[Kmymoney] importing Quicken3 into KMyMoney 4.7.1

[Faz]

Hi all

Also noticed something else while trying to migrate my Quicken3 data to
KMM, that I thought to share too.

I'm sorry this is long...The upshot here is - I think the application of FX
rates should be restricted only to the parts of a split that really cross
currency boundaries.
(i.e. I think splits for bank charges for card purchases that always stay
in the bank account currency,  should not even be editable (or visible?) in
the register entry of the destination cash account.)

The longer version (a couple of days already gone for me!):

In quicken3 I can record a (foreign currency) cash withdrawal (from a bank
account in my home country/currency) made abroad (eg using an ATM while on
holiday), the following happens:

My bank statement includes one part that has an FX rate (on the cash I drew
out) and other parts (the charges, in home currency) that have no FX rate.

I can make a split entry in the bank-account register, which includes one
split that is a transfer into a cash account I have already setup (in the
foreign currency in question).

Then in my case there are actually *two* other split-elements:
- one is a standard debit card charge (just for the audacity of travelling
abroad and using the bank's card !), and
- one is a foreign-currency-amount-related charge, eg might be a percentage
of the transferred amount with an upper limit etc.

So in quicken these two charges stay in my home currency and no fx rate is
applied (nor needed).
An FX rate is only needed for the split element representing the amount of
foreign cash I drew out of the hole in the wall.
Quicken effectively asks for this fx rate (actually: asks exactly how much
the transferred amount becomes in the destination currency) when the
transaction is committed into the bank account register.

I find this sensible.

Then recently I was surprised by two things in KMM, after trying to import
these accounts from Quicken3.

*First*, in KMM (you can right click the bank register entry and '*go to*'
the cash account register, where..) surprisingly in the destination cash
account register you can see *all three* split entries.  Even though the
two card-related charges are administrative charges 'back at home'.

*Secondly*, the FX rate used/applied to the amount pulled out of the wall,
to calculate one of the split elements, is *also applied* to the other two
elements as well.

Now I find this problematic because when I import this transfer over into
KMM there is no FX rate stored in the record, so KMM is using some default
FX rate.
Then when I try to find these FX-impacted transfers and *correct the FX
rate* manually, my new rate is applied not only to the money pulled out of
the wall, but also affects the charges applied in the home currency too.
That then breaks the total of the transaction and I'm stuck in a fiddly
recursive 'newton-raphson style' manual iteration loop that gets quickly
tedious.

Anyhooo if someone has familiarity with this area and wants to get in touch
I'd be glad to get any helpful feedback.

Kindest regards
Faz




On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Thomas Baumgart <thb at net-bembel.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> some information about Quicken import I received as PM and might be
> interesting for others as well.
>
> Regards
>
> Thomas
>
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
>
> Subject: importing Quicken3 into KMyMoney 4.7.1
> Date: Wednesday 26 November 2014, 00:48:33
> From: Faz
> To: ipwizard at users.sourceforge.net
>
> Hi Thomas
>
> Been trying to import a couple decades of "Quicken3 for Windows" QIF
> exported data into KMyMoney v4.7.1
>
> Your help doc on
> http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/online-manual/details.impexp.qifimp.html
> is very useful.
>
> You might be surprised how many people stayed with Quicken3 - it basically
> did what I needed so I never upgraded.
>
> Here's a tip that may be worth adding on that page:
>
> Quicken3 spits out ^^ on a record separator line but KMyMoney is expecting
> a single ^ .
>
> I just use a Textpad regexp search / replace on the QIF file like this:
>
> Search for: ^^^$
> Replace with: ^
>
> You could stick with awk as in the existing filter example. I guess it
> would be a one liner like this:
>
> /^^^$/ { print "^" }
>
> (Not sure if the carets in the search expression need escaping though - I
> don't have a linux box to try it with - sorry!)
>
> In anycase I'll see how far I get and maybe I'll have more experience to
> share with you on importing Quicken3 into KMyMoney 4.7.1!
>
> The double ^^ issue was a major hurdle before I could get any progress with
> imports.
>
> Best wishes
> Fazl
> -----------------------------------------
> --
>
> Regards
>
> Thomas Baumgart
>
> GPG-FP: E55E D592 F45F 116B 8429   4F99 9C59 DB40 B75D D3BA
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
>  (Punch, 1855)
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
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