Transferring data between two Gnucash files

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Mon Jan 9 16:20:42 EST 2012


Hi,

"David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> writes:

> As I understand it, there is no facility to do what you want.
>
> You already seem to have the mechanics of coordinating the two sets of books; I think that's the prescribed method.
>
> Have you considered merging your books? It would reduce the overhead...

My other recommendation is that if you can take the entries from one
file and programatically decide what you need entered in the other file,
just generate a QIF file and use the QIF Importer to import those
additional transactions.

> David

-derek

>
> ________________________________
>  From: Jesse C <crimson.corelio at gmail.com>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org 
> Sent: Sunday, January 8, 2012 1:18 PM
> Subject: Transferring data between two Gnucash files
>  
> My wife and I both use Gnucash to keep track of our finances, in separate
> Gnucash files.  There are some expenses that one of us incurs which are
> shared expenses, that the other person is liable for a portion of (usually
> half).  Currently all transfer of these expenses is done manually, by
> exporting a report that contains the expenses, which the other person then
> has to enter by hand.  That's a lot of work and it sucks.  So I'm looking
> for a better way to accomplish this.
>
> It is easy to export the list of transactions to be transferred as a html
> file and it is simple to parse the html and obtain a programmatic
> representation of the data (my languages of choice are Java and Scala, but
> python, php, lua, etc. are also options, though I don't have any scheme
> experience).  But once I have that programmatic representation of the data,
> I don't know what to do with it.  What sort of file can I write that will
> allow me to import transactions, complete with account information, into
> gnucash/  I've never used the QIF or OFX functionality in Gnucash, so I'm
> not sure if one of those would be answer.
>
> part of me wants to just switch to the SQL backend and stuff the data in
> there, but from reading on the wiki this sounds like a terrible idea.
>
> To present a quick example:
>
> I have a Rent transaction, for a month where I paid the entire amount.
>
> (Asset Account) Wife A/L:Shared Expenses:Owed To Me:Housing:Rent  +50
> (Asset Account) Assets:Current Assets:Checking Account   -100
> (Expense Account) Expenses:Rent   +50
>
> I then export the entire Wife A/L:Shared Expenses account to a report
> file.  I'd then like to write some new file that she can import which will
> contain the following transaction
>
> (Liability Account) Husband A/L:Shared Expenses:Owed to Him:Merged  +50
> (Expense Account) Expenses:Housing:Rent  +50
>
> I'm not opposed to doing some development work to solve this problem, but
> some direction would be great.  Thanks for any help.
>
> cheers,
>
> jesse
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available



More information about the gnucash-user mailing list