[...] 
> Account Configuration / OFX
> 
> What are the Transfer Settings?  The Purpose Lines?
[...]

Those are settings to be used for future support of transfer orders via OFX 
("purpose of the transfer", i.e. a note attached to the transfer which tells 
the recipient what a payment is for).

[...] 
> And if you don't know any of this, do you know where the information can be
> found?
[...]

OFX specifica can be obtained from various sites on the internet (namely 
OFXBlog and OFXHome), but also from the OFX specs.

Again, the dialogs of AqBanking5 are more specific in this regard as they only 
show fields which are required for the OFX setup.


Regards
Martin


-- 
"Things are only impossible until they're not"

Martin Preuss - http://www2.aquamaniac.de/
AqBanking - http://www.aqbanking.de/
LibChipcard - http://www.libchipcard.de/