[GNC] import csv transactions

[davidcousens49 at gmail.com]

Chris,

The account to import the records to will be the account in GnuCash which
records the transactions for your business bank account. If you have the
register for that account open when you initiate the import process it will be
used as the default account to import to unless that is explicitly specified in
the import records. Each transaction has at least one entry for that account and
entries to 1 or more other accounts usually in you Expense and Income type
accounts and their sub accounts ( unless a capital purchase - where it will be
an asset account). 

The Import Matching process constructs a map to the expense and income accounts
structure based on the information in the transactions and the associations you
make manually during your initial imports. You can add new accounts to the
income and expense account structure during the import process if a suitable
account does not already exist in your chart of accounts.

If the record you are importing has the format you show i.e. is multiline and
blank separated you can select a blank as the field separator but you will need
to ensure all fields for a transaction are either on a single line or are in the
multiline format GnuCash uses for importing transactions with more than two
splits.  This is illustrated in the Importing Transactions sectionof the
documentation 
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-import.html#:~:text=Navigate%20to%20the%20file%20you,name%20in%20the%20import%20file
. 

The date and description fields will best map onto those column headers. The
Amount field will most likely be associated with the Deposit header ( you may
have to experiment with this and perhaps assign it to the Withdrawal header if
the Deposit header does not work - it depends on whatever conventions are used
by your bank) in the import dialogue and the Counter Party field could be used
as an indicator for the Transfer Account field. The import process will ask you
to assign identifiers in this field to specific internal GNuCash expense/income
accoounts the first time they are encountered in an import record to construct
the mapping that will be used for subsequent imports. 

It is essential to complete the import process (click on the Import button) to
store the data from the mapping and transfer account assignments matching for
subsequent imports. 

I would suggest initially truncating a file to a small number of records to
familiarize yourself with the procedure. (saves having to delete a large number
of records if you get it wrong initially and GNuCash has no process for deleting
multiple transactions for an account register.

David Cousens
On Sat, 2021-11-13 at 19:04 +0000, Chris Matchett wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am experimenting with gnucash. I am trying to import a csv file of my
> business bank statement. Starling bank in the UK.
> 
> I assume the date and description fields are good below for the mandatory
> requirements? I am not sure how to match deposit and/or withdrawal and
> which account to use?
> 
> *(Date)* Date - 21/01/2020
> Counter Party - Citybus Ticket Kiosk
> *(Description)* Reference - CITYBUS TICKET KIOSK
> Type - CONTACTLESS
> Amount (GBP) - -15.5
> Balance (GBP) - 480.1
> Spending Category - TRANSPORT
> Notes -
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Chris
>