On Sep 4, 2013, at 9:13 AM, Derek Atkins <de...@ihtfp.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, September 4, 2013 12:01 pm, Ngewi Fet wrote: >> On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Derek Atkins <warl...@mit.edu> wrote: >> >>> John Ralls <jra...@ceridwen.us> writes: >>> >>>> On Sep 4, 2013, at 7:04 AM, Derek Atkins <warl...@mit.edu> wrote: >>> >>> >>> The importer does map the OFX Account ID to the GNC Account, but it does >>> not expect the OFX Account ID to be the GNC Account GUID so it doesn't >>> shortcut the manual mapping involved. >>> >>> >> Ah, in that case, there is not much I can do then. I thought (and the >> general user expectation is) that the GNC OFX importer shortcuts the >> mappings. >> Meaning that when it sees a transaction with same account ID, it >> automatically imports and assigns. If the users have to select the account >> every time, then it is very cumbersome. >> >> So if I understand right, the OFX file is treated as coming from one >> account and all to go into one account? >> The OFX standard has account information for each transaction, however. > > No, the OFX file is treated as coming from one account and going to one or > more accounts (each transaction goes from the main OFX-file account to > some other account). However AFAIK the importer does not expect the OFX > file to contain GNC Account GUIDs. The OFX account IDs are treated as > opaque strings and the user still needs to manually map the accounts. > > This is yet another reason QIF is better for your purpose. If you specify > a QIF Category of e.g. Expenses:Groceries then the default would be to map > that to a GNC Account of the same name, so the right thing would happen. > > >>>> Ngewi, the problem may be because some users are trying to use OFX >>>> both to obtain transactions from GCfA and from their banks, and if the >>>> two don't use the same number, the user must re-associate every >>>> time. I'm speculating, but it may be that the importer can store only >>>> one OFX mapping per account. >>> >>> This is true, too. If you are importing OFX for GNC account A from your >>> bank and also from the Android App, GnuCash can only store a single OFX >>> AccountID map for the account. So it will overwrite the mapping every >>> time you swap. >>> >> >> Yes that would indeed be a problem, especially since the importer does not >> expect GCfA to have the same account IDs as GC. >> So it probably doesn't attempt any matching. >> >> This means that there is actually no easy way to import transactions into >> GnuCash (at least full multi-account transactions) from the Android app. >> Because even if I implement exporting GnuCash XML, even those cannot be >> imported into an existing GC file. >> From what I've read of QIF, it is not worth looking at, and OFX is not >> cutting it for automatic transaction-to-account mapping. > > Why do you think QIF is not worth looking at? What have you read, and > where? If you already know the GNC Account names (which you do if the > user does an import into your app) then you can make a QIF file that would > import extremely easily with very little user intervention back into the > main set of accounts. The only downside of QIF is the lack of > duplicate-import detection. This means if a user tries to import the same > data multiple times then they would wind up with multiple transactions in > their books, unless they manually tell the importer that they are > duplicates. > >> Hmmm... >> >> Right now I am thinking of implementing GnuCash XML export (in pure Java, >> not using the C API). Basic features/transactions should be easy to do. >> - Upside is that users could open up the file in GC and change stuff (and >> maybe in the future reload the file in GCfA). >> - Downside is that users cannot integrate this directly into their >> existing >> finance "books". They will have to maintain 2 GC files then. >> >> It still wouldn't be as seamless as I'd like, but it is a start. >> What do you guys think of this? > > I think it's a horrible idea. What's the point of maintaining a second > set of books? If you do this there is even LESS of a chance of merging > the data, and frankly I wouldn't use an app that wouldn't let me pull my > transactions back into my main data file. > > I'd rather see you implement QIF, or let's come up with a better way to > synchronize with the app. > >> Anyways, thanks for your responses everyone. >>
Ngewi, I agree with Derek that trying to maintain two separate account files isn't a good option. Don't forget that you don't have to live with the defects of the GC importers: If you want the OFX importer to track two account numbers, or to check if an account number matches an account's GUID, fix it so that it does. Regards, John Ralls _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
