[GNC] importing (QIF/OFX)

[Jeff Abrahamson]

I wanted to import a bunch of transactions.  I had a CSV file, which
gnucash (2.6.19) doesn't like to import.  So I wrote a quick CSV to QIF
translator.  This worked, it recognized account names even though I
provided only the tail, and it correctly caught duplicates.  But a
couple quibbles: I'm wondering if they are inevitable.

- The importer asks me a lot of questions. ;-)

- When it finds matching transactions (because I tested importing the
same file a second time to make sure it wouldn't do it quietly), it
proposed matches.  (Good!)  In my case, every transaction had a unique
transaction id (the "number" field in gnucash, the N prefix in QIF) but
most of the transactions had one of a handful of values.  I would have
thought that 20180515-XQUFEF-3 would be matched uniquely, but it's not. 
I'm proposed every transaction with that value.

These aren't deal-killers, but it does make automation feel like a weak
concept.  I'm wondering if I can optimise better.

In passing, since I'll surely write more of these converters, would I
have been better off converting to OFX?  QIF simply had the advantage of
being dead simple, permitting splits, and having a wikipedia page that
describes the format.

Thanks!

-- 

Jeff Abrahamson
+33 6 24 40 01 57
+44 7920 594 255

http://p27.eu/jeff/