Importing QIF files with multiple accounts w/o going through a transfer account

[David Carlson]

Wouldn't that result in every transaction being a transfer to/from your
dummy account?  Then how do you associate a simple pair of half
transactions such as a bank payment to some other account with that account
receiving payment from the bank?

That is what double entry is all about.

David C

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 7:35 PM, RianMonnahan <rian.monnahan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> First, many thanks to those who replied to my request for help. The comment
> that "I may be trying to use import to do something it was not intended
> for"
> put me on the right track.
>
> I was indeed trying to use the QIF and CSV import facilities to load
> transactions from a legacy system's general journal. And I have succeed by
> tricking the system. I'll explain later.
>
> GnuCash import appears to be geared to loading, say, a transaction summary
> from your bank. The QIF/CSV important wants you to import into one account,
> usually the bank. It will then happily distribute the balance of the bank
> statement to various other accounts - suppliers, clients, expense, income,
> etc. BUT all of these accounts "tranfer" account will be the bank.
>
> The way to trick GnuCash into importing a general ledger is to set up a
> dummy account, say, 9:91 called interface and to use that as the
> base/transfer account for anything you throw at it. When important has
> completed all of you BS accounts from the legacy system will be Dr/Cr
> accordingly and the dummy account will have a zero balance.
>
> Here's a contrived example:
>
> File:
> 1 T1 Client A    100DR  BAL100DR
> 2 T1 Revenue 100CR  BAL100CR
> 3 T2 Bank      100DR  BAL100DR
> 4 T4 Client A  100CR  BAL0
>
> Dummy after GnuCash import (mirrors the file):
> 1 T1 Client    100CR BAL100CR
> 2 T1 Revenue 100DR BAL0
> 3 T2 Bank     100CR BAL100CR
> 4 T2 Client    100DR BAL0
>
> Accounts...
>
> Client
>
> 1 T1 Dummy   100DR BAL100DR
> 4 T2 Dummy   100CR BAL0
>
> Revenue
>
> 2 T1 Dummy   100CR BAL100CR
>
> Bank
>
> 3 T2 Dummy 100DR BAL100DR
>
>
> Again, thanks for your help everyone and I hope this post will be helpful
> for anyone wanting to do the same thing.
>
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> --
> View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.
> nabble.com/Importing-QIF-files-with-multiple-accounts-
> w-o-going-through-a-transfer-account-tp4690449p4690497.html
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