First of all, thanks for creating Manager. It looks like a great program. I’m testing it right now and am trying to figure out importing bank statements.
I can get a CSV from the bank which I can convert to QIF without too much difficulty.
First attempt: It worked and I thought all was well, but then I realized I forgot to remove commas from the bank’s Description field, so the exported CSV didn’t convert cleanly to QIF. (The spreadsheet app figures out which commas are delimiters and which are plain punctuation). As a result some original import file entries (here supposing there was a comma after “Jones”) look like this (malformed example, substituting fake info):
D7/21/2024
T M.D. JPM99ao5khud"
P"Zelle payment to Dr. Bill Jones
M-$30.00
N$42556.34
^
… when they should look like (corrected example):
D7/21/2024
T-$30.00
PZelle payment to Dr. Bill Jones MD JPM99ao5khud
MCHASE_TO_PARTNERFI
^
In Manager’s Payments, this entry should appear in the table like:
Date | Paid from | Description | Payee | Amount
2024-07-21 | Chase 5555 | Zelle payment to Dr. Bill Jones MD JPM99ao5khud CHASE_TO_PARTNERFI | | $ 30.00
(Manager combines [P]ayee and [M]emo fields into its Description field, and leaves its own Payee field blank. This is ok for my purposes.)
The malformed entries cannot be found via a search.
Second attempt: I culled all the entries with commas in their Description into its own spreadsheet, cleaned them up, export to CSV and convert to QIF. All the entries look correct now.
On import I’m told there are 11 duplicate entries. The number of Receipts and Payments from the first import plus the number of records in the second import is the same as the total number of entries in the original spreadsheet. So why/how are 11 (considered) duplicate? I look through the spreadsheet that produced this second import and try to find an obvious 11. I have groups of 12s and 13s, but no 11s.
I don’t finish the import just yet (thank you for the preview step!).
I take about 13 entries from the second import file and make it its own file. The import process tells me there is one duplicate. I narrow it down to a certain transaction. Only this transaction triggers the duplicate detector. The other entries are clean.
Go back to the second import file and pull out all the entries like the one that got flagged and test just those. Now I have found eight of 11 entries that are flagged as duplicate. Progress!
Then on an file of 12 of these entries, there is one duplicate. Split the file in two. The first half has one duplicate. I check the second half and it has… also one duplicate. I check the original file again and it has… only one duplicate. Are there two duplicates or one?
I go back to the first spreadsheet and clean everything up from the start: removing commas, extra spaces and periods for good measure (Manager seems to remove extra spaces on import anyways which I think is great). Export to CSV, convert to QIF. Import into a test Business with test Bank Account. The correct number of records and correct total amount is shown.
I guess my question comes down to this: should I trust the first import and try to add the missing entries (about a third of the total number)? Or just delete the current Bank Account and its Receipts and Payments and start over from a clean base? Fortunately I haven’t done too much work on the first import’s entries. What really happens on the backend if you try to import a QIF with entries messed up as in my example?
