QIF Import and accounts

Georg Stapper georgstapper at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 17 05:45:26 EST 2007


Where do I see in GNC what the locale is? 
Or is it just set by MS Windows in my case? It's GBP for the moment.

Why is it better to set up different account trees for different currencies? 
I would want to know my total assets in EUR, but also in GBP or whatever.
I would also want to have an overview of the different currencies as well. 
This should all be possible with different reports, or not?

Cheers,
G.

----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Lewis <ianmlewis at gmail.com>
To: Georg Stapper <georgstapper at yahoo.com>
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Sent: Monday, 17 December, 2007 11:56:47 AM
Subject: Re: QIF Import and accounts

The currency selection comes up for you when you do QIF imports? Lucky you!

Ok, I saw that your reimbursed expenses account is in GBP and the QIF is GBP but the locale currency (or reporting currency (not totally sure what it uses)) is EUR right? That should have worked if you selected the right currency. The accounts in the QIF you provided seem strait. 

It's purely speculation on my part and I would have to check myself but the reason might also be that gnucash is getting confused because your account structure has accounts with different currencies than their parent account. I'm not sure why it would get confused necessarily but usually you have separate account trees for different currencies since balances for sub-accounts are usually summed up as part of the balance for parent accounts ( e.g. so you can see the total balance of your assets in a particular currency).

Ian


2007/12/17, Georg Stapper <georgstapper at yahoo.com >:
Ian,
 
Thanks for your reply.
Just to make sure, at the top level I set EUR (Asset, Equity etc.). Each QIF file is has got only one currency. I chose the respective currency for the account during the import process. 
 
Cheers,
Georg  


----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Lewis < ianmlewis at gmail.com>
To: Georg Stapper <georgstapper at yahoo.com>
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Sent: Monday, 17 December, 2007 10:41:28 AM
Subject: Re: QIF Import and accounts

Georg,

Thanks for posting this in user. This is really where an issue like this should be posted. 

I picked up on what your problem might be the second time around. I had a similar problem recently and since you are working with multiple currencies I'm guessing this is your problem. If you are importing QIF files that have a different currency than the currency for your locale it will often try to import the QIF as your locale currency rather than the account currency. I submitted a bug for this. The QIF import should allow you to select a currency. 

See this mailing list thread: https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2007-December/thread.html#22727 
and the bug report: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504007 
Feel free to add yourself to the notify list on the bug report. 

I believe that I was able to import properly by changing the default reporting currency in the preferences->reporting to the currency I was importing then doing the import and then changing it back to what it was before. I would have to try that again when I get home to confirm but give it a try. 

Ian


2007/12/17, Georg Stapper <georgstapper at yahoo.com >: 
Hi there.

my checking and savings accounts are with ABSA (ZAR), Barclays (GBP), and ING DIBA (EUR). So far I kept track of my accounts with Excel, but that's far from perfect and I thought it would take too much time to put it all together. I have spent so much time now trying to import my Excel data history into a software package that I could have continued with Excel for the rest of my life. My wife is freaking out already. 

So I am looking for a better option. Strangely enough only the South African bank allows to download the transaction data in different formats. The other two banks provide only CSV downloands for each account separately. My first attempt was MS Money 2007 with QIF files and a category and a sub-category, but MS Money does not even recognise the categories of its own QIF files. GNU Cash seems to be the better choice then. 

Instead of using just two categories I tried to set up the whole account structure using the category field and a colon as the account separator. This ended up in a mess. So, I decided to set up the account structure by hand. A simplified version looks like this: 

Assets (EUR)
    Current Assets (EUR)
        Cash (EUR)
            EUR
            GBP
            ZAR
        Checking (EUR)
            Absa (ZAR)
            Barclays (GBP)
                reimbursed expenses (GBP) 
            Diba (EUR)
        Savings (EUR)
            Absa (ZAR)
            Barclays (GBP)
            Diba (EUR)

Equity (EUR)
    opening balance EUR 
    opening balance GBP
    opening balance ZAR 

Expenses (EUR)
    flat (GBP)
        renovation (GBP)

Income (EUR)
    Bonus (EUR)
        Barclays (GBP)

If I try to import the following QIF files for my Barclays accounts GNC comes up with an additional asset account structure due to "QIF import: Name conflict with another account" only for the reimbursed expenses. 

During the import process the QIF account name and the GNC account name for both physical accounts are recognised to be the same. I am happy with that.

The problem starts when GNC tries to match the QIF categories its own accounts even though they should be exactly the same. It wants to set up another account for the reimbursed expenses even though it exsits already: 
        Assets:Current Assets:Checking:Barclays:reimbursed expenses
By double clicking on the entry the "Select Account" window pops up, but I cannot change there anything except setting up another new account. That does not help. The same applies to 
        Assets:Current Assets:Savings:Barclays
and
        Expenses:flat:renovation.

The result is a mixture of new accounts in the existing account structure and a whole new "Asset 2" branch. 

I did not go any further to import my EUR and ZAR accounts, because it's a mess already at this stage.

First file:
------------
!Account
NAssets:Current Assets:Checking:Barclays
DBarclays Checking 
TBank
/01/08/2007
$0.00
^
!Type:Bank
N1
D03/08/2007
MEmployer EXPENSES
T100.00
PEmployer
LAssets:Current Assets:Checking:Barclays:reimbursed expenses
^
N2
D08/08/2007
MK A C BUILDERS MER 
T-16.00
PK A C BUILDERS MER
LExpenses:flat:renovation
^
N3
D28/11/2007
MMe
T-100.00
PMe
LAssets:Current Assets:Savings:Barclays

Second file:
----------------
!Account
NAssets:Current Assets:Savings:Barclays 
DBarclays Tracker Account
TBank
/01/8/2007
$0.00
^
!Type:Bank
N1
D29/10/2007
MMe
T1000.00
PMe
LAssets:Current Assets:Savings:Barclays 
^
N2
D29/10/2007
MEmployer
T1000.00 
PEmployer
LIncome:Bonus:Barclays
^
N3
D28/11/2007
MMe
T100.00
PMe
LAssets:Current Assets:Checking:Barclays
^


I have some questions now: 
1) Is there anything wrong with my QIF files? 
2) How do I make GNC import my accounts properly?
3) Should I maybe use an older GNC version?
4) Does it make sense to enter reimbursed expenses under assets?

I deleted always qif-accounts-map to start all over again. 
I am using GNC 2.2.1, built from r16462 on 2007-08-20 on Windows XP.

Thanx for your help
Georg


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http://www.ianlewis.org/



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