[GNC] Migration and On-lind banking Manuals

[Brad Morrison]

Hi Chris/David/all,

While David covered some of the aspects of migrating your QuickBooks 
files into GnuCash, as far as online banking, I would suggest checking 
out https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Setting_up_OFXDirectConnect & 
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings and 
seeing whether what you are hoping to do is possible with GnuCash and 
with the financial institution(s) that you use.

https://www.ofxhome.com/ - might also be helpful for determining the 
connection settings for the financial institutions listed there

https://financialdataexchange.org/ofx - I have heard from others on this 
GnuCash mailing list that OFX is not well maintained and further 
development is iffy. "Death by a thousand cuts" is how one person 
described OFX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange).

You also mentioned 'company files' in QuickBooks and while I am not 
exactly sure what you mean by that, if you have anything other than a 
very simple business, GnuCash may not work well for you:

https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1623#issuecomment-1583966278 - 
"But GnuCash isn't suitable for large—or even small;mdash;enterprises 
and never will be. GnuCash is for tiny and simple enterprises; we often 
say individuals and sole proprietorships. Even having employees makes 
using GnuCash a dubious proposition (no payroll module), as does 
carrying more than a very few line items of inventory (no inventory 
module) or performing any sort of manufacturing (no bill of materials or 
cost accounting modules).

Adding those modules is a non-starter: Consider that it's been 10 years 
since we began working on separating libgnucash from the application, 
converting from GObject to C++, and changing from a program that can 
load its data from a SQL database and put it back to one that is built 
around SQL queries. We haven't gotten very far.

Those seeking a F/LOSS accounting solution for larger enterprises should 
look to Odoo <https://www.odoo.com>." (https://www.odoo.com/ & 
https://www.odoo.com/accounting-firms)

I include that last part just to make any expectations you might have 
more grounded in the reality of GnuCash's current capabilities.

Good luck!

Brad


On 7/16/23 19:22, David Cousens wrote:
> 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,
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>