[GNC] Setting up existing investments in new GnuCash file

ornd25 at tutanota.com ornd25 at tutanota.com
Sat Nov 9 08:33:09 EST 2019


"Thanks for your reply. I get the impression that even if I get the import process sorted out, that this will be a tedious process and probably no easier in the long run that just entering all the data manually. You state the importer is ahead of the documentation, but my evaluation was based on actually trying the importer more than going following the documentation. None of them seemed suitable without a lot of work, and manual entry is a lot of work. I believe I'll do the latter. 

Regards, 
~dean~"I went through much the same process in August and was unable to use the importer for investments 
effectively - I ended up doing much of it manually, also.

I have some techniques suggestions that might be useful for manual entry.
"Save as" your work product as something like "GnuCash_Experimental" in a directory different from your main one in case of non-recoverable errors.
Do one account at a time 
Have your working account at the top level, e.g., ABCDE Mutual Fund, rather than "Assets:Investments:Taxable:Joint:Mutual Funds; this makes the splits easier to assign. Moving a whole account to its nested position later is easy using the (hair-raising) "Delete Account" technique, which I practiced a few times before invoking it with real data.
Do only six months or a year's worth of your most recent data at a time. This gives you current information immediately, allowing you to fill in older data as you have time.
Use common Description terms, such as "Dividend Reinvestment" when possible - this allows you to <Tab> to create the same split as previously, saving much Debit/Credit assignment clicks.




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