Downloading

[Conrad Canterford]

On Fri, 2003-01-10 at 09:54, Ken Sieving wrote:
> I currently download all my bank data into Quicken. Will GNUCASH
> do the same??    If so I can ditch Win98.  I can't find any data on my
> Bank's website that informs me of what format/protocol they use.
> Ken

I don't believe this has been answered yet.

The short answer is: Gnucash cannot do the download process for you. If
you download a file from your bank (in QIF or OFX/QFX format) to your
harddisk, Gnucash can then import that file.

The longer explanation: The process which Quicken and MS-Money use to
determine where and how to access your banks server to download the file
is a proprietary one which no-one appears to have cracked yet. Because
we can't access this information, Gnucash has no means of determining
the location to download from, and therefore no-one has bothered to
write the code for this process.
If your bank doesn't have a web page available for you to access, hassle
them about making one publicly available as its the only reliable way
software like gnucash is going to be able to access it.

If you do manage to download a file, but can't tell what type it is, its
relatively simple.

If the file starts with a series of lines looking something like this,
its an OFX file (you will need to get a binary with the OFX stuff
enabled, as it is not enabled by default).
OFXHEADER:100
DATA:OFXSGML
VERSION:102
SECURITY:TYPE1
ENCODING:USASCII
CHARSET:1252
COMPRESSION:NONE
OLDFILEUID:NONE
NEWFILEUID:NONE
<OFX>

If the file looks more like:
NSalary
DPQR Net Pay
T
R7360
I
^^
then it is a QIF file and can be imported. (Hopefully it will start with
a line like !Type=Bank or something similar before the above).

Hope this has been of help to someone. If you have a look in the
..<path>/doc/examples directory, you will see several QIF files and some
OFX files to give you more information.

Hope this helps someone.

Conrad.
-- 
Conrad Canterford  (conrad@mail.watersprite.com.au)
Water Sprite Pty Ltd   |  url - http://www.watersprite.com.au/
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