[GNC] Oddities importing from Quicken

[David Carlson]

The duplicate entries issue with QIF imports is very common if you have
more than one account in a given QIF import file because there are no
existing entries to compare against during the import.  The easiest
solution is to import one account at a time and carefully monitor the
matching step to be sure GnuCash is matching the second import to the first
for those transfers.


On Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 12:58 PM Simon Roberts <
simon at dancingcloudservices.com> wrote:

> Many thanks Murugan, Fred; I've been using GNC for some years now for other
> accounting, so double entry is decently familiar (though I don't usually
> use the transaction journal). However, I hadn't recognized what was
> happening with the two entries, not least because each showed a split to
> the other account anyway. But your observation makes perfect sense. Why the
> QIF import didn't recognize that the source / destination accounts were
> different--it seems to have duplicated the transaction in *both*
> accounts--is puzzling, but I guess this kind of import is not a priority.
>
> Particular thanks to Kalpesh, that's definitely not what I'd hoped for!
> Anyway, at least it gives me a route to try. As one with a programming
> background I can kinda see how the matching of an account for a transfer
> could flunk out if that account doesn't exist yet. I will try the stepwise
> approach you suggest. It almost makes it surprising that any of it worked,
> after all, the software doesn't know the difference between a bank-type
> account and a category, and the vast majority of the import worked in this
> respect.
>
> I suppose the bottom line is that if this can't be persuaded to work
> smoothly there's no way I'm putting the time into fixing years of data with
> seemingly arbitrary errors, so I'll have to decide between continuing to
> run Quicken (not too big of a deal) along with windows (which is what I
> really wanted to get away from!) or having a new set of accounts starting
> from now and risking losing access to the historical stuff (which was what
> happened when I quit paying Intuit for their ever more expensive stuff).
>
> Thanks all, I guess I have a plan and fallbacks mapped out.
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 4:39 PM Simon Roberts <
> simon at dancingcloudservices.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm hoping to get my personal accounts onto GNC (I'm using it for a small
> > business, so I'm tolerably familiar with it already).
> >
> > 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 (though I must say up front,
> > I'm not a transaction journal view user, so perhaps I just don't
> understand
> > it.
> >
> > 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:
> > [image: image.png]
> > Here's the transaction journal view, notice there's only one entry here
> (I
> > left the previous and next visible so you can see that :) Again, all
> those
> > greyed out account numbers are identical:
> > [image: image.png]
> > Did I do something wrong in the export, or in the import?
> > I'd prefer to get this right from the start, there are quite a few years
> > of data, and fixing this up by hand over all the accounts would be a
> > frustratingly major undertaking.
> >
> > Any suggestions gratefully received,
> > Cheers,
> > Simon
> >
> > --
> > Simon Roberts
> > 303 249 3613
> > https://www.youtube.com/@DancingCloudServices
> > https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonhgroberts/
> >
> >
>
> --
> Simon Roberts
> 303 249 3613
> https://www.youtube.com/@DancingCloudServices
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonhgroberts/
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-- 
David Carlson