QIF import balances wrong due to same account transfers

[Mark Stosberg]

In article <slrnb7sb9c.2uao.mark at tanagra.summersault.com>, Mark Stosberg wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've been following the progress of GnuCash over the last few years, but
> have not yet made the switch. Now, lack of Quicken replacement is the
> only reason I reboot into the Mac OS at home.
> 
> The last time I tried to import my Quicken 2000 file into GnuCash
> (several months ago), the checking account balance was wildy off
> ($10,000+). Now I'm trying again patiently with GnuCash 1.8.2, which
> shaped up into a great piece of software.
> 
> Tonight I had the patience to begin to track down why the difference
> is still arising. Here's one cause:
> 
> I had entered some Balance Adjustments in Quicken, with the category set
> to "[Personal Checking]", the same account I was adjusting. In Quicken
> this works fine-- the correct amount if credited or debited. After
> importing the QIF file into Gnucash, GnuCash faithly tries to turn this
> into double-entry accounting, showing both a withdrawal and a deposit
> for that amount into the same account.
> 
> The effect is that each time this happens, my account balance becomes
> off by that amount. I have the following questions:
> 
> 1. Does anyone have suggestions for a workaround for this, either by
> using Quicken or GnuCash to fix the entries? I'd like avoid
> hand-editting every entry if possible.

I came up with a fairly painless solution to this problem. For each
account in Quicken, I did a "find and replace". In the "find" field, I
searched for transfer from the account I was currently in. In the
replace field, I changed the account to one named "[lost and found]".
The transactions I found were nearly all balance adjustments. After this
process, the account balances were substantially closer to what GnuCash
came up with after an import, but there are still off a bit, so there is
something else to track down.

	Mark

--
http://mark.stosberg.com/