request help importing Quicken files please...

[Derek Atkins]

seberino at spawar.navy.mil writes:

> My bank exports their online bank statements
> in Quicken format.  I tried to import this
> into GnuCash and it was a real pain.  Please
> help with following problems if you don't mind...

I presume you mean QIF format?

> Basically, the bank statement and the Quicken
> version you try to import into GnuCash are
> very different which makes conversion hard...

I don't understand what you mean by this statement.

> (I'm at the import step where you must
> assign a category to every item in Quicken file:)

Uhh...  I think you are misunderstanding how QIF works and
what it is doing.  QIF has the concept of "categories", which
directly map into GnuCash Income/Expense accounts.  During
the QIF import process you map your QIF Categories directly
to accounts.

For transactions that don't have categories, you need to
determine the destination account for the funds transfer.
This is done by Payee/Memo/Description matching of the QIF
Transaction.  The Payees, Memos, and Descriptions are
listed alpabetically for you to match.

There is also duplicate detection.  This is where the
importer tries to detect whether an imported transaction
already exists in your Gnucash file.  This can happen if
you import the same transaction multiple times, or if
you hand-entered the transaction prior to the import.
In either case, this gives you the list of transactions
that have duplicates, and you can mark the duplication
to keep the importer from duplicating it.

> Problems: GnuCash omits *amount* of each transaction

Amounts are (usually) not necessary to match destination accounts.

>           GnuCash lists tranactions in alphabetical order
>           rather than sorted by date.

Which page is this? 

>           GnuCash seems to add together multiple transactions
>           from same source.... but this is unclear since
>           I cannot see *amounts*!!!!

No, it's not adding them together -- it's letting you put them all
into the same destination account at one time.

> Can I change any of these attributes??

I don't understand -- what do you want to change?   First, I should
point out that the current QIF Importer UI is EOLed -- we're going
to try to move to a consolodated import infrastructure using the
new generic importer UI that is used by OFX and HBCI.  This should
make the import process a bit more streamlined.  However it also
means that very little work is being done on the current importer.

I hope this helps,

> Chris

-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