trouble with date when importing a just exported csv file.

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 30 20:50:31 EST 2015


On 1/30/2015 12:26 PM, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Larry Evans <cppljevans at suddenlink.net>
> wrote:
>
>> On 01/29/2015 04:12 PM, Wm wrote:
>>> Thu, 29 Jan 2015 14:34:44
>>> <CA+E35_7AN=0Zc11Y8dWvbeaXsjkRZSwba4g3Efa+1purnO6y8w at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Edward Doolittle <edward.doolittle at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>> Probably the fastest way to get something working would be to write a
>>>> program to translate from the CSV format that your brokerage provides
>>>> into
>>>> QIF or something else for easier importing into GnuCash.
>>> That is available for free, see my
>>> ===
>>> Subject: csv to qif / ofx
>>> Date:    08 January 2015 21:27:00
>>> ===
>>> and similar
>>>
>>> is no one (not you, E) able to solve a problem using the tools available
>>> these days?
>>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion, Wm.
>> Here's what I tried:
>>
>> * Went to the webpage:
>>   http://csvconverter.gginternational.net/
>> * uploaded file:
>>     SHA1_transactions.csv
>>   which contained only 1 line:
>> 01-06-2015,buy more,Checking Account,1.5,100.0
>>   where fields were:
>> Date,Description,Transfer,Shares,Price
>> * Then tried the mapping step on the web page, but
>>   got stuck at the place shown in the attached .png.
>>   As you can see, there's no obvious place to put
>>   the Price field :(
>>
> I haven't worked with this on this level, but I seem to recall some
> discussion saying the security price gets derived from the sum of the buy
> (or sell) transaction splits. In other words, you cannot just set the price
> of a security for a transaction; it is derived from the results of the
> splits in a fully-formed transaction.
>
> If my memory is wrong, my apologies.
>
>
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I believe Tommy T. is correct about the part that a purchase or sale of
stock transaction can only accept two of the three values when the
transaction is created and usually the price is the one that is allowed
to float to control errors due to rounding.  That is part of why I
avoided addressing that issue in my previous message.
The other part is that I do not know how the various import wizards
address this issue during the import process.  I suspect that this is
another weakness in the import process that currently has an
indeterminate solution, therefore it is just left hanging.
If I am right about that, I would think that the various import wizards
could choose to require number of shares, total value, and to warn the
user that they will let the price float to control rounding errors. 
However, I am not a developer and I do not know all the ramifications of
doing it that way.  Documentation is poor in this area.

I am not optimistic about seeing resolution of this dilemma anytime soon.

David C

David C


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