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

[Tom Van Braeckel]

> Then there is accounting in general (personal or business accounting). This
> usually comes with a lot of data entry. For personal accounting this is
> mainly
> copying the information from your bank statements into GnuCash. To reduce
> this
> work a little, GnuCash provides a number of importers that can help you
> copy
> some of this information in a semi-automated way (see the various import
> options in the File menu).
>
> Unfortunately this isn't compatible with the business features, or more
> accurately put: the business features and the importers are totally unaware
> of
> each other. There's no way you can tell the importer "Hey, this payment
> here
> is actually a payment for this invoice". Nor can you go into the business
> features and say "That bill over there is actually paid by the transaction
> that is already in account such and so".
>
> So there's the issue: what do you do if you want the best of both worlds ?
> Both use the importer and the business features ?
> I'm afraid I don't know. These two just don't work together right now.
>
> Geert
>

Thanks for the thorough analysis, Geert.
You implicitly answered a lot of related questions that I had been meaning
to ask.

I guesstimate that having a "That bill over there is actually paid by the
transaction that is already in account such and so" feature would reduce the
work by 25% (leaving the invoice/bill creation, population, booking and
printing), so that might be a great first improvement.

In the longer term, the importer and business features might be coupled even
tighter:

   - The importer could match transactions to "accounts payable" or from
   "accounts receivable" to outstanding invoices, perhaps asking for manual
   intervention when the match can't be made easily.
   - The business features could have for a "pay bill" feature for saving
   payment instructions for your bank to a file.

I'm sure other, more knowledgeable people can think of additional
opportunities for integrating the importer and the business features.