QuickBooks to GnuCash -- Apologies for wrong question

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Mon May 10 20:23:51 EDT 2010


Tom, Yawar--

Rather than go down the XML rabbit hole, take a look at The Export Accounts option (File->Export->Export Accounts). Per the documentation (Chapter 4.2): "Exports your account hierarchy to a new file. Does not export data."

David

--- On Sun, 5/9/10, Yawar Amin <yawar.amin at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Yawar Amin <yawar.amin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: QuickBooks to GnuCash -- Apologies for wrong question
> To: "Tom Bullock" <tbullock at nd.edu>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Date: Sunday, May 9, 2010, 2:19 PM
> Hi,
> 
> > [...]
> > Tom:  This is a great suggestion.  I made a
> backup of my chart so that I
> > could have a test file to practice in.  However,
> my original and backup both
> > have opening balances in them.
> 
> I got bitten by that once, and ever since then I've never
> used the opening balance feature when creating a new
> account. Instead, I create the account, then put in a
> transaction called `Opening balance' that draws in money
> from (or throws it out to) Equity.
> 
> >  To implement your idea I should have a file
> > with all zeros for the opening balances.  That
> way, I have a chart that can
> > be used without the need to remove old data.
> 
> Correct.
> 
> > [...]
> > Now that I am thinking about that, I could zero out
> the balances.  But that
> > seems to me it would generate a transaction.
> 
> That's correct, zeroing will not delete any transactions,
> but it will add (at least) one transaction.
> 
> >  Since no transactions can be
> > deleted (only hidden, right?),
> 
> Actually, you can delete transactions one by one, but it's
> slow going. If you have a lot of transactions, it might be
> easier to manually edit the XML file that GnuCash uses to
> store its data, and just delete all the transactions in
> there. Of course, this is not officially supported by
> GnuCash, and all sorts of weird things could happen. Very
> important to keep a backup if you need to go there.
> 
> > [...]
> > Does that mean I would need to edit the data
> file?  If so, how would
> > I do that?  Any suggestions?
> 
> I outlined the process of editing your GnuCash XML file a
> while back in [1]. Also, see Fred Bone's suggestion that
> should simplify things a bit [2]. In your case, you'd want
> to leave your accounts alone and delete all the transactions
> to get a skeleton file. The transactions start right where
> the accounts end, like the following:
> 
> <gnc:account version="2.0.0">
>   <act:name>Orphan-CAD</act:name>
>   <act:id
> type="guid">0c89272f8c6ae755466d92d27c800867</act:id>
>   <act:type>BANK</act:type>
>   <act:commodity>
>    
> <cmdty:space>ISO4217</cmdty:space>
>     <cmdty:id>CAD</cmdty:id>
>   </act:commodity>
>  
> <act:commodity-scu>100</act:commodity-scu>
>   <act:parent
> type="guid">721006df65f050d9e9c76b27b98c2609</act:parent>
> </gnc:account>
> <gnc:transaction version="2.0.0">
> ...
> 
> Notice the last line above, which starts with
> `<gnc:transaction...'. You basically want to delete
> everything from there up until the end of the last
> transaction, which will be near the end of the file and look
> something like this:
> 
>   </trn:splits>
> </gnc:transaction>
> <gnc:template-transactions>
> ...
> 
> In the above snippet, the line which goes
> `</gnc:transaction>' is the end of the last
> transaction. So you want to delete up until that line, but
> no more. Note that if you haven't set up any scheduled
> transactions, you may not see the line after that, which
> starts the template transactions.
> 
> > Thanks again for your input.  It helps me to
> think about other aspects of
> > GC.  I appreciate your taking the time.
> 
> Sure. Glad it helps. Btw, if the XML stuff above looks like
> gibberish, remember you can still delete transactions one by
> one using the Delete toolbar button. You may not have that
> many to delete in any case.
> 
>  Cheers,
> 
>   Yawar
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2009-December/032593.html
> [2] https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2009-December/032595.html
> 
> 
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