[GNC] Wells Fargo OFX

[Kalpesh Patel]

Glenn, you said " I think QFX is OFX with some minor modifications.". 

>From the GNC import perspective, they are both same. Technically QFX is proprietary Quicken implementation of OFX by adding a header but GNC ignores that header during the import.

I concur that best way to deal with OFX is to download via financial institutions on-line web portal and import it in. If you want go down the technical side, see https://sites.google.com/site/pocketsense/home/msmoneyfixp1/faq. It is old but is good. 

OFX direct connect (verus downloading) is dying. BOF discontinued and so did Chase. Schwab went behind paywall with Quicken is the only one authorized for OFX direct connect.

-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn Serre <gaserre at spiresoftware.com> 
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2023 2:54 PM
To: Chris Miller <cjm at tryx.org>
Cc: gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Wells Fargo OFX

Good morning,

Here's a quick note on my experience in case it's helpful.

Summary:
Instead of OFX direct connect I use the various bank websites to download transactions in QFX format corresponding to the monthly statements.  I think QFX is OFX with some minor modifications.

I have used gnucash with several banks for checking, savings, and credit cards: Wells Fargo, Bank of the West, E*Trade Bank, Chase, Capital One, Apple Card (whatever bank they really use).
Last year I made a concerted effort to enable OFX direct connect for all of these, but I gave up after the first couple.  I may have written an email about it that is saved in the archives.  My conclusion is that OFX direct connect is generally not well supported by banks and seems to be going away.

On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 10:35 AM Chris Miller <cjm at tryx.org> wrote:
[...]
> Yes. What diagnosis and debug facilities are available? Am I going to have to compile code and step through it with a debugger? I can do that, but if I have to, but I don't think I want to. It just sounds like a frustrating project. I haven't yet tried to do an OFX exchange, because antecedent to "exchange" is "setup", and I'm still not entirely sure how I do that, or even if I can do that with Wells Fargo.
>

If I remember correctly, Wells Fargo is one of the ones that still works (I don't bank with Wells Fargo any more). If you really want direct connect, go to Tools->Online Banking Setup and give it a whirl.
If it doesn't work, my advice would be to abandon the effort and use transaction download instead as I do. Debugging is reasonably well supported in that you can set gnucash to write a detailed log file which generally pointed me to what was going wrong.  I'm not remembering the details, but the instructions are on a gnucash web page.
There are a few ofx client programs also, ofxclient being one I found particularly useful.
The ofxhome website does not appear to be well maintained.

> I am curious about relative successes. OFX exchange is so important to me that I would consider changing banks to get it. What banks support GnuCash OFX with the fewest probems? Which ones have the most trouble?
[...]

I recently discovered that Morgan Stanley's cashplus account only supports transaction download in Excel (.xlsx) format, so that would be the one with the most trouble that I have seen.  Otherwise, my monthly download of transactions works reasonably well with the other banks I use.  The lack of detail I get in the transactions (Zelle, checks, and direct deposit) is annoying, but that's not directly an OFX issue.

Again, based on my experience I would say do something else rather than use ofx direct connect.

-- Glenn S.