Automatic Bank Import

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting Chris Spencer <gmane.20.evilspam at spamgourmet.com>:

> Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
>> On Tuesday 13 June 2006 08:29, Chris Spencer wrote:
>>> That's unfortunate. Without some ability to automate the mundane
>>> information entry aspect, Gnucash is going to be far more trouble than
>>> it's worth. However, thanks for answering my questions.
>> Do you mean transferring old account information or entering new?
>
> Mostly the later. Manually retrieving a file of all my credit/debit
> transactions on a daily/weekly/monthly basis shouldn't be necessary.
> Granted, syncing with the myriad banking websites is no trivial task,
> even if they do allow you to export your data.

Does your bank support OFX?  If so, you might want to use OFX Direct
Connect instead of manually downloading the file from their website.

>> Back to original email, Gnucash will quickly learn that <supermarket_name>
>> belongs to Expenses:Groceries and <fuel_station> belongs to Expenses:Fuel.
>> You'll tell it once only, and changes will only be needed when you take out
>> cash with the groceries or buy milk and bread at the fuel stop.
>
> That's good to know. How is the learning implemented? Is it like a
> Bayesian spam filter, that assigns probabilities to word combinations?

QIF is a direct string-map.  OFX and HBCI (optionally) use a Bayesian-like
method to learn over time.

> 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
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