GC 2.6.12 QIF Import Comments

Listsub listsub at liberator-systems.co.uk
Tue Jul 5 19:16:01 EDT 2016


I recently experimented with migrating from Quicken 2002 Deluxe to GC. 
The Quicken program is still going strong but the software is old as is 
the PC it is running on (XP Pro SP3 32bit). The Quicken database had 
17-18K transactions across approx 90 accounts. These were all exported 
in QIF format and copied to a decent spec PC (WIN 7 Pro 64bit 16gb).

Comments on the process:-

1. The QIF import process is slow... even on decent PC. I did read 
warning about it somewhere but still surprised at how slow it was.

2. I intially tried tried importing all accounts in one run (this seemed 
to be the recommended method). This failed twice for me after running 
for ages with message "A bug has been detected while reading QIF file". 
IMO that message is pretty useless - why not give full details of 
account and transaction that it was porcessing? I know there is a trace 
log but it should not be necessary for user to start hunting in there. I 
opted instead to import accounts in some sort of logical groups. Using 
this approach I got all the data imported without crashing (the QIF 
import files were unchanged).

3. The import process keeps asking to select the date format of import 
file(s) and it is easy to click the wrong one from drop down list. Would 
be better if format could just be configd/selected up front.

4. When processing multiple files each time user confirms they wish to 
select another input file error message is displayed warning last file 
selected has already been selected.

5. By far the the worst part of QIF import is the duplicate matching 
process. I am not sure how GC decides on possible duplicates but I had 
many hundreds. It took me several days to work thru and even at end 
there were many errors (incorrect balances) in data due to incorrect 
match selection requiring many subsequent manual account edits. The only 
info GC dispaly for duplicates is Desc and Amount - this makes it 
virtually impossible for user to make correct match decisions. Program 
really needs to display full info of each transaction i.e. Date, 
Account, Amount(DB/CR), Notes/Memo, Category etc. Further it is not 
clear why GC even needs to do any matching when a complete logical set 
of data is being imported which contains no ambiguous data?

John





More information about the gnucash-user mailing list