How? Auto-matching Imported Transactions to Accounts

[Darren Merritt]

I haven't been in a hurry to finish the QIF file pre-processing for 
auto-account matching but hope to get back to that soon.

To be honest, I'm not familiar enough with how the splits work exactly 
so can't say that would fit the existing scope BUT there would be room 
to expand the project after the basics were done. I'll certainly give it 
thought.

Your other post about doing selective imports would be easy to add to my 
pre-processing since I can get it to pull out transactions selectively, 
so yes, that's an obvious feature to add.

I've been thinking how the approach I was considering might fit with a 
built-in solution for GnuCash.  There doesn't appear to have been much 
thought about it yet. Perhaps other countries tend to leave their 
transaction payee descriptions unchanged between transactions, unlike 
us, who tend to make every single one slightly different ie: by adding a 
date or receipt number, thus breaking GnuCash's system for automating 
the imports.

I'm thinking the approach I was pursuing, somewhat crude as it may be, 
might actually be suitable for the GnuCash developers themselves.  I'm 
learning more about what they are doing.

Glad to hear some extra interest.  Doing this purely for my own benefit 
seemed a bit over-kill so would like to make it useful for others too.

I appreciate the suggestions and encouragement.  I'll get back to the 
task soon.

Darren


On 13/07/2013 11:43 AM, elvis wrote:
> G'day Darren,
>
> I was reading your work on importing QIF files and was wondering if 
> you were considering adding something to auto split for GST?
>
> Cheers
>
> Lawrence
>
> On 08/07/13 17:39, Darren Merritt wrote:
>>
>> I noticed I wasn't the first one to want a better way to match bank 
>> transactions imported in QIF files to specific accounts without the 
>> "guesswork" that currently takes place.
>>
>> Sorry I didn't find a simple answer but happy to discuss it with 
>> anyone wanting to discuss it further.
>>
>> I don't give up easily and my work-around (partially constructed in 
>> Java) is to write a utility to partially re-build the original QIF 
>> files from the bank so this extra info about Accounts to associate 
>> with transactions is in there first instead.  That means I don't have 
>> to touch anything in GnuCash. The imported QIF files will work better.
>>
>> For those not afraid of how QIF files are constructed, they are very 
>> simple text files.  Each line begins with a character describing what 
>> it contains, like D for Date, T for amount, P for Payee etc.  ^ means 
>> end of transaction data.
>>
>> There's PLENTY of reds about QIF files.  I kinda like this for clarity:
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20100222214101/http://web.intuit.com/support/quicken/docs/d_qif.html 
>>
>>
>> My bank exports only lines: D, T, P ie:
>>
>> D05/07/13
>> T-22.40
>> P7-ELEVEN 1027 GLEN HUNTLY VI AUS Card xx3181 Value Date: 03/07/2013
>> ^
>>
>> I can get all the transactions containing "7-ELEVEN" to auto-match a 
>> specific account by adding a line starting with L (QIF Category 
>> field) ie:
>> D05/07/13
>> T-22.40
>> P7-ELEVEN 1027 GLEN HUNTLY VI AUS Card xx3181 Value Date: 03/07/2013
>> LExpenses:Groceries
>> ^
>>
>> This will guide GnuCash when importing QIF files.  It's a work-around 
>> which needs some utility to pre-process all the QIF files and 
>> identify what corresponding L - data to add to every transaction.  
>> I'm working on it if others are interested.   It's not perfect but 
>> will largely do the job and save 90% of the work by identifying the 
>> obvious account matches.
>>
>> It would be nice to have a better way but it's a little too much for 
>> me to handle.  This way I can manage
>>
>> Darren
>>
>>
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