How to reset Income/Excpense account dates globally?

[Peter J. Farley III]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Baumgart [mailto:thb at net-bembel.de]
> Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2016 6:46 AM
> To: Peter J. Farley III
> Cc: kmymoney at kde.org
> Subject: Re: How to reset Income/Excpense account dates globally?
> 
> Hi Peter
> 
> On Sunday 11 December 2016 14:28:13 Peter J. Farley III wrote:
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I was able to import all my checking account transactions with
> > categories into kMyMoney nicely, but all of the Income/Expense
> > accounts that I added myself before the import were dated 1/1/2016
> > instead of the default date of 1/1/1900.  When I saved my file all the
> > transactions dated prior to 1/1/2016 that had one of the categories
> > that I added myself were flagged as inconsistent.
> >
> > I did not realize that the date field in the Add Category screen had
> > any significance, which is why I did not change the date field at the
> > time I added them.
> >
> > Is there a way to globally reset all Income/Expense category dates to
> > the default date of 1/1/1900?  Or do I have to go to each one I added
> > individually to change the dates?  I want to import my other accounts
> > as well (Savings, Credit Cards, etc.) and I don’t want the category
> > dates affecting them too.
> 
> sorry that it took some time to find an answer which starts with a
> question from my end: which version of KMyMoney are you using?  
> The code base contains the feature you are looking for since May 2015 
> where all category accounts opening date is changed to 1900-01-01 
> during the save operation. I am pretty sure that this is part of KMyMoney 
>4.8.0 and later.
> 
> So from what you explain, it looks like you are using an older version
> than that. Or there is something else which would be strange.
> 
> Hope that helps. If an upgrade to 4.8.0 does not help or you already
> have that version, please get back to us.

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for getting back to me.  I am running V4.7.2 of kMyMoney from a download dated on my system as 7/20/2015 (kmymoney-x86-setup-4.7.2.exe).  I have not yet tried this under V4.8.0.

I have been importing and deleting about 1300 checking account transactions as I adjust the categories that I want them assigned to (I am programmatically pre-assigning categories in a CSV import file).  I delete all payees and all transactions between each pass.  When I finish the import and then Save is when the "consistency checks" error messages appear, saying that the starting date for some of the categories is after the date of the earliest transaction assigned to that category.  It also says it automatically fixed the category date in each case.

I then decided that I wanted a shorter list of categories, so after deleting all payees and transactions again I then deleted all categories and started over with the detailed account template and added a few more groups (Housing, Schedule A) and then added a few custom categories of my own.  For the custom categories that I added manually I did set the start date to the opening date of the account I am loading, but I didn't set any dates on the system-provided categories that I imported.  I *think* I saved after setting up my new account template; I should have, but I can’t be positive that I did.

I will restart the process again from scratch (empty account template, no payees or transactions) and log what happens at each step and report my results as soon as I can.

Some RL events and duties will likely prevent me from getting back to this exercise right away, so it may be a few days or more before I can report back, possibly not until after Christmas.

BTW, is it possible to actually import an entire externally-modified account template (a *.kmt file) into a new, completely empty kMyMoney file which has no categories defined at all?  If so, what date would be assigned to those imported categories?

Regards,

Peter