Updating my bank account - qif downloads

Bill Gribble grib@gnumatic.com
Mon, 29 Jan 2001 11:12:50 -0600


On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 09:48:46PM -0800, Richard Court wrote:
> How do I manage periodic downloads of .qif files to gnucash to
> update my bank account. Will subsequent downloads recognize
> previously recorded transactions. Do I have to choose
> non-overlapping periods. Do I create new file names? What procedures
> are involved? This is all very confusing to me. Any advice
> appreciated.

The current QIF importer is not optimal for periodic updating of your
records.  It's mainly designed for people migrating from Quicken to
Gnucash.  The features to make incremental importing easier are on the
list of things to do, but haven't been done yet.

To use the current importer most effectively, you should download QIFs
for non-overlapping periods from your bank.  If you import overlapping
periods, you will have duplicate transactions in your file.  Detecting
and eliminating these duplicates is the most important feature that
needs to be added to make incremental QIF imports work more smoothly.

The file names don't really matter.  If you make sure to check the
Accounts and Categories matches to see that the correct Gnucash
accounts are being picked you will be OK.

Good luck,
Bill Gribble