[GNC] Oddities importing from Quicken

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Simon:

Welcome to GnuCash! Good luck with your migration.

On 2024-11-19 15:39, Simon Roberts wrote:
> ...I exported a QIF from Quicken, and imported it. Lots of accounts were
> created in GNC that map "well-at-first-glance" to the actual accounts and
> categories in Quicken. However, many balances are way off.
>
> I've done some digging, and the thing I've noticed so far is that some
> transfers between actual bank accounts appear to have been entered twice. I
> say "appear" because I get oddly different results in "basic ledger" view
> from what I get in transaction journal view...
>
> ...Here's one of the offending entries in basic ledger. There's only one entry
> (a deposit to this account) in the Quicken file. but notice two entries
> here--the blocked out account numbers are identical in the upper and lower
> entry...

Recall that GnuCash is a tool for doing double-entry bookkeeping. Every 
transaction involved debits and credits between bookkeeping accounts, 
which sum to zero. What I recall from Quicken, by contrast, is that it 
tries to shield you from double-entries.

What I see here is a transaction where you take $500 out of the bank 
account and immediately put it back in. Imagine that you go to the bank 
teller, and say, "I want to deposit $500 to my bank account". They say, 
"give me the $500". You say, "Withdraw it from my bank account please". 
$500 leaves, $500 arrives, but the bank balance is unchanged afterwards.

Think about where that the funds for that deposit originated. Was it 
cash in your pocket? Then maybe one of the splits in that transaction 
should be the GnuCash account corresponding to your cash.  Was it income 
from a job?  Then maybe one of the splits should be the GnuCash account 
corresponding to Income:My Job:Wages.

Probably this is in import mistake. When you import a QIF file for the 
bank account, and it contains a deposit transaction, then in the import 
matcher you need to choose the other account involved in the 
transaction. Don't tell the matcher that the deposit is to the bank 
account; it knows that, because every transaction in the QIF file is 
about the bank account. Tell it the account corresponding to the source 
of the funds.

If this isn't clear, then maybe I should write more clearly. But also, 
maybe refresh your memory about how double-entry bookkeeping works.

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt