Trouble Importing QIF to Gnucash 2.4.8

Derek Atkins derek at ihtfp.com
Thu Jan 12 10:52:02 EST 2012


Hi,

On Thu, January 12, 2012 10:39 am, Bruce Perryman wrote:
> Thanks again for all of your help. And thanks for advising me to adjust my
> thinking from categories to accounts.
>
> Based on your replies, it seems like this management software generates
> invalid .qif files. There are ^^ all throughout the .qif(s). I would have
> to manually change all of these. Also, not understanding the process, at
> first I put an arbitrary !Type:XX just to satisfy the requirement. That
> allowed me to continue through the import, but it yielded no apparent
> change in my gnucash data. I then put a name of an existing account to see
> if there was any difference for example, !Type:Checking. That produced the
> same results (nothing) as the !Type:XX.

That would be correct.  There is a finite number of !Type:XX labels that
are allowed.  As I suggested in an earlier message, !Type:Bank is the most
prevalent.  There is also !Type:CCard for credit card transactions.  And
then there is !Type:Invest for investments.  There are also !Type:Cash,
!Type:Oth A, !Type:Oth L, and a number of others.

> Should I create accounts in gnucash that match what is contained in the
> .qif(s) before I perform the import? Again, the management software's
> accounts have been created with 'quicken account or category'
> specifications so that when I perform the import the transactions are
> either directed to the appropriate accounts or new accounts are created.
> For example, in this software I can create an account called PettyCash and
> specify that it is a quicken account. When I export a .qif, the file is
> generated like I showed you without the !Type statement and with the ^^s.
> Quicken has no problem importing it and if the account doesn't exist,
> Quicken will ask if I want to create it.

GnuCash will create the accounts if they don't exist.  However, they might
not appear correctly in the hierarchy.  During the Import it lets you map
QIF Accounts (Assets and Liabilities) and QIF Categories (Income and
Expenses) to GnuCash Accounts.  This is where you can say that the QIF
Groceries Category should get input into Expenses:Groceries.  I believe it
will create this account if it doesn't already exist, but I'm not 100%
sure.

If you do NOT do this mapping then GnuCash *will* create an account
"Groceries" at the top-level, which is probably not what you want.

> I will need to make sure that the process is as seamless as possible. What
> will I need to do to ensure that gnucash will understand what is being
> given? It is apparent that the version of the software is compatible with
> Quicken but not gnucash. I need to determine if the issues are show
> stoppers. I will try the single ^ and see if that produces any different
> results.

You need to provide properly formatted QIF.  Quicken seems to be extremely
liberal in what it accepts.  GnuCash is a bit more rigid.

GnuCash may accept the double-carat -- if you didn't give it a valid !Type
then that would cause the rest of the file to be ignored.  So try it with
a valid !Type first before you remove the double carats.  I assumed that
you had tried with !Type:Bank as the first line but apparently that was an
invalid assumption on my part.

> Thanks, you've been extremely helpful.

-derek

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



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