[GNC] Migration and On-lind banking Manuals

[David Cousens]

Chris,

If you will have ongoing access to Quickbooks then it is reasonable just to
start by transferring the balances. If for some reason (unable to run the
program in future due to platform change etc etc) you will not have access but
still have a need to access the previous records, then data migration.

When I first moved to GnuCash I had previous data from a business in MYOB.
Initially I just transferred the balances but eventually I transferred the data
for previous years using CSV export and import into GnuCash. I worked back wards
a year at a time resetting the opening balances. I produced balance sheets for
each year and Profit/Loss reports in MYOB before starting and ensured the
corresponding reports in GnuCash matched after completing the import of data for
a given year.  If the reconciliation was valid to some date (eg start of a
current period) before beginning the import and it still works on the major
accounts to the same date after import, you can be reasonably sure that you
haven't introduced too many major errors. If it doesn't agree use the usual
procedures to locate errors in the records until the reconciliation is in
agreement again. Gnucash will show any unreconciled transactions from past
periods in the reconciliation dialogue for a reconciliation to a dtae in the
current period and you can keep a reconciliation dialogue open while importing
the data.
 
Quickbboks IIF files seem to be tab separated CSV files so GNucash's importer
should be able to handle them.

With the importer it is usually good practice to initially import relatively
small batches until you work out the correct associations between columns in the
expoprted data and the corresponding headings within GnuCash. It is possibly a
good idea to initially do this on a dummy set of books to sort out the problems
and only import into your working books once you have it sorted and routine. I
imported data a month at a time going backwards when I initially did this (circa
2010) and gradually moved to 6 months and then a year at a time when I had a
reliable methodology worked out.

Make frequent backups of the data file as you work backwards.

Another approach that I didn't try was to enter the historical data into a
separate data file from the file for the current data going forward.

Good luck

David Cousens

On Sun, 2023-07-16 at 18:13 -0700, Chris Miller wrote:
> Hi Folks, 
> 
> I have a few Intuit QuickBooks "Company Files" that I will migrate to GnuCash.
> I'm looking for migration advice. 
> 
> It is not clear how much history I want to take with me. I may simply start
> with exiting account balances, and live with QuickBooks for historical
> reports. Or, it may be easy and worthwhile to move move more than that. I
> don't know and I'd be interested to hear advice. For example, how difficult is
> it to start with zero migrated history and set account starting balances and
> then later migrate additional history and adjust starting balances? Or maybe
> there are other, even better strategies. I'm sure I am not the first user to
> move from QuickBooks. 
> 
> What is the minimum migration to do on-line banking? Is there a manual for on-
> line banking options and configuration? 
> 
> I think my goal is to get started using GnuCash as soon as I can and not get
> bogged down in the whole migration problem. 
> 
> Thanks for the help,