IIF, QIF, QuickBooks Import

[Derek Atkins]

Craig Lanning <CraigL at Knology.net> writes:

> software and found Gnucash.  The Gnucash feature I found most
> interesting is the PostgreSQL backend.  I really look forward to having
> that fully functional.  (I hope the people working on this are keeping
> the PostgreSQL hooks separate from the rest of the SQL code so that
> other databases can be used instead of PostgreSQL.)

It's being worked on, and we're certainly going to try...  Matthew is
working on a new PG backend, and I'm hoping to leverage his work to
create an embedded-MySQL Backend....  This would prove that we could
re-use the SQL code.  So, yes, the HOPE is to keep the sql generation
and the sql execution separable such that we can share the sql
generation bits but use different underlying sql engines.

> Not only have I used QB for my personal finances (Quicken wouldn't do
> what I wanted to do), I also keep the finances for my church (yes, that
> means I'm the treasurer).  Having the financial data in a real database
> would mean that other programs could be written to extract (and
> potentially insert) data from (to) the database.

Storing data into the database might be problematic -- Gnucash
requires a number of invariants, and really just uses the database as
a data store.  You would have to make sure you maintained those
invariants if you went around the gnucash engine when you added data
into the database....  If nothing else, it will NOT be a "supported
operation", and if you destroy your data doing it, don't come crying
to us ;)

> Having a good mechanism for importing all the legacy financial info from
> QB would allow me to migrate the historical data for the church from QB
> to Gnucash.

Agreed.  It doesn't affect me, but I agree that a migration path would
be a Good Thing (TM).

> Sorry for the long winded dissertation of my motives.  I'll go back to
> my day job now.

heh!

> Craig

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available