Writing a script to import bank's csv file

[Brendan S]

On 02/11/2014 12:35 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> Brendan S wrote:

[]

Thank you for your response. 

> Not "confused" exactly but I am getting the sense that you haven't
> yet grasped the fundamental concepts of "double entry bookkeeping".

Yes.  I have actually done a course on it - but that was some time ago now. 

[]

> There are always (at least) TWO accounts associated with a 
> transaction, one on the debit side of the transaction and one on the 
> credit side. At the time invented many centuries ago, negative 
> numbers were not in common use, so in general you will always be 
> entering positive amounts << a negative balance for an account
> simply means that the net balance is on the opposite side* of the
> ledger than normal for that account.

I am not entering them manually.  Rather, I'm importing them after
pre-processing them.  When Gnucash does the import it puts the amount in a
ledger depending on whether it is -ive or not.  (On import it automatically
credits(?) the bank account so the transactions are always matched.) 
 
> a) If you get cash back when paying at the supermarket, yes that 
> would be a split transaction. You didn't say HOW you were paying: If 

EFTPOS from check acct.  eg: $150 =  $50 purchase and $100 cash out. 

At the moment I am recording this as two separate transactions -> $100 to
cash and $50 to the expense account.  In the future (ie when I come back to
review the accounts) will it matter if I've automatically separated this
into two transactions before importing?  Or is it better to import it as a
single transaction with a "split"?  (I've assumed it doesn't matter)

> by credit card, that would be a credit to (Liabilities) Credit Card 
> and debits to (Expenses) Food and (Assets) Cash. b) Your individual 
> credit card transactions would all be credits to Credit Card and 
> debits to the appropriate expense. In neither case would these be 
> negative numbers, just on opposite sides of the transaction. c) 

> Checks would be a credits to (assets) Checking and debits to the 
> appropriate expense account.

I'm also interested in how to process the transactions.   When I get the csv
from the bank, it just says "check #x".  At the moment (when I run the
script to automatically import them) I am parking them in Expenses:Checks
Uncategorised and going to get out my check book and move them to an
appropriate account manually.  This seems logical to me, but I'm wondering
if there's a more sensible "accounting" way to do it.  

So a payment from my check account to my credit card account would be a
debit to the credit card account and a credit to the check account?

Brendan 




--
View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/Writing-a-script-to-import-bank-s-csv-file-tp4668150p4668167.html
Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.