Cannot get American Express to work

[David Reiser]

On Jan 7, 2010, at 1:07 AM, 419er wrote:

> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I am a newbie to GnuCash and a newbie to this forum, although a fairly old
> hack at online banking.  I have recently switched to GnuCash and have
> successfully set up a bank and a credit union for online banking.  I have
> now been working on getting AMEX to work for a few days, hoping I could
> solve it myself, but I am finally stuck - I have no idea where to turn next. 
> I'll try to provide as much information as I can - I'd appreciate any
> answers.
> 
> I'm using GnuCash 2.2.9 and have installed and successfully used aqbanking -
> obviously - since I have a couple of other financial institutions working.
> 
> I have configured Amex according to all of the online resources (the wiki
> and several other forum threads) and I have the following two issues.
> 
> First - when I am in the "User Configuration" window within the aqbanking
> wizard, there is an option to check "Supports Account List Download" and
> then click "Get Accounts" I am asked for my password - and it appears to
> connect properly - and then finally says that it's finished, but never
> offers me up an account number.
> 
> Second - since I couldn't get account numbers automatically through the
> process listed above, I manually entered the account via the Accounts
> configuration tab.  I told it to use the user I created for Amex, and I
> entered my account number correctly.  When I go to that account and choose
> to get transactions via online banking I am asked for my password, and after
> entering it I get the following set of messages in the "Online Banking
> Connection Window"
> 
> Resolving hostname
> "www99.americanexpress.com"...
> IP address is 12.29.100.25
> Creating HTTPS connection
> Connecting...
> Sending request...
> 
> Then a message box appears that says: Error executing backend's queue.  What
> shall we do?
> 
> My options are "Continue" and "Abort" - they both seem to have the same
> results, except that abort leaves the connection window open.  
> 
> These results are the same whether I try to get transactions or try to get
> the balance.
> 
> I have not seen this particular issue discussed elsewhere which is why I'm
> posting it here.
> 
> I'm really not sure what other information I should post, but I promise I
> will post whatever you think I need to (except my AMEX number!) and come
> back and provide any resolution instructions I get.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 419er
> 
Which version of aqbanking and gwenhywfar are you using? Which operating system?

If you are on a unix (including Mac), you can set the environment variable:

AQOFX_LOG_COMM=1

then a file is created (/tmp/ofx.log) with the transcript of the OFX session. Don't leave the logging on any more than you have to -- the log file is created and filled outside the SSL connection (or you couldn't read it). But the log file will have your account ID and password in plain text. The log file should show you if the OFX exchange failed, with possibly a useful OFX error message. The log file is also a real log file -- new ofx attempts will be appended to the file until the file is eliminated by renaming or a reboot.

Financial institutions in the US are being required to implement multifactor authentication for online account access. Even the bastardized version most are choosing is causing a problem for open source programs because Intuit is hiding their method of initializing the 'second factor' in their server implementations. And Intuit controls the vast majority of ofx server installations.

However, my problems with newer ofx servers don't usually end with the backend queue complaint. That error suggests it could be aqbanking or gwenhywfar. If you set the environment variables:

AQBANKING_LOGLEVEL=verbous
GWEN_LOGLEVEL=verbous

then both aqbanking and gwenhywfar will spill tremendous numbers of log messages into the terminal window from which you launched gnucash. If these messages provide additional info surrounding the backend queue failure, the aqbanking-user mailing list is the best place to get help.

Dave
--
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net