On Jul 10, 2012, at 3:31 AM, Ngewi Fet wrote: > Thanks for the clarifications Dave. > > On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 6:12 AM, David Reiser <dbrei...@me.com> wrote: > >> >> On Jul 9, 2012, at 6:02 PM, Ngewi Fet wrote: >> >> Hello everyone, >> I have a question about OFX which I am implementing for Gnucash Mobile for >> Android and >> I need help from anyone more experienced with OFX. >> >> >> I'm not sure it matters to gnucash, but your <ACCTTYPE> tags are >> misspelled. >> > > Will fix. > > >> >> >> I export the transactions from the app as bank statement transactions. In >> OFX, this means the >> accounts which the user creates in the app are treated as bank accounts. >> Bank accounts >> do not have any names defined in the OFX schema, only bank ID and account >> ID. Gnucash on >> the other hand supports descriptive account names and so forth. I also see >> that there are "Cash Accounts" in Gnucash, >> but I cannot find any analogous accounts in the OFX standard. Am I missing >> something here? >> >> >> You're not missing anything. Outside of the investment account handling, >> OFX has no concept of cash accounts. There are cash withdrawals, ATM >> deposits and withdrawals, Point Of Sale debits and credits, and general >> debits and credits. OFX is constructed from the viewpoint of a customer's >> interactions with various accounts at a financial institution. So money >> either enters or leaves a given account. Gnucash has a means to let you >> specify the gnucash account that is the second split of the transaction >> reported by the bank in the OFX file, but OFX doesn't handle double entry >> transactions internally. OFX also doesn't handle split transactions at all. >> > > Ok. Good to know. > > >> >> >> When importing the OFX file with transactions into Gnucash, it always asks >> you to create a new account >> into which to import the transactions. It correctly identifies that there >> are multiple accounts and requires you to create an account in Gnucash >> (or select an existing one) into which to import the transactions from the >> account for each of the accounts from the file. >> Ideally, I would like Gnucash to simply create the corresponding new >> accounts to those defined the exported OFX and import the transactions for >> each of the accounts accordingly. Is this possible? >> >> >> I don't think it is possible the way you describe it. Will any new account >> always be created at the root level of your gnucash account hierarchy? If >> not, will they always have the same parent at some other point in the tree? >> (seems unlikely to me that such an assumption would please many users). In >> any event, doing automatic account creation would require a change to >> gnucash itself. >> > > I was thinking more of like the accounts are created at the root level. > Subsequent imports will realize that the account has the same ID and then > just import the transactions directly into that account. > But now that you mention it, I am beginning to think many-a-user will not > be happy about this. Maybe I'll just let the user specify where to put the > transactions. > It will be less automatic than I hoped, but gives more control to the user. > > >> >> Does anyone know how I can best export OFX so that Gnucash automatically >> picks up both >> the accounts and the transactions within those accounts? Thanks. >> >> >> One of the problems is that OFX's notion of accounts does not include the >> concept of another account being the other half of a double entry system. >> To OFX, there is only one account at a time, and one or more transactions >> affecting that account. Transfers affect two OFX accounts at a time, but I >> don't think you want to make every transaction a transfer. >> >> >> Attached is a sample file produced by the OFX exporter at the moment. >> >> Cheers, >> Ngewi >> <20120709_2221_gnucash_all.ofx> >> _______________________________________________ >> gnucash-devel mailing list >> gnucash-devel@gnucash.org >> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel >> >> >> One other thing to consider is that once you've assigned an FITID, a >> gnucash user won't be able to use a download from their bank to >> clear/reconcile transactions in the desktop file. Since an FITID exists, >> and download from a bank results in those transactions being duplicated in >> gnucash because they'll certainly have different FITIDs from the bank than >> they will from your app. >> > > So will it be better if I eliminate the transaction IDs (FITID) in order to > allow for reconciling transactions in Gnucash with other external accounts? > This will make the OFX produced invalid, though, as I think an FITID tag is > required. > I guess the bigger question is how many people will use it like this, so > the decision becomes a trade-off between validity and practicality.
I don't think the importer will accept transactions without an FITID. You'll have to try it, but I think libofx eliminates both unknown tags and invalid transactions. > > >> >> Dave >> -- >> Dave Reiser >> dbrei...@me.com >> >> >> > Cheers, > Ngewi > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-devel mailing list > gnucash-devel@gnucash.org > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
