[GNC] Setting up existing investments in new GnuCash file

[Joseph G. Keithley, III]

Speaking from painful experience.... I exported my brokerage register in quicken to a qif and then imported it into GnuCash.  Once you get past all the questions from the import not-so-wizard, it took a very long time to import the file.  I tried to break the file up by exporting/importing one year at a time, but it was still a very slow process.  The biggest hassle was, after GnuCash imported the file, it asks to assign the imported transactions of stock, bonds, equities, etc to equivalent GnuCash categories or accounts.   The specific hassle was, that it asks you to assign transactions to categories/accounts (stock purchase or cash dividend or dividend reinvestment) but is cuts the item short so you cant read what the full item is and you have to guess whether you are defining a new stock or a dividend etc.  It was very painful.  It took at least three separate attempts before I got something workable and it still required a lot of after import editing.  The only words of advice I can offer are, START VERY SMALL!  A few transactions at a time.  You can save yourself some time by predefining your stocks, bonds and other investments in the security editor and creating the appropriate categories/accounts for other transactions like dividends and interest.


iii




 On Monday, November 4, 2019, 12:13:19 AM UTC, Dean Bradley <no1clashfan at mailbox.org> wrote:





 Hello!,
I am a long-time (25+ years)_ trying to finish my conversion to Linux. I am setting up GnuCash 3.7 on Manjaro KDE 18.1.2. I am not  importing my Quicken history, and am starting with a new file. The task at hand is setting up my brokerage account and its holdings. There are 30 securities in this account; a mix of cash, cash alternatives, funds and stocks. Following are some questions about this.

Can I import my holdings from a CSV file into GnuCash?
I have exported my holdings to a CSV file, but it does not appear that any of the CSV import options are designed for importing holdings. "Import Accounts as CSV" seems the most appropriate option, but the constraints on that import file (must match the format of an export) don't match my CSV input file at all. I've also looked at the Price import, but it doesn't capture much of the information (e.g. quantity, description). And Import as Transactions just seem wrong.

in the absence of an import, it appears I must go through the multi-step (15-20) process defined in Section 9 of the documentation for each account/security (define account, define security, define opening balance), for each of my 30 accounts? Is this correct? Is there any valid shortcut to this cumbersome approach?

Assuming I have to manually define each account /security...
Is it correct that I define my current holding (shares and price) as the opening balance for each account, using the register?
I can export transactions from my brokerage as a QFX file. Once this is all setup, will I be able to maintain this hierarchy of accounts under the brokerage parent by importing QFX files?

I appreciate any help and guidance you can give me. I'd really like to complete my migration to Linux, and getting this sorted out seems the hardest part of the process.

Thanks,and regards,
~dean~
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