GnuCash OFX import not matching accounts of same ID

[Ngewi Fet]

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:
>
> > On Sep 4, 2013, at 7:04 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> The importer does map the OFX Account ID to the GNC Account, but it does
> not expect the OFX Account ID to be the GNC Account GUID so it doesn't
> shortcut the manual mapping involved.
>
>
Ah, in that case, there is not much I can do then. I thought (and the
general user expectation is) that the GNC OFX importer shortcuts the
mappings.
Meaning that when it sees a transaction with same account ID, it
automatically imports and assigns. If the users have to select the account
every time, then it is very cumbersome.

So if I understand right, the OFX file is treated as coming from one
account and all to go into one account?
The OFX standard has account information for each transaction, however.



>
> > Ngewi, the problem may be because some users are trying to use OFX
> > both to obtain transactions from GCfA and from their banks, and if the
> > two don't use the same number, the user must re-associate every
> > time. I'm speculating, but it may be that the importer can store only
> > one OFX mapping per account.
>
> This is true, too. If you are importing OFX for GNC account A from your
> bank and also from the Android App, GnuCash can only store a single OFX
> AccountID map for the account.  So it will overwrite the mapping every
> time you swap.
>

Yes that would indeed be a problem, especially since the importer does not
expect GCfA to have the same account IDs as GC.
So it probably doesn't attempt any matching.

This means that there is actually no easy way to import transactions into
GnuCash (at least full multi-account transactions) from the Android app.
Because even if I implement exporting GnuCash XML, even those cannot be
imported into an existing GC file.
>From what I've read of QIF, it is not worth looking at, and OFX is not
cutting it for automatic transaction-to-account mapping.

Hmmm...

Right now I am thinking of implementing GnuCash XML export (in pure Java,
not using the C API). Basic features/transactions should be easy to do.
- Upside is that users could open up the file in GC and change stuff (and
maybe in the future reload the file in GCfA).
- Downside is that users cannot integrate this directly into their existing
finance "books". They will have to maintain 2 GC files then.

It still wouldn't be as seamless as I'd like, but it is a start.
What do you guys think of this?

Anyways, thanks for your responses everyone.

Regards,
Ngewi