[GNC] Example of importing Stock transactions from CSV

[David Carlson]

Jon,

If you are not using some recent 4.x version of GnuCash you may not have
the latest improvements to the CSV transaction importer.

A normal stock purchase or sale transaction has two parts, one, a deposit
or withdrawal of cash from a brokerage account, the other an exchange of
the cash for a security at some exchange rate, aka price.  For this
discussion I will ignore commissions and fees.

Thus you want to have two CSV lines per transaction.  Also, when importing
the CSV file, you will need to check the Multi-split box to tell GnuCash
that is the type of file that you are importing.  Then you can assign one
line to the security purchase or sale and the other to the cash transfer.
You can define fields in each line to match the respective lines in a
completed transaction as seen in the security register.  You only see the
price and share details in the security register and the cash transfer
details can be seen in both the security register and the brokerage
register.

I will admit that I have not done that myself, so I cannot provide an
example for you to follow.  Perhaps another user can provide an example.
Good luck.

On Sun, Aug 21, 2022 at 8:38 AM Jon Schewe <jpschewe at mtu.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 2022-08-20 at 12:20 -0400, Michael or Penny Novack wrote:
> > On 8/19/2022 10:33 PM, Jon Schewe wrote:
> > > So I didn't get the CSV import tool to work.
> >
> > Perhaps a reminder on what CSV is and is not.
> >
> > CSV stands for "common separated variables. That means the data is in
> > the form of a record consisting of a number of fields delineated by
> > commas. Which means two important things. The fields (individual data
> > elements) cannot contain commas but even more important, ORDER
> > MATTERS.
> >
> > In other words, the record A,B,C,D is not the same a B,A,C,D << A, B,
> > C,
> > and D being elements of data, names, amounts, etc. >>
> >
> > The CSV data you are importing must not only be in CSV format but the
> > data must be in the right order AND any data that is null (not
> > present
> > still has its space in the record.
> >
> > Thus if a record was supposed to include A, C, and D  (B is not
> > relevant
> > to this record) it would look like A,,C,D and not A,C,D
> >
> >
> > But even the "wrong" examples are in CSV format.
> >
> >
> Yes, I know what a CSV file is and how it should be formatted. The
> problem is not with the format of the file, that is handled by GnuCash
> just fine. The problem is the mapping of columns in the CSV file to
> fields in GnuCash. I cannot figure out the correct mapping to get the
> correct transactions.
>
>
>
> I have tried all of the following possible mappings between GnuCash
> fields and columns in my CSV file. In the end I finally wrote the
> python script out of frustration of the import CSV transactions not
> working. I'm hoping that someone on this list understands enough python
> and the import CSV transactions functionality enough to tell me how to
> get the mapping correct.
>
> # test 2
>
> Transfer Account - FUND
> Withdrawal - FUND UNITS
> Account - Transfer Account
> Transaction Commodity - Currency
>
> Shares are correct.
> Close, need to get the dollars right now
>
> # test 3
>
> Transfer Account - FUND
> Withdrawal - FUND UNITS
> Account - Transfer Account
> Transaction Commodity - Currency
> Deposit - AMOUNT
>
> None of the shares or cash lined up.
>
> # test 4
>
> Try swapping withdrawal and deposit
>
> Transfer Account - FUND
> Deposit - FUND UNITS
> Account - Transfer Account
> Transaction Commodity - Currency
> Withdrawal - AMOUNT
>
> None of the shares or cash lined up.
>
> # test 5
>
> Transfer Account - FUND
> Withdrawal - FUND UNITS
> Account - Transfer Account
> Transaction Commodity - Currency
> price - FUND UNITS
>
> Values don't line up with the price
>
> # test 6
>
> Transfer Account - Transfer Account
> Deposit - AMOUNT
> Account - FUND
> Transaction Commodity - Currency
>
> Price is right, Shares are the dollars
> Shares times price equals dollars.
>
>
> # test 7
>
> Transfer Account - Transfer Account
> Account - FUND
> Transaction Commodity - Fund Commodity
> Deposit - FUND UNITS
>
> Nothing is right, couldn't find the account to transfer from and price
> is 1.
>
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-- 
David Carlson