Newbie starting out - need help in automatically assigning transactions to accounts

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Dani Flexer <gnucash at daniflexer.com> writes:

> Hi
>
> I have just begun using GnuCash. Apologies if my terminology is not up
> to scratch.
>
> - I am looking to automate the process of getting a lot of historic
> information from my bank and credit card accounts into the system so
> that I will be able to do some backward-analysis for planning
> purposes.
>
> - I would like all of the transactions that I download from my bank
> (in OFX or CVS) to be processed semi-automatically and be assigned to
> the appropriate credit and debit accounts  based on their comment
> field.
>
> - About 80% of my transaction are with a set of maybe 20 or suppliers
> who can all be pre-assigned to specific expense accounts, based on the
> COMMENT field. (E.g., "Joe's Grocery" is always a food expense).
>
> - Have not been able to find a way to do this from within GnuCash,
> nor, for that matter, by pre-processing my information.
>
> - I would have thought this is a common requirement, so I suspect I
> have not been looking in the right place.
>
> I would appreciate advice on the way to do this.

* Turn on Bayesian Matching in the OFX Importer.
* Import a small subset of your data, but make sure you include at least
  one transaction of each type you want auto-assigned.
* Make sure you assign the accounts properly in the importer.
* Complete the import process for the subset
* Verify the results
* Save
* Now import the rest of the data.  The importer should auto-assign
  accounts based on your previous selections.
* Verify the matches and complete the import.

> Thanks
> Dani

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-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
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available