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file formatsfile formatsPosted Jan 13, 2009 20:14 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)Parent article: The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update
in practice, most banks have a way to export files into comma delimited files that can be read by quicken, so if you can find out how to get that from your bank you should be in fairly good shape. they also will output quicken and microsoft money formated files directly (these files are a proprietary format, but they have been reverse engineered long ago)
the other option is that most banks have a XML interface to allow software to query your account (you have to trust your software with your banking credentials), the interface even has public documentation (search for OFX)
how you find this information for your bank is the problem, but it's not quite as bad as you indicate
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file formats Posted Jan 13, 2009 20:17 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] You misunderstood. Importing data from banks is relatively easily done; tools like GnuCash (and many others) handle it nicely. They do a better job of it than QuickBooks does. But those are not the formats expected by the tax preparation tools used by professional accountants. That is where the problem lies. It's an export problem, not an import problem.
file formats Posted Jan 13, 2009 20:37 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
hmm, I'm a bit surprised at this. I would have thought that that software would be able to read the quicken files (if nothing else), and if it's been reverse engineered enough to read the files it should be able to create suitable files as well.
besides being a good idea for compatibility, it would also be a good idea in terms of avoiding product lock-in (since almost everything can import your data from quicken, being able to export to quicken would let you migrate your data from one package to another)
if nothing else, this would let you use the open software for your day-to-day activities and then export to quickbooks for the tax stuff (yes you end up dealing with the proprietary software, but you are able to avoid it's limitations most of the time)
file formats Posted Jan 15, 2009 22:35 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I would have thought that that software would be able to read the quicken files Quicken files such as you would use to import bank account information from your bank to Quicken do not carry the same kind of information that your accountant needs to determine how much tax your business owes. So I don't think this format has any bearing on the difficulty in substituting another bookkeeping program for Quickbooks.
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