Trouble Importing QIF to Gnucash 2.4.8

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 12 02:38:27 EST 2012


Bruce--

When I left Quicken many years ago, I exported Everything in my Quicken data file--Accounts, Categories, Transactions, Securities, you  name it--and imported everything into Gnucash with only a few hiccups. When I look at that behemoth QIF file with everything in it, I see that each segment (Security, Category, Bank account) uses the following demarcation:

^
!Type:{Security|Category|Bank|CCard}
<a bunch of QIF data>

So, you can have multiple classes of data in a single QIF file. You would have to figure out whether the problem is only at the header of the file, though, or if it actually is troubled throughout. The former would be relatively easy to fix; the latter would be a real hassle.

David



________________________________
 From: Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com>
To: Bruce Perryman <bperryman_us at yahoo.com> 
Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>; Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: Trouble Importing QIF to Gnucash 2.4.8
 
Hi,

On Wed, January 11, 2012 7:32 pm, Bruce Perryman wrote:
> <Quote>
> Well, it depends what account the transactions are for.  The !Type
> description tells the QIF parser how to interpret the transactions.
> Options include !Type:Bank, !Type:CCard, and many others.
>
> Most likely it should be !Type:Bank, but really it does depend on what
> kind of transactions you are importing.
> </Quote>
>
> I'm not sure that I am getting the same functionality that I desire. The
> Financial management software that I've been using captures may sources of
> income and categorizes and sub-categorizes them for import into a quicken
> file via .qifs.

Don't think in terms of income and expenses or categories.  Think in terms
of your assets and liabilities, and the transactions into and out of those
accounts.  In general a QIF file would be the collection of transactions
into or out of ONE ACCOUNT (a Bank account, a Credit Card account, etc). 
Then the Category specification in the QIF Transaction would specify the
target Category for that transaction (i.e, it's a transaction between the
QIF Account and the specified Category, e.g. Groceries).  The Payee and
Memo fields are just ancillary data which you can use to map to Income and
Expense accounts if the QIF doesn't already specify a Category.

>      For example, the following .qif:
> D01/01/2012
> T10.00
> NDEP
> PCat1
> LCat1
> MCat1
> ^^

This is invalid QIF.  You should only have a single ^, not a double (^^).

[snip]
> Imports the data into the account that I have opened in the Payee,
> Category, and Memo fields respectively. When I first tried to import,
> because of the missing type statement, it displayed an error. When I place
> a !Type statement, it doesn't display an error, but it doesn't import any
> data into any accounts. When the screen comes up to match the fields, all
> fields are blank and there is nothing to match. Something is not
> connecting.

What !Type field did you put up front?  Also, remove the double carat and
use a single carat.  Also, you need a carat at the end of the file. 
Beyond that, the importer should read the file just fine if the contents
are what you sent.

> I need to understand the process a little better. Thanks again.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

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

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