Re: Problems importing .OXF files - A £27.00 transaction is lost, so balance is shown £27.00 higher in GnuCash than the true balance.

[John Ralls]

> On Nov 27, 2016, at 6:52 AM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) <drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> I've downloaded some .OXF files from my bank. I've named them something
> half-sensible, so it should be clear the first,
> 
> KIRKBYMICROWAVELTD-20161126-01-02-2014-to-31-12-2014.ofx
> 
> is for the period 01-02-2014 to 31-12-2014. When I imported that, the
> balance shown in GnuCash is £1175.18 - see screenshot below.
> 
> http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/tmp/Screenshot-33.png
> 
> That looks sensible. A check of a .csv file for the same period from the
> bank, has at the last line.
> 
> 31/12/2014,POS,"'9035 30DEC14 , WWW.UK.RS-ONLINE.C, 08457 201201
> GB",-44.76,1175.18,"'KIRKBY MICROWAVE LTD","'830425-11186193",
> 
> So GnuCash and my bank seem to be in agreement there.
> 
> Next I imported all the 2015 transactions, from the file
> 
> KIRKBYMICROWAVELTD-20161126-01-01-2015-to-31-12-2015.ofx
> 
> Looking back now to the end of 2014
> 
> http://www.kirkbymicrowave.co.uk/tmp/Screenshot-36.png
> 
> I see something odd.  Notice that the balance is higher at the end of 2014
> than it was before I imported the 2015 transactions.
> 
> The last transaction of 2014 has been lost. A £27.00 debit to Interparcel
> is no longer shown. Hence the balance at the end of 2014 is now shown as
> 1175.18+27.00=£1202.18, which I believe is incorrect.
> 
> I then imported the 2016 transactions. As of yesterday, there was a couple
> of hundred pounds difference between what my bank shows, and what GnuCash
> shows. I've not bothered looking at what causes that, but first I'd like to
> sort out why importing the 2015 transactions caused a problem.
> 
> Does anyone have any ideas what could cause this £27.00 transaction to be
> lost?

As a guess--the best I can do without having the files to import myself--the matcher decided that there was a duplicate entry to the missing transaction that warranted updating it to a new date. You can disable that behavior by unselecting "Enable update match action" in Preferences>Online Banking. 

BTW, we recommend doing imports in small batches, carefully reviewing all of the matches, and reconciling after each import. That trains the matcher, which speeds up future imports, and makes it easier to sort import problems because you have a much smaller set of transactions to examine. It's also helpful to do a save after each import so that if something goes wrong you can use File>Revert to discard the import and try it again if you discover a problem during reconcile.

Regards,
John Ralls