GnuCash OFX import not matching accounts of same ID

[David Carlson]

On 9/4/2013 11:01 AM, Ngewi Fet wrote:
> 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.
>
I am jumping in awfully late.  I was on vacation and not reading and
responding to all my e-mail.  Regarding OFX and multiple accounts, one
of my banks concatenates transactions from several accounts into one OFX
file and GnuCash imports all the transactions correctly, including
transfers between accounts.  :)   That works very nicely and is a lot
more convenient than other banks that only do one account at a time.  I
could show you an example if you are interested.

I believe that multi-account activity is a cornerstone for OFX imports
from brokerage accounts as well.

As to the issue of multi-line splits, while the various releases of the
OFX standard are devoid of examples, they do not explicitly forbid
them.  I think they left room for development in that direction. 
GnuCash, in my opinion, could develop a 'variation' of OFX for Gnu-Cash
for Android only that does support both of these issues.  Call it OFX
2.0.3.G(nuCash).

>
>>> 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
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