importing QIF

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Please be sure to CC the gnucash-user list on all replies using your
mailer's reply-to-list or reply-all functionality.  Please do not reply
back just to me, because there are other people who can help and answer
questions (and lately I've been traveling a lot, which can result in a
week+ delay in a response).

Paul Kinzelman <paul at kinzelman.com> writes:

> Thanks for the reply! I'll give that a try. There are a few importing
> problems I found
> and so I put it on the back burner for awhile. I've got 20 years of
> financial data on
> my Quicken and I'd like to not be tied to it, but GnuCash still isn't
> up to the level of
> Quicken. I could probably use it, but I'd like to be able to cut loose
> from Quicken
> completely. The QIF import seems to not import everything, and the QIF
> format
> isn't well documented. I tried editing the QIF file, but that didn't
> seem to help.

Importing 20 years of history is a big job.  The importer isn't perfect;
different versions of quicken have slightly different quirks and
sometimes the importer hits an odd corner case.

It helps to start with a small section of import and make sure that it
comes in right before you import the whole thing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "does not import everything".

-derek

> On 6/15/2016 11:22 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Paul Kinzelman <paul at kinzelman.com> writes:
>>
>>> I know I can do it that way, but remember, I have a "yuge"
>>> database, the biggest
>>> and best database in the world, nobody has databases like I do. :-)
>>>
>>> But seriously, it's pretty big (QIF > 2Mb) and yes, I could do
>>> that, but it's a
>>> lot of work given how many categories I have in my Quicken database,
>>> and being as how I'm an engineer, I'll spend weeks to elegantly
>>> solve a problem
>>> that I could brute force in an hour. :-)
>> Coming in a bit late due to being on vacation, so this may no longer be
>> relevant to you, but...
>>
>> During the QIF import process there are several pages where you can map
>> the QIF Categories/Accounts to GnuCash Accounts.  This only lets you map
>> to *existing* accounts.  So if you *have* an account Expenses:House:Rent
>> then you can map the QIF Category House:Rent to the GnuCash account
>> Expenses:House:Rent.
>>
>> Now, it MAY be possible (I honestly don't recall, because it's been over
>> a decade since I've really looked at or used the QIF importer) for you
>> to assign the account without it already existing.  But it may be the
>> case that if the GnuCash account does not already exist then you might
>> not be able to change its name during the import.
>>
>> In that case, what you should do is complete all your importing using
>> the QIF names, and then re-organize your account tree.  Or you can start
>> by creating a full set of accounts and then map them during the import.
>>
>>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> -derek
>>
>
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available