download transactions?

[David Reiser]

On Aug 25, 2006, at 8:47 PM, J. David Beutel wrote:

> David Reiser <dbreiser at earthlink.net> wrote on Friday, August 25,  
> 2006 14:25:08:
>> Now that libofx 0.8.2 is out (Yay!), ofx connections easier to set  
>> up  than ofx.py, but one still must look up the ofx server web  
>> address  manually in the files included with aqbanking.
>>
>> OFXDirectConnect works well for bank account and credit card  
>> account  transaction downloads.
>
> Is OFX better than QIF?  My bank and credit card have QIF  
> downloads, so should I see if they also have OFX?  I haven't tried  
> either yet.
>
> Cheers,
> 11011011

ofx is infinitely better than qif. A bit strong, perhaps, but a very  
big issue with qif is that there is no unique transaction identifier.  
So if you happen to get overlapping downloads (less of an issue with  
aqbanking than ofx.py, but still...), you get to manually identify  
duplicates. Yuck. There are other technical issues with qif, but for  
me the biggest annoyance is the lack of transaction ID.

My experience suggests that the bank would call it a Quicken download  
rather than ofx. Sometimes MSMoney downloads show up as either ofx or  
ofc files. Libofx can handle ofc files, but there are a few glitches.

These days if banks are still offering QIF downloads (no longer  
supported by Quicken on the Windows platform), usually it means they  
have chosen not to pay the exorbitant licensing fee Intuit is  
demanding for an ofx server license. OTOH, there are some financial  
organizations that are providing 'Quicken downloads' without  
supporting the direct link into Quicken. Go figure. Good Luck.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net