mulitple currencies in QIF files

Bill Gribble grib@billgribble.com
Fri, 13 Oct 2000 15:01:21 -0500


On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 09:20:35PM -0400, bruno pagis wrote:
> My Quicken QIF file includes accounts in USD, FRF, and EUR. The gnucash 
> import utility allows me to select one currency only. As a result, the 
> import doesn't work.

This problem is difficult to solve from the QIF format and can't
really be done at all given the current state of gnucash without some
painful mods to the QIF importer.  Two main reasons: Gnucash currently
requires Currency accounts as intermediaries between accounts in
different currencies, but Quicken does not; and the QIF format does
not contain ANY information about the currencies associated with the
account, nor even that the accounts are in different currencies (see
the sample QIF file below, an actual export from Quicken 2000, which
shows what happens when you transfer money from a bank account
denominated in USD to one denominated in CAD within Quicken, then
export the result).  The problem of "matching up" one end of this
transaction with the other is quite hard since the amounts may be
nothing alike.  The Currency account problem is solvable, but just
requires the creation of a lot of extra accounts and more logic for
dealing with recognizing the situation.

I have been aware of the problem for a month or two and am waiting for
some changes to the way gnucash handles currencies (some of which I've
made, and some of which have been designed but not implemented) to
make it into CVS before I tackle this directly.  In any event, if
you're going to try to do it yourself, please wait a bit to start
because my current development version of the QIF importer has many
changes over what's in the development branch now.

It's my belief that this problem will be greatly eased when these
currency changes are in, and at that point the QIF importer can
support such things without being all hacked up, which I'd prefer.

b.g.

!Option:AutoSwitch
!Account
Ncanadian bank
TBank
^
NDave's Checking
TBank
^
!Clear:AutoSwitch
!Account
Ncanadian bank
TBank
^
!Type:Bank 
D8/31' 0
U-1,000.00
T-1,000.00
NTXFR
PTransfer Money
L[Dave's Checking]
^
!Account
NDave's Checking
TBank
^
!Type:Bank 
D8/31' 0
U662.21
T662.21
PTransfer Money
L[canadian bank]
^