[GNC] Almost ready to give up

Wed Jan 23 23:14:43 EST 2019

Michael, I feel your pain.  I miss Quicken's "one click
import" feature, too. I blame Intuit...they kept getting the
banks to mess around with the authentication process and data
formats, plus their lack of documentation and pointed desire
to not help developers of other applications made things
worse then they had to be. 

That said, if you don't mind a few extra steps and a (very)
few minutes of clicking around the screen, here's the method
I use to download and enter transactions from my Chase credit
cards and checking account to Gnucash. 

1. Open the Chase web site, log in with your usual user
credentials and navigate to the activity page of the account
you want to process.  About halfway down the page there will
be a menu bar with some icons...the "download activity" icon
(looks like a down arrow pointing at an in basket) will be
near the far right. Clicking on the icon will open a dialog
where you specify the date range and file type.  I always use
the ofx/qfx format because it seems most reliable. Click
download to save your transactions and note the file name and
location where it is saved.  

Repeat as desired for other Chase accounts, making sure you
have a unique name for each transaction download. Chase does
this automagically now, but that wasn't always the case. 
Some institutions just give you a "transaction.ofx" file name
for every account.  

When finished, log out of the Chase web site and close the
browser for security's sake. 

Start GnuCash, open the account register for the first
account you want to process.  Click on <file> then <import>.
Select the file type (in my case it's ofx/Qfx) then select
the file you downloaded for that account from the navigator.
Click "import".

That opens the transaction matching window. The options are
described in detail in the GnuCash documentation. For me, the
automatcher gets most of the transactions correct and I just
have to check the appropriate box for the ones it does not
match. 

Repeat for other accounts as appropriate. Done. 

This method is certainly not as convenient as a one click
download like Quicken does, but at least it works and is
reliable and consistent.  I use it with Chase, Bank of
America (checking and credit card), wife's Target Bank Credit
Card, USAA (checking, credit card) and my Charles Schawb cash
sweep checking account.   

I don't use Gnucash to track investment portfolio activity,
so I can't help with that. Every time I get interested in
sciencing out a solution for the potfolio I decide Chuck's
Schawb's web portal already tells me more than I want to know
(lately, anyway) and it is their problem to maintain it. 

Ron Morse 

On Wed, 2019-01-23 at 18:10 -0800, Michael Mantei wrote:
> I really want to get away from Quicken.  I've been trying
> gnucash for a 
> little over 2 months now, but I can't get the bank
> transfers to work. 
> I'm no closer now than I was 2 months ago.
> 
> This is where I am at...
>      0. I'm using gnuCash versioin 3.4 and the bundled
> aqbanking on a 
> Windows 10 PC
>      1. I generated a version 4 UUID at 
> https://www.uuidgenerator.net/version4
>      2. I entered my bank account username in both the User
> Name and 
> User ID fields
>      3. I entered the generated UUID in the user setting
> ClientUId field 
> in the aqbanking wizard, without any dashes
>      4. On the Bank Settings tab, I searched for JPMorgan
> Chase Bank and 
> let it fill the fields.
>      5. On the Application Settings tab I have the
> Application ID set to 
> QWIN, the Application Version set to 2700 and the Header
> Version set to 103.
>      6. I save this info then exit out. After re-entering
> gnucash and 
> restarting the aqbanking wizard, I go to the Bank Settings
> tab and click 
> on Retrieve Account List.
>      7. I am prompted for my password end enter it. I then
> see the 
> following:
>          21:51:30 Saving communication log to /tmp/ofx.log
>          21:51:30 Sending request...
>          21:51:30 Using GnuTLS default ciphers.
>          21:51:30 TLS: SSL-Ciphers negotiated: 
> TLS1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES-256-GCM:AEAD
>          21:51:30 Signer not found
>          21:51:30 Certificate is not trusted
>          21:51:30 Waiting for response...
>          21:51:30 Operation finished, you can now close
> this window.
>      The OFX.LOG file contains the following:
>          Sending:
>          -------------------------------------
>          OFXHEADER:100
>          DATA:OFXSGML
>          VERSION:103
>          SECURITY:NONE
>          ENCODING:USASCII
>          CHARSET:1252
>          COMPRESSION:NONE
>          OLDFILEUID:NONE
>          NEWFILEUID:20190122215110.000
>   <OFX><SIGNONMSGSRQV1><SONRQ><DTCLIENT>20190122215110.000<
> USERID>MYUSERID
>          <USERPASS>MYPASSWORD
>          <LANGUAGE>ENG<FI><ORG>Chase 
> Bank<FID>1601</FI><APPID>QWIN<APPVER>2700<CLIENTUID>1df5920
> 7be3d4a6aa416de9233639b2d</SONRQ></SIGNONMSGSRQV1><SIGNUPMS
> GSRQV1><ACCTINFOTRNRQ><TRNUID>20190122215110.000<CLTCOOKIE>
> 1<ACCTINFORQ><DTACCTUP>19691231</ACCTINFORQ></ACCTINFOTRNRQ
> ></SIGNUPMSGSRQV1></OFX>
> 
>      8. This is all I ever see, regardless of how often I
> do it. There 
> are no messages available on the Chase website. Quicken
> works fine, but 
> AQBanking gives me nothing.
>      9. I've tried everything I can think of for 2 months,
> but my 
> knowledge of the products is very limited and I've figured
> nothing out 
> other than it won't work.
>      10. I've tried posting to what appear to be aqbanking
> message 
> lists, but have no luck getting my posts to take. Any help
> would be 
> appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
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