[GNC] Need help importing Investment transactions

[john]

> On Dec 22, 2021, at 8:58 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I am currently running release 3.8 in Linux Lite, which is Ubuntu 20.04
> under a different label.  I think that the CSV transaction import has not
> been changed, between 3.8 and 4.9.  If that is not correct, then some of my
> issues may be bugs that have been fixed.
> 
> I have read the current help manual section on importing transactions in
> csv format <https://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=4&lang=C&doc=help> which
> gave me a start, but there are some things that I cannot make work
> correctly.
> 
> I have come to the conclusion that my brokerage house World Equity Group
> CSV exports probably need to be massaged, and possibly split up but there
> are a couple of issues that I need to understand in order to determine how
> to fix the import data and to assign the proper names to the various fields.
> 
> One issue is that in one test many transactions were imported as single
> line unbalanced transactions with no transfer account, not even an
> assignment to an unbalance account.  Why did GnuCash accept unbalanced
> transactions containing amounts? Applying Check and Repair to some of those
> transactions did not balance them to an unbalance account.
> 
> Another issue is that I have not figured out which column name should be
> used for the number of shares in a purchase or sale transaction.
> 
> Yet another issue would be whether I can import everything into the
> brokerage account or do I need to do something special to get stock
> transactions assigned to the proper security account when appropriate?
> 
> A fourth issue would be whether I need to use the Multi-Split feature and,
> if so, how to format the CSV file to make it assign the correct split lines
> to the correct base transaction, and save it in CSV format if I built the
> spreadsheet in LibreOffice Calc or equivalent

Your premise might be mistaken: There have been 40 commits in gnucash/import-export/csv since 3.8 including several bug-fixes. However none of the summaries say anything about creating single-split transactions. You're right that that shouldn't be possible. Can you post an example or two of CSV rows that do that?

There isn't a column name for amount (see https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797368 <https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797368>), just for price, but even that apparently doesn't work well: https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793306 <https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793306> and https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=796955 <https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=796955>.

If you root the import on the brokerage cash account you should be able to designate the transfer accounts to the various stock's accounts in the matcher if importing stock trades worked, see previous item.

The easiest way to learn the format for multi-split CSV files is to do File>Export>Export Transactions to CSV and examine the resulting spreadsheet.

Regards,
John Ralls