OFX Support

Kevin Cramer kcramer@siscom.net
Tue, 10 Dec 2002 11:53:47 -0500


Ok, thanks for guiding me through that.  I kept thinking I had to get
it straight from the bank's server and I didn't realize my bank
offered the OFX information on their website.

I went to my bank's website and I found that it offers the choice of
downloading your transaction to Quicken, Money, and in QIF.  The
Quicken file was a file with a QFX extension and the Money file had an
OFX extension so I imagine these things are close to what I need.

I tried to run the 2 files through ofxdump and both had nothing but
errors.  However, I did look and my openjade is only at 1.3.1.  I'm
running Gentoo and there isn't a package for 1.3.4 in the stable
branch but I will try to upgrade and see if it works.

Here is what is at the top of both files.  It looks like OFX to me but
I wanted to check since I didn't expect the non-marked up text at the
top.  Removing it and re-running ofxdump didn't change anything,
though.  Either the OpenSP is the culprit or my bank doesn't provide
proper OFX.

OFXHEADER:100
DATA:OFXSGML
VERSION:102
SECURITY:NONE
ENCODING:USASCII
CHARSET:1252
COMPRESSION:NONE
OLDFILEUID:NONE
NEWFILEUID:NONE

<OFX>
<SIGNONMSGSRSV1>
<SONRS>
<STATUS>
<CODE>0

One last question, as I understand it the direct bill pay feature
isn't not in libofx.  Is that something I should expect in the future?
I've also thought about using the bill pay through their website and
using GnuCash.  It will be a little more work than just entering bills
in Quicken and it handles the payment but it will get me off of
Quicken and using GnuCash!

Thanks!

Kevin

On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 08:07:02PM -0500, Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> On December 9, 2002 05:30 pm, Kevin Cramer wrote:
> > Thank you for the information.  The only part I am unclear on is how I
> > would get the OFX file from my bank.  It looks like your library does
> > not handle getting the OFX file.
> 
> It changes for every bank, but for most, you can go to their homepage, chose 
> "online banking" or something to that effect, and there you will be able to 
> download the information.
> 
> > Have you found information on how to get the OFX from various banks
> > and credit card companies?  It seems like that would be helpful.  I
> > could probably use a packet sniffer to figure out the hostname/IP and
> > port of the server but it would be a problem if they ever changed it.
> > I wonder how Intuit handles it.  I guess the banks just give them
> > updates.
> 
> As I said in my last message, that information is queried at runtime by 
> Quicken from a central Intuit server.  So yes, Intuit and Microsoft probably 
> receive an update everytime a bank moves their server.
> 
> > I wonder if GnuCash as a software project could ask banks to provide
> > them with that information?  There might be a good chance they get
> > turned down but you never know.  It would also be a lot of work to
> > partner with all the banks to get that info. and I imagine the banks
> > would worry about support issues.
> 
> We could (and should) try.  But remember, most ISPs still refuse to support 
> you if you are running Linux, imagine banks...
> 
> -- 
> Benoit Grégoire
> http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/
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