OFX example

[Derek Atkins]

David Reiser <dbreiser at earthlink.net> writes:

>> Let's say I have 2 accounts in this bank and I've transfered money
>> from the first to the second. Does GNUCash uses FITID to detect
>> internal money transfer?
>
> I don't think so -- you'll have the transaction in both ofx files (ofx
> is one account per file only) and the FITIDs do not have to
> match. Usually they wouldn't match. I think when you import each file,
> gnucash is only trying to match the split associated with the account
> being imported, so you'd get a match in each account based on date and
> amount. After importing both ofx files, both sides of the transfer
> operation would be cleared. I suspect that since FITIDs only have to
> be unique within accounts, that a matching FITID in a different
> account is not considered as a possible transfer transaction.
>
> If you have lots of transfers of similar amounts, you will probably
> run into transaction matching problems.

This is one place where QIF is definitely better.  If you have QIF
Account A and QIF Account B, the importer will notice an A->B ($xx.yy)
and B<-A (-$xx.yy) and declare them duplicates.

With OFX you need to manually match A->B/B<-A dups during the import of
the second set.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-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