Problems importing bank statements.

[David Carlson]

Dr Kirby,

You might first try opening a sample CSV file with LibreOffice, Open Office
or Microsoft Office.  Those programs have a fairly good ability to help
figure out the detail of the file format including the particular date
format (Which GnuCash is very fussy about) and whether there is really a
comma separator or there is some other separator.

Then try again to import, adjusting things to get each column showing one
field such as date, number, description, account, and amount.

I rarely use the CSV importer myself, partly because it is not easy to set
up.

David C

On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Dave H <hellvee at gmail.com> wrote:

> Check out
> http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_My_bank_doesn.27t_
> offer_OFX_or_QIF_but_only_CSV_or_similar._How_can_I_import_
> my_statement_data.3F
>
> I think from memory you have to tell the importer which column is which. I
> can't really remember as I only used it when setting it up in the first
> place.  I prefer to enter all transactions by hand and reconcile with the
> bank statement later.
>
> CSV is a pretty basic format, if your bank exports transactions in QIF or
> OFX format you probably want to consider using one of those formats.
>
> Cheers Dave H.
>
>
> On 27 November 2016 at 02:53, Dr. David Kirkby - Kirkby Microwave Ltd <
> drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to import my bank statements into a current account, starting
> > when the company was set up. I can export this data from my bank's
> website,
> > and have put the first few here.
> >
> > http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/tmp/first-few-transactions.csv
> >
> > changing the odd name for confidentiality reasons.
> >
> > When I try to import these, I'm not surprised it all goes wrong, as the
> > columns my bank uses, and those I think GnuCash is expecting are quite
> > different. So it all goes horribly wrong, and the import looks as though
> it
> > will be like this.
> >
> > http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/tmp/Screenshot-32.png
> >
> > which is clearly very muddled up. The number of accounts imported is 0,
> > and the number updated is 0. The errors are:
> >
> >
> > Row 1, account Description not in Type
> > Row 2, account 09/04/2014 not in '830425-11186193
> > Row 3, account 35314369001 GB" not in PP*7605CODE
> > Row 4, account 77.23 not in -11.78
> > Row 5, account BAC not in 28/04/2014
> > Row 6, account -46.70 not in INTERNET GB"
> > Row 7, account 06/05/2014 not in '830425-11186193
> > Row 8, account TUSTIN US not in CROSS RF
> > Row 9, account -98.43 not in '9035 05MAY14 , PAYPAL , *ELECTROMAVI ,
> > 35314369001 GB
> >
> > I notice the GnuCash has, going left to right:
> >
> > Date, Num, Description, Transfer, R, Deposit, Withdrawal, Balance.
> >
> >
> >
> > Am I expect to do some pre-processing of the cvs file before attempting
> to
> > import it? Clearly having the company name and account number on every
> > single line is not exactly useful, and I'd like to remove them.
> >
> > I could no doubt mess around in Excel, or with the Unix sed and awk
> > utilities to create a new .cvs file in a different format, but somehow I
> > don't expect that what the programmers expect a user to do.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
> >
> > --
> > Dr. David Kirkby Ph.D CEng MIET
> > Kirkby Microwave Ltd
> > Registered office: Stokes Hall Lodge, Burnham Rd, Althorne, Essex, CM3
> > 6DT, UK.
> > Registered in England and Wales, company number 08914892.
> > http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/
> > Tel: 07910 441670 / +44 7910 441670 (0900 to 2100 GMT only please)
> >
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