[GNC] Importing Checking Transactions: Expense Acct Assignment Question.

[Fran_3]

 Thank you Adrien. Your answer was very helpful. I experimented today and hope to do the big import tomorrow. Wish me luck :-)

    On Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 12:17:54 PM EST, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:  
 
 It’s okay to not give a final “thanks” message, but it is helpful to inform the list that the particular advice either did or did not answer the question or help solve the problem. (or even help lead you to the solution and what that might have turned out to be) This way, future readers of the archive aren’t left in limbo as to how the thread resolved in case they have a similar question. Sometimes, a simple “thanks, that worked” is sufficient and acceptable. (with the ’that worked’ part being more important than the ’thanks’ part)

As for the mechanics of the import, it should allow you to train the importer for each payee. Thus the vendors you pay outright without raising bills would be assigned to a relevant expense account, but vendors you do raise bills for would get a different assignment, most likely Accounts Payable, then after the import, assign each of those as payment individually as appropriate to the relevant vendor invoices. (normally you don’t make manual entries against AP, noted in another thread) Be certain to use the “Assign as payment” feature from the checking register as a safety measure. (I’m not even sure you can do it from AP)

It is highly recommended when first starting an import workflow to do so with just a few transactions at a time, then move up to perhaps an entire month, then you can move up to a larger batch. Some veterans on this list always recommend to do one month at a time no matter what, check over everything carefully, reconcile, then move to the next month.

As you do each import, you are refining the training of the importer so you have to do less and less work each time making assignments or correcting mismatched imports. (you don’t want to jump head first and then have to review hundreds or thousands of transactions for errors or improper account assignments, and then you miss the benefit of training the importer)

You might want to start with just importing basic expenses and get some of those payees trained and make sure the importer matches subsequent imports correctly. Then move on to the business payments that need to be assigned. All of them should go to AP and each subsequent import should do this correctly.

As you move through the process (working from oldest imports to current day) the importer will improve and the entire process will be faster with less manual input. Future imports will be even smoother.

Finally, be certain to use the latest v3.8 as older versions had their individual bugs and quirks with the importer. (there might still be some outstanding to be fixed or improved, but the best state of the feature is in the current version)

Regards,
Adrien

> On Feb 4, 2020 w6d35, at 10:55 AM, Fran_3 via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> We have two types of vendors...1 - Vendors for which we receive & post bills2 - Vendors for which we just write a check and make an entry into the checking account
> Normally...In Case 1, we post bills first, assign an expense account, and later pay the bill. The expense account is assigned when we create the bill.
> In Case 2 we assign the Expense Account when entering the transaction into the check register.
> Now...- We are about to import months of checking transactions.
> - Later we will Post Bills for any of those transactions for which we receive bills.
> - Then we will Apply the associated checking transactions as payments for the associated vendor Bills.
> 
> Here is the question:
> When we import the checking transactions I'm guessing we can assign the appropriate Expense Account during that import.
> 
> Will assigning the Expense Account during import conflict with later creating a bill and then assigning a checking transaction as payment for that bill? (Since the Expense Account is normally assigned during creation of the bill... so this will be kind of backwards... I think)
> I hope I made the issue and question clear. At least I gave it my best shot :-)
> Thanks for any help.
> PS - I've recently posted a number of questions leading up to this big import and when given answers have chosen not to send out a "Thank You" response. I've done this in order to not needlessly clog up everybody's inbox. But, I do want to say "Thank You" now for your assistance. I hope my choice of not sending out a simple "Thank You" is appropriate protocol but if not let me know as the members here are just terrific and very helpful.


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