Quickbooks to GnuCash conversion

[Tom Bullock]

Replying to Laura's message of 5/6, reported in Vol 74, Issue 12:

Hi Laura,

In the above message you said:
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/"I recently converted a client from QuickBooks to GnuCash when she purchased
a Dell laptop with Ubuntu installed.

"There is no conversion method so I had to enter a large journal entry with
the ending Trial balance from 12/31/08 adjusted for any outstanding checks
and invoices. I then entered the outstanding entries and arrived back to the
Trial balance I started with.

"You do lose your details of the QuickBooks file if you don't have access to
that file any longer but unless you want to reenter the detail into GnuCash
you don't have many options.

"Check the board's archives for the past couple of weeks. I seem to recall
this discussion and the other option is to export the transactions to excel
and use a third party tool to create IIF files from that output. The IIF
file is then imported into GnuCash."
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/Because of what you describe above and the fact I have been using QB for many years, I am working on developing a QB to GnuCash conversion program so I can load my data into GnuCash.  It is taking a lot of time and I don't know when it will get done.  

Having explained my interest, I want to request a clarification of your last paragraph.  As far as I know Quick Books creates IIF output and Quicken QIF format records.  So it seems to me that you want QuickBooks to export its IIF transactions into Excel.  Then you open the Excel file and save a copy of that file into CSV (comma separated values) format.  That CSV file then is input to the third party tool, and the tool creates QIF format records that get imported to Gnucash.  Do I have that right?  Or am I misunderstanding something?

The fact that you have succesfully converted from QB to Gnucash looms large in my mind and I want to be sure I understand exactly what you mean.

TIA

Tom Bullock