Importing both sides of a transaction

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Ewan Slater <ewan.slater at googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to automate pulling work expenses into GnuCash.
>
> I can download my bank / credit card information as QIF or OFX.
>
> I can download my work expenses in CSV format.
>
> What I would like to do is to merge the data from the bank with that for
> the expenses application so I can then import one file which contains both
> sides of the transaction.
>
> Can anyone tell me how to represent both sides of the transaction in QIF or
> OFX, so that the debit and credit sides of the transaction can be assigned
> automatically to the correct account please?
>
> If I know how to represent it in either file format I can then write an app
> to merge the data for import.

With QIF you need to supply a multi-account QIF file.  It's slightly
more complicated, and I don't know of any examples offhand.  IIRC you
need to supply some !Account settings for the various QIF accounts, and
then for each account you supply the transactions.  Then you can use
L[OtherAccount] to specify that a transaction goes from the current
account to the other account.  The importer will then make this happen.

Note that this only works between Assets and Liabilities.

If you want to specify an Income/Expense account then you can use
LCategory.

In both cases LCategory and L[Account] you have the ability to map the
QIF Account and QIF Categories to GnuCash accounts.

Hope this helps,

> Cheers,
>
> Ewan

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-derek

-- 
       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