trouble with date when importing a just exported csv file.

[Larry Evans]

On 01/31/2015 08:43 AM, Wm wrote:
> Fri, 30 Jan 2015 20:46:41 <mahfmj$tao$1 at ger.gmane.org>  Larry Evans
> <cppljevans at suddenlink.net>
> 
>> On 01/30/2015 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;
>>
>> I also gave the number of Shares bought.  Please review the lines:
>>
>>>>     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
>>
>> In my previous post.  There, 1.5 Shares were bought at a price of 100.0
>> per share.  That's all that's required in the register, which calculates
>> the value of the Buy (if Shares is positive) or the value of the Sell
>> (if Shares is negative).  The import interface should behave similarly.
>>
>>> it is derived from the results of the
>>> splits in a fully-formed transaction.
>>>
>>> If my memory is wrong, my apologies.
>>
>> No problem.
> 
> It might help to think of it this way.
> 
> In a test book use your lottery winnings to make a transfer from
> equity:lottery to assets:share1 [1]
> 
> you can also buy some assets:share1 using expense:share_purchases or
> income:share_reinvestment and so on
> 
> in gnc the expense, income and equity account types deal in money; lots
> of different kinds of money called currencies but only money [2] not
> units of something that isn't money.
> 
> So, the obvious way of getting your transactions in and out is through
> amounts of money.
> 
> Presuming you don't have thousands of these them it becomes a simple
> matter of adjusting the not-pure-currency (i.e. there was a number of
> frog-legs or bags-of-recycled-paper) involved via an amount of money
> which could, theoretically be an arbitrary 1.  But I'd suggest a best
> guess at a realisable value is better than 1.
> 
> Have I made things more or less confusing? :)

Thank you for the explanation, Wm.

However, my aim was to make the import process mirror the interactive
entry of a transaction as done in the "Checkbook-Style Register":

http://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml#main-feat

And the actual register used would depend on which account was being
used as the target of the import.  IOW, for a stock, it would be
as shown in the 8.7.1 Example here:

http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html#idm242253328896

Or, in the particular case in this thread, like that shown here:

http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20150129/9f0f0f99/attachment-0003.png

IOW, if, instead of the column types choices being as shown in:

http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20150129/9f0f0f99/attachment-0002.png

they were:

  None
  Date
  Num
  Description
  Transfer
  R
  Shares
  Price
  Buy
  Sell
  Balance

Then the import would behave similar to the register, except it wouldn't
be interactive.  For example, if all fields except:

  Num, R, Buy, Sell, Balance

were specified, then the import would mirror the interactive input to
the register.

This is what was proposed on the devel list here:

http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2015-January/038489.html

IOW, if it can be done in the register, it can be done in a similar way
in the import.

> 
> 
> 
> [1] mention of SHA1 consistently distracts my thought processes to
> something other than stocks and shares

I got that name from some Gnucash example.  I can't remember where.
I guess it's short for SHAre from stock_1.

[snip]