Quicken to GnuCash (Windows)

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:04:51 +1100 "Charles Day" <cedayiv at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Thanks for the advice!
> 
> On Nov 26, 2007 7:41 AM, Andrew Sackville-West <ajswest at mindspring.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 04:32:01PM -0800, Charles Day wrote:
> > > -Successfully and securely downloading transactions from the same
> > > institutions that work in Quicken
> >
> > depends on the institution and how their downloading works. you'll
> > have to investigate this on your own or get input from others.
> >
> 
> As long as anything within gnucash's control doesn't contribute to
> security holes during downloads, that's all I can expect.
> 
> > > -Securing all financial data with strong encryption (e.g. data
> >    files)
> >
> > this functionality is not provided by gnucash, but their are many ways
> > to encrypt your information. The easiest would be to store the
> > information on some sort of encrypted media (maybe another partition
> > or a usb key) such that you provide the encryption key when you mount
> > the partition. I'm willing to be this is much easier done in linux
> > than windows, but I don't do windows, so can't really comment beyond
> > that.
> 
> I'll start by using TrueCrypt to create a secure partition, since I am
> already family with it, but I can't say that this method really
> satisfies. Once mounted, the financial data becomes cleartext to any
> program (e.g. viruses). Is there a solution that makes the unencrypted
> data only available to gnucash?

Yes, but you really are not going to like it: Linux, using either proper
UNIX User/Group file protection OR (even more secure) using SELinix and
ACLs (this probably only really makes sense if you are the accountant
for a spy agency or something and need to keep the accounting for 'black
opps' secure :-)).

Linux has no viruses (in the sense that MS-Windows does), so even
though the data is 'clear text', you only need to worry about other
users on the system from snooping -- if they have different UIDs and/or
GIDs and you set the protections of your gnucash files to be other=<no
access> and group=<no access> [chmod go-rwx ...], the normal file
system protections will keep everyone out (except the super user, who
is presumed to be trustworthy).  It does have quite functional file
protection and ownership -- MS-Windows NT only has a half-baked file
protection and ownership system using NTFS (WinNT, Win2k, and later)
and none at all with FAT (Win9x).

The only other solution would be to use a dedicated machine (which does
nothing but run gnucash) behind a very secure firewall and being totally
anal about virus scanning.

You could also install VMWare and install one of the popular end-user
Linux distros (such as unbuntu) on a virtual machine (again using
proper UNIX User/Group file protection on an Ext3 file system).  I
doubt that any of the MS-Windows viruses can deal with a Ext3 file
system on their own.

> 
> > >
> > > I began by exporting all data from Quicken Premier 2006 in QIF format.
> > > All accounts, transactions, memorized payees, security lists, category
> > > lists Â- the works Â- went into a single QIF file.  GnuCash 2.2.1
> > > installed on Windows XP without incident. Then I started going through
> > > the QIF import process.
> >
> > this is where you're going to run into problems. I don't think you'll
> > get it to work doing it all as one big import. And some of this stuff
> > just flat won't import. When I moved my stuff from quickbooks, I did
> > it in stages. I started with just the account structure. Then I
> > followed up with the major accounts (checking accounts, money market
> > accounts, etc). Then I used subsequent smaller imports to fill in the
> > holes.
> >
> 
> The import process is actually going reasonably well!  Here's an
> update on the three main issues I was having:
> 
> ISSUE #1
> =======
> Problem: QIF importer doesn't support multiple currencies.
> Status: This will need to be addressed by the development team, but
> the transaction count is small enough that I can fix them by hand. I'm
> not worried about this.
> 
> 
> ISSUE #2
> =======
> Problem: ContribX, WithdrwX, and Cash transactions aren't recognized
> by the QIF importer
> Status: I created a patch for this. ContribX can be treated as an Xin.
> WithdrwX can be treated as an XOut. Cash can be treated as a MiscInc
> (not MiscExp, due to a negative sign). So I changed the scheme code in
> src/import-export/qif-import/qif-parse.scm (shown below) and it all
> now imports correctly. How can this be followed up, so that the
> changes can be considered for a future release?
> 
> # diff qif-parse.scm.patched qif-parse.scm
> 234c234
> <    ((miscinc cash)
> ---
> >    ((miscinc)
> 266c266
> <    ((xin contribx)
> ---
> >    ((xin)
> 268c268
> <    ((xout withdrwx)
> ---
> >    ((xout)
> 
> 
> ISSUE #3
> =======
> Problem: Can't find any dividend reinvestments after QIF import
> Status: The dividend reinvestment transactions actually came over OK;
> I just was looking for them in the wrong place. Quicken user's are
> used to seeing these in the investment account's main register, but in
> GnuCash they actually show up in a subaccount for the security, which
> makes perfect sense. I'm sure this won't be the last time that a
> Quicken user wonders where their dividend reinvestments went. What can
> I say except "RTFM"...
> 
> Cheers,
> Charles
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> 
>                                            
> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- Get the Deepwoods Software FireFox Toolbar!
Deepwoods Software        -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
heller at deepsoft.com       -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk