[GNC] QIF Import Fails

Art Chimes arts.online at gmail.com
Thu Apr 4 18:59:02 EDT 2019


Thanks for the troubleshooting suggestions. Adrien pointed out the
ability to filter register displays, for which I am thankful. As a new
user, I hadn't discovered that tool yet.

He also suggested searching to see if the transaction ended up
imported into some other account. Which is exactly what happened.
Instead of going into the checking account where it was supposed to
go, this transaction -- and many others I thought I had failed to
import -- ended up in "Equity:Retained Earnings." I suspect "retained
earnings" has some specific accounting definition, but I don't know
what it is or what transactions actually belong in that account. I do
know that it was not my intention to put those transactions in that
account, and I am pretty sure I did not assign any transactions to
that account in the import process.

In 2009, a user filed a bug report in Bugzilla on just this behavior.
(https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=603761). Another user
replied to the bug report, "The importer is assuming these are opening
balance transactions. Could you explain why this type of transaction
is legitimate for some other purpose?" My transaction involved a bank
account interest payment. (In Quicken there is no separate income
account so the bank account has an interest payment that appears as if
by magic; it can be credited to the account or transferred to another
account.)

I can manually move these transactions, one-by-one, to where they
should be. But going forward, do I just have to resign myself to a lot
of QIF editing? Since I imagine that a lot of QIF importer users are
migrating from Quicken, perhaps some Quicken-specific warnings or
something could be considered?

Thanks again,
Art

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 11:25:00 -0500
> From: Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net>
> To: Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: [GNC] QIF Import Fails
> Message-ID: <FE5D5ACC-C7DA-46BF-86F5-1E128D7C36E6 at lusfiber.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=utf-8
>
> Any time I?m in a pickle and can?t see a transaction that should be there, I check that the register is not set to a filtered view. The transaction might be hidden for some reason. I also check one of the registers for the other accounts involved in the transaction.
>
> There is also a very powerful Find feature that you can even use regex with to find it.
>
> Regards,
> Adrien
>
> > On Apr 3, 2019, at 9:16 PM, Art Chimes <arts.online at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > !Type:Bank
> > D7/ 1/97
> > U5.32
> > T5.32
> > CX
> > PInterest Earned
> > L_IntInc
> > ^
> >
> > Above is an example of a transaction that is failing to import. The
> > QIF export is from Quicken 2000 via Windows.
> >
> > I've had problems with imports before, but eventually figured out the
> > problem. This one has me stymied. I  successfully imported
> > transactions from 1998-present, but the older ones aren't cooperating.
> >
> > The importer process seems to work ok, concluding with the encouraging
> > notice, "QIF Import Completed" However, the transaction does not
> > appear in the account register.
> >
> > One possible clue: I get a screen that asks me to match this
> > transaction with one of two others that have the same
> > date/amount/payee, even though the transaction doesn't appear in the
> > account.
> >
> > This is actually one of numerous exports from the same Quicken file.
> > Some work; others don't, and my troubleshooting hasn't gotten me
> > anywhere. From the "about" screen: Version: 3.4; Build ID: 3.4+
> > (2018-12-30)
> >
> > Thanks to the community for your help!
> >
> > Art


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list