Using bank exports (CSV, QIF, ...) to avoid the overhead that comes from processing bills

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 9 March 2010, Tom Van Braeckel wrote:
> *trythis: *Why are you not sure it would help ?*
> 
> *Allow me to elaborate on my current strategy. I've made a script that
> converts the CSV's from my bank to QIF's, and which uses the transaction
> description to guess which GnuCash expense post is appropriate for that
> transaction.
> 
> For example, when the transaction description contains
> "*PAYMENT*MCDONALDS*", my script will add "LExpenses:Food:Fastfood" to the
> QIF file so that the transaction will be booked to the
> "LExpenses:Food:Fastfood" expense post.
> 
> I'm doing something similar for my business transactions (which are often
> split transactions, since the VAT is booked to another post).
> For example, when the transaction contains "PAYMENT*INVOICE*NUON*", the
> script adds:
> SExpensesPro:With21%VAT:Utilities:Gas
> $6.26446
> SEquity:VAT:Deductible VAT
> $1.31554
> 
> So, this works, but it completely bypasses the MKB features that GnuCash
> has, such as bill expiration dates, or keeping track of whether or not a
> bill has been paid. It also ignores the fact that a bill has a "posted"
> date, since it only knows about the date a bill was paid, not when it was
> received.
> 
> 
> My question is: What are you other business users doing to (partially)
> automate their MKB workflow ?
I use the business features, but because the importers are not aware of those, 
I simply don't use those.

Not much for automation of course, but in my workflow it doesn't make much of 
a difference.

See, I put all my bills and invoices in GnuCash. When I make a payment via my 
bank, I immediately use GnuCash' "Pay bill" feature to add this payment into 
GnuCash. I don't write many customer's invoices, so there's not many customer 
payments in my bank accounts.

When it's time to match the bank's statements with my GnuCash accounts, I 
still manually add all the the missing entries in GnuCash.

This works because I don't have much traffic. I don't know what you could do 
currently to improve this when you have to deal with a lot of invoices/bills.

> What do you think about my idea, or what other approaches would you suggest
> ?
> 
As said, no idea... For me the using the business features takes priority over 
automated import because it helps me catch mistakes (paid too much/too little, 
missing invoices). The past has proven that such mistakes are very real.

Geert