[GNC] OFX import when bank doesn't use unique ACCTID

[Ryan Boder]

I'm new to gnucash and have run into a frustrating problem importing my
bank accounts. My bank is putting a non-unique number in the ACCTID field
of the OFX files. They only put the last 4 digits of what they call the
"member number product ID" in as the ACCTID. I have multiple accounts with
this bank and all my accounts have the same last 4 digits in that ID.

The result is that when I try to import transactions into Gnucash, once
that 4 digit ID has been associated with a Gnucash account then Gnucash
wants to import transactions for all my OFX files into that same account.

I can think of a few work arounds for the issue but I wanted to ask the
list since I'm a newbie and don't want to pick a bad solution.

1) I could edit the OFX files from my bank before importing them into
Gnucash and replace the 4 digit ID with the full account number which is
unique. This seems like the best solution to me but also a bit annoying and
it would not work if starting using automatic imports.

2) I could edit my Gnucash file and remove the online_id slot from the XML
before importing. That would make Gnucash prompt me again for which account
to import transactions into. That seems risky. Should I avoid editing my
Gnucash file manually like this?

3) My bank supports CSV export as well as OFX/QFX. I could avoid OFX all
together and try to make something work with CSV. This doesn't seem ideal
as it's not a standard file format and it looks like I would have to do
some manipulation of some of the fields to make it work in Gnucash.

What do more experienced users recommend? Also, have others had this
problem before? If so, maybe we can find a way to solve it in a future
version such as optionally being able to force Gnucash to prompt for the
account to import into instead of just assuming it's what's in
the online_id slot.

- Ryan