[GNC] Import qif does not remember account allocation.

[David Carlson]

Dave W,

Once is enough with the duplicated messages.  The previous responses by
John and Derek seemed to cover your concerns but since you are asking for
elaboration, I as an experienced user can answer your questions #1 & #2.
The QIF Import wizard in the GnuCash Releases 2.6.21 and earlier assign the
unspecified account when there is not enough history detected by the
Bayesian matcher to assign an existing account to a transaction.  The user
must monitor the import and correct those transactions during the import
process as well as catching and correcting any other assignment errors
arising from similar transactions in the history before accepting the
assignments in the import.  Since each financial institution structures
their descriptions somewhat differently, it sometimes takes much more
history to get better accuracy with the matching.  Even after many years
using the OFX importer, I still get frequent mis-assignments between
gasoline purchases and restaurant purchases in one of my bank accounts.  In
my experience, the OFX import wizard historically has given me better
results than the QIF importer, and I have few accounts that do not offer
OFX format.

To make things more interesting, the 3.x release series has the importers
re-configured to work differently so that it is, as a practical matter,
necessary to start over with matching once you have migrated to that
release series.  The bright side of that change is that it should work
better fairly quickly, and best of all, it will be easier to purge out bad
history when needed.

I cannot answer your questions #3 and #4.

David C

On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 11:29 PM DaveW <wasserland44 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 03 Dec 2018 19:13:53 -0500
> Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.fremont.ca.us> writes:
> >
> > >> On Dec 3, 2018, at 6:06 AM, David wasserman
> > >> <wasserland44 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Running Ubuntu 18.04.  GNC version 2.6.19.
> > >>
> > >> Whereas GNC remembers previous account allocation on my Mastercard.
> > >> Importing from my recently new AMEX credit card, the system doesn't
> > >> remember the account allocation even for exactly the same
> > >> transaction multiple times previously booked.
> > >>
> > >> How to fix, please?
> > >
> > > Keep importing. It takes several runs of the importer to build up
> > > enough matching data to generate matches, and it’s runs of the
> > > matcher that matter, not the number of transactions in an import.
> >
> > Keep in mind that the QIF importer matches on FULL LINES.  If there is
> > even a single character different in the Payee or Memo then the QIF
> > importer will consider it different.
> >
> > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >
> > -derek
>
> Ongoing . . . . .
>
> I have now been through 8 monthly iterations of my newer Amex qif
> importations.  Still no auto account allocation generation as
> suggested will eventually occur. (Yet my long-term Mastercard
> account .qif downloads continue to import and allocate correctly.)
>
> In my frenetic searching, I find this file: /.gnucash/qif-accounts-map.
> It seems to be the memory source of previous transaction.  It's a long
> file that obviously has followed me over the years.  In it I recognise
> that, typically, the Mastercard allocations Line Description has
> the correct account allocation recorded.
>
> So I searched a recent Amex transaction that has twice previously been
> manually corrected from "Unspecified" to it's correct Expense account
> yet this is what is recorded inter alia:
> ("ROMEO S FOODHALL SUTHER SUTHERLAND" "ROMEO S FOODHALL SUTHER
> SUTHERLAND" (9 8 0 3 4 2 11 12 5 6) #f "Unspecified" #f #t).
>
> Sorry about the long preamble. ):
>
> *1. Once designated "Unspecified" how/when, and by what means, does the
> correct allocation be recorded?
> *2. Is there a difference between manual correction while in QIF
> Download mode and after Import has been completed?
> *3. What do the numerals and #'s mean?
> *4. Shall I upload the said qif-accounts-map file for you?
>
> Dave W
>
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