Fwd: OFX/QFX import

[David Reiser]

oops. Forgot the list.
Begin forwarded message:

> From: David Reiser <dbreiser at icloud.com>
> Subject: Re: OFX/QFX import
> Date: May 15, 2013 11:08:52 PM EDT
> To: Alan Schold <aschold at q.com>
> 
> On May 15, 2013, at 1:46 PM, Alan Schold <aschold at q.com> wrote:
> 
>> I have an investment account with Merrill Lynch. A couple of times a month I download dividend and investment activity. M/L sends it as a .QFX file which I save onto my desktop then Import into GnuCash. I see the list of activity in the Generic Import Transaction Matcher, make any changes necessary and insert the data into GnuCash.
>> 
>> Last Saturday the file seemed to download, but the GITM came up empty; although I know there was activity in the account. If I export data as a .OFX file, the results are Identical.  If I export the data as a .CSV file and use that setting to import into GnuCash, the data is present, but I don't know how to get it automatically inserted into the GnuCash account.
>> 
>> I'm using version 2.4.11. I have a desktop with Windows 7 and a laptop with Windows XP. The problem is the same on both computers .
>> 
>> Thanks for your ideas.
>> 
> 
> If this were some TinyTown bank, I'd say they were reusing transaction ID's month-to-month. But if ML did that they'd get thousands of complaints from their Quicken users each month. So, I suspect an anomaly in the way ML is constructing their transaction ID's and the way libofx is parsing them.
> 
> If you still have a qfx file that successfully imported and one that didn't, open both of them (they are just text files) and look for the entries between the <FITID> and </FITID> tags. (Some older implementations left out the closing </FITID> tag.) Officially the OFX spec allows FITID elements to be 255 characters long, but the spec-writing organization recommends they be limited to 32 characters. If ML is using a very long FITID, it's possible that libofx (utility library used by gnucash) is truncating those IDs to non-unique substrings.
> 
> The reason the GITM is showing nothing is that it thinks it has already imported all the transactions (duplicate FITID 'unique transaction ID' entries).
> 
> I suppose it could even be gnucash that isn't allowing a long-enough field for the FITIDs being passed by libofx from ML.ofx.
> 
> --
> Dave Reiser
> dbreiser at icloud.com
> 
> 
> 
>