aqbanking info

[Paul Abrahams]

On Monday, January 24, 2011 11:55:55 am Martin Preuss wrote:

> However, for the not-so-new-anymore AqBanking5 I created special setup
> dialogs for OFX DirectConnect (see
> "http://www2.aquamaniac.de/sites/aqbanking/manual5/setup_ofx_user.php") and
> we now use OFXHome to retrieve server information to make things easier
> for OFX users.
>

Martin, I'm very grateful to you not only for creating aqbanking but also for 
entering this conversation.  Your very helpful post to gnucash-user raises 
these questions: is aqbanking5 ready for general release?  And if so, what 
does it take to upgrade Gnucash to use aqbanking5 instead of aqbanking4?  My 
specific environment is Kubuntu 10.10 M	eerkat.

The Quicken orientation of US financial institutions is maddening.  However, 
they do seem to recognize the existence of Microsoft Money, which I believe 
uses the OFX protocols.   So that might be a way to extract information from 
them if it can't be gotten otherwise.  Or perhaps we'll be fortunate enough to 
locate a few secret Linux sympathizers among their systems people.

It would be very helpful to me at least and probably to others if you could 
explain some of the fields in the aqbanking4 setup, since I haven't managed to 
find that information written down anywhere:

User Configuration / General

User name -- can this be anything?  Does the financial institution use it at 
all?

User ID/ Customer ID: how do these match up with my account number and login 
name at the financial institution, i.e.,which is which?  In my experience, just 
about every institution uses these two pieces of identity information and 
nothing else.

Bank ID -- Is this always the 10-digit routing number?  What is it generally 
for credit cards or brokerage accounts?

User Configuration / OFX

What is the Broker ID?

Expert Settings - how would these ordinarily be generated by, say, a Quicken 
user?  Or would they need to be?  And what is the CLIENTUID all about?

What is the purpose of the button with three dots next to the FID field?

Account Configuration / General

Name - is this the name of the financial institution?  Does it have to be 
exactly right (since sometimes the institutions add little bits of information 
like "N.A.")?

Number - Is this the same as either the customer ID or the user ID in the User 
setup?

IBAN - what is this all about?

Owner name - is this the same as any of the fields in the User Settings?

Bank Settings - BIC - what is this?

Bank Settings - Name -- Is this the name of the bank?  Again, does it have to 
be exactly right?

Account Configuration / OFX

What are the Transfer Settings?  The Purpose Lines?

And if you don't know any of this, do you know where the information can be 
found?

Again, I'm grateful for any help you can provide.

Paul