Transferring data between two Gnucash files

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

On Wed, January 11, 2012 6:24 pm, Jesse C wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>
[snip]
>> I'm not sure what you mean by this.  What do you mean by "matching
>> ... from different OFX files"?
>>
>
> What it appears is that if I import, say, a Liability account with the
> transaction:
> 1/1/2012 "Spent some money"  $100
> and an Expense account with a transaction:
> 1/1/2012 "Spent some money"  $100

Except you would never do this.  (or you're skipping the double-entry
accounting portion of it).  When you import a transaction you are only
importing Asset and Liability transactions.  For each transaction you need
to assign the "far" account (the second split in the double-entry).

Think about it this way:  a transaction is a decription of money flow. 
Value moves from one place (the credit) to another place (the debit).  So
it moves from Assets:Cash to Expenses:Groceries.  Or it moves from
Income:Salary to Assets:Bank.

When you import a bunch of transactions for your Bank account, each one
would get assigned to the Bank but also each one gets assigned to some far
account.

The only time you would *ever* import the same transaction twice is if you
have a transfer between multiple import accounts.  This would be a
bank-to-bank transfer, or a credit card payment.

> Then Gnucash should be able to connect them up as being the opposite sides
> of the same transaction.  Or least that is the impression I got from
> reading the mailing list archives.  If that is case, then it is perfect
> for
> what I'm doing (and way simpler than I was fearing).

It can, *IFF* you specify the correct accounts during the import process. 
If you wait, import the transactions as "Unspecified", then no, GnuCash
will not be able to determine that the $100 Transfer from Bank to
Unspecified is the same as the $100 transfer from Unspecified to
CreditCard.

The only way the duplicate detection works is if you tell it that when
importing the Bank transactions that $100 goes to CreditCard, and when
importing the CreditCard transactions that $100 is coming from Bank.

[snip]
> I don't need splits, but having looked at the syntax for OFX, I have to
> agree that QIF is a much simpler format.

So you never import a Salary with Withholdings?  Okay.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant