[GNC] What does OFX Direct Connect do?

[John Ralls]

Please remember to copy the list on all replies.

GnuCash does not have such a list, but the website http://ofxhome.com maintains a directory of US financial institutions that do or did support OFX Direct Connect. Be sure to check the bottom of the institution's page to see when the ofxhome test script last ran successfully.

If your existing FI decides to support only Quicken then your options are to switch to somewhere that still supports OFX Direct Connect (a steadily dwindling list), switch to manually downloading your transactions in one of the formats GnuCash supports, or getting Quicken.

Regards,
John Ralls


> On Jan 4, 2021, at 1:19 PM, Steve Cohen <stevecoh2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> and if your financial institution, like American Express, forces you to maintain an account with Quicken in order to download QFX files, what, short of closing your account with them, are your options?  Does GNUCash maintain a list of institutions that do or don't support import of data?
> 
> I quit Quicken several years ago because I was tired of being forced to upgrade every 2 or 3 years to get a bunch of features I had no need of, yet bug fixes I did have need of were never made.
> 
> On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 10:09 PM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> No, OFX is a file format. Many financial/bank websites offer OFX or QFX downloads of your transaction data; more in fact than offer OFX Direct Connect. Since OFX (and it's slightly altered evil twin QFX, for Quicken Financial eXchange) are formats expressly designed for transferring consumer transaction information it's a more efficient and less error prone way to import transactions into programs like GnuCash.
> 
> If your bank offers OFX Direct Connect then GnuCash can connect to your bank and get that OFX download. If not but allows downloading OFX-formatted files then you go to the bank website, log in, and get the download, then use File>Import>Import OFX/QFX to import it.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
> > On May 18, 2020, at 2:20 PM, Fran_3 <mailbox0600 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Woops! No ill intent. I've seen the same response on other SIG's when someone started a new thread that a groups member or admin thought should have been included in a recent thread on that some related topic. Oh well.
> > 
> > Back to the topic... so OFX just saves you the steps of downloading the transactions as CSV and then having to do a bit of formatting before you import them into GC... right?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Monday, May 18, 2020, 1:48:19 PM EDT, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Don't hijack threads, it's rude. Start a new one when you have a new question.
> > 
> > OFX Direct Connect is just like importing an OFX or QFX file downloaded from your bank's website except that it will connect to the bank and get the OFX file for you.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > John Ralls
> > 
> > 
> > > On May 18, 2020, at 10:27 AM, Fran_3 <mailbox0600 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > If I can jump in here I would like to learn more about OFX Direct Connect with GnuCash.
> > > 
> > > Does such automatically determine what transactions occur at the bank that are not in GC...
> > > And then automatically update GnuCash?
> > > 
> > > Or what?
> > > 
> > > Thanks.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On Monday, May 18, 2020, 12:35:10 PM EDT, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > On May 17, 2020, at 12:06 PM, Hershey <Hershey at triad.rr.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I'm new to Gnu and am having issues setting up online downloads.
> > > > My first attempt is Wells Fargo and I get a 2000 error message.
> > > > The Tutorial show Wells Fargo in its example but I've also seen this
> > > > statement on the web: Wells Fargo has switched to OFX Web Connect. GnuCash
> > > > doesn't support this authentication.
> > > 
> > > That last sentence is your answer, but perhaps you need some more detail. There are two ways of connecting to a bank for OFX online communication, OFX Direct Connect and OFX Web Connect. The former collects your user name and password as part of the online session and the latter has you log in to the bank's website and launch the OFX session from there. The way that the bank's website connects to the financial software is proprietary to Intuit, the makers of Quicken, so that it works only with their products. GnuCash is able to work only with OFX Direct Connect.
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > John Ralls
> > > 
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