OFX question

[BenoitGrégoire]

On March 19, 2003 09:07 am, plussier at mindspring.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm curious about how OFX is better than QIF.  I'm well aware of how
> QIF falls short, but I know nothing of OFX.  For importing QIF files
> into Gnucash, I've written a pretty lengthy perl program which
> extensively massages the QIF data prior to import.  As a result, I
> get almost everything into Gnucash the way it's meant to be.

Well, the most visible difference for the user is that all transactions have a 
unique id.  This means that there are never any duplicates if the transaction 
was originally downloaded thru OFX.  It also allows you not to care about the 
date range of the files you download.  If you download 30 days worth every 
teen days, you'll only see the last ten days in the matcher.

Off course OFX also includes much more information about the transaction than 
QIF, but that is not always provided by banks or supported by gnucash or 
libofx.

Finally OFX also allows you to initiate actions in your account, such as 
paying bills, but that isn't yet supported.

> With the OFX import though, I seem to have been lead to believe that
> this won't be necessary, and that Gnucash will be able to figure out
> which transactions belong in which accounts automatically.

Yes, but that has little to do with OFX.  Once qif-io-core is hooked in the 
new import GUI, it will also be possible for QIF.

-- 
Benoit Grégoire
http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/