More pdf2kmymoney

[pjfarley3 at earthlink.net]

Aaron,

 

In my experience pdftotext does not “overflow lines”.  That is probably “extra information” (i.e., “Memo” field data) related to the transaction on the previous line.  That is quite common in bank statements.  You have to expect such lines and be prepared to attach them  to the prior transaction.   I do it as the “Memo” field in my output.

 

And no, there is no “automatic” way to turn it into a csv file.  Every bank’s statements are unique to that bank, so there is no “common format” for a software company or enterprising independent programmer looking for work to use as the model of how to do it.  *You* have to write the code to do that for *your* particular bank’s statement format, using the text scripting language of your choice.  As I said previously, I used gawk and then miller languages for my needs.  Some would recommend the use of the perl language, which I never got around to learning but which certainly has a lot going for it.

 

You could also think about paying a programmer currently out of work to write this stuff for you, but in order to test the new software they would write for you properly, you would have to trust them with copies of your highly personal financial information to make that work.

 

Converting a bank’s PDF statement to CSV data for KMM (or any other money management software) is NOT something that the “low tech user” can do by themselves.  You need to be (or hire) a programmer with a fair amount of experience to accomplish this task.  “Just out of school” programmers won’t get the job done right, or even necessarily at all.  It is definitely NOT a trivial task.

 

Peter

 

From: KMyMoney <kmymoney-bounces at kde.org> On Behalf Of Aaron Mehl
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2020 6:22 AM
To: KMyMoney Users' Mailing List <kmymoney at kde.org>
Subject: More pdf2kmymoney

 

I need a little help,

I tried the different ideas for moving pdf to kmymoney.

 

Okular - I used the table select, but couldn't figure out how to export csv. Plus I want something more automatic, if possible

 

pdftotext - produced a nice text file, but since the columns were separated, by commas and the dates also use commas I need to get the columns separated by tabs? Also I found that in the final text file there was extra rows that was overflow from the same column but the row above.

 

I want to come up with a way to get the file as clean as I can before importing it into KMyMoney. I am not sure what strategy to use to do this. I am writing directions for users with that get their bank statements as pdfs. I am assuming low tech users as my base line. These are people who I gather wouldn't know regular expressions etc.

Also once my text file is in the correct format is there an automatic way to turn it into csv?

 

If anyone can float a few ideas of how to clean up these files, I would most appreciate  it,

Thanks,

Aaron

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