[GNC] desparately seeking susan ... no, wait, that's wrong. desparately seeking docs. Yeah, that's it.

[Chris Miller]

Hi Folks, 

I have recently designed a spreadsheet to read the accounts list I get from QuickBooks, map the QuickBooks columns to GnuCash columns, and output a CSV for import. It works quite well. What I have learned is that account import is a rigid and brittle process; it will not accept much variability from the format of the same data as exported from GnuCash. As nearly as I can tell, it completely ignores the column headers, if it is told that they are there, and it cannot handle "tab separated values". None of this is a huge problem, since I can accommodate this rigidity. And, "forewarned is fore-armed", therefore I will simply assume that other imports are also going to be rigid, in spite of the rather elegant column mapper for transactions. "Transactions" looks like it's going to be dead simple. 

I am preparing to import "Customers and Vendors", "Bills and Invoices", and, of course, "Transactions". It is not clear how some of the QBK columns map to the GNC columns, although a lot of them are pretty self-evident. My imports are quite automatic, so I could easily "Guess and Check", since the cycles are pretty painless. For "Accounts", I was able to create some bogus accounts and see how they were represented on "export", which made it easy to map QBK columns to GNC columns. I don't seem to have that export option for any of the contact categories or trade account (A/R, A/P) categories, so I'm flying blind. 

Which raises the question, is there a place where the GNC columns are enumerated and described? I have looked at the various import procedures and I was able to gather what I believe is a comprehensive list of the GNC columns, but I would feel more secure if I could see these in a manual somewhere, with descriptions. Maybe there is even a QBK to GNC "cheat sheet" somewhere ... 

I also have a question about the referential integrity of the GNC data. For example, transactions usually have a "who", which would be a customer, vendor, or employee, in GNC parlance, ignoring that there are other relationships which don't fit these three, like Family, Gift recipients, Government, Partners, Benefactors/Patrons ... It there a "database" link that verifies that the "who" exists before the transaction is committed? What happens to historical data if one of these changes their name? Can I produce a report on a given vendor or customer that would work like a statement? Can I be sure that it includes all the transactions, meaning there is nothing sitting out in the periphery with a slightly misspelled "who"? Apparently Customer and Vendor reports center around trade accounts (A/R, A/P), and it is not yet clear to me what that means. 

These questions are best answered with reference to the documentation. I'm sure the answers already exist somewhere. 

Remember, I am a confused Quickbooks refugee, and I have been held captive there for thirty years, so I am looking to understand GNC in terms of Quickbooks. Be gentle. 

Thanks for the help, 
-- 
Chris. 

V:916.799.9461 
F:916.974.0428 
A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right.
    Q: > Why should I start my reply below the quoted text?