You can not directly use data that has been created by other personal accounting applications in Grisbi, and vice versa. Because these applications work differently, their data is structured differently, so you need to convert their data structure before you can use it.
This conversion can not be done at once on all data, but must be done separately for each account managed by the application. To convert each of these accounts, you must first export them from the original application and then import them into the destination application.
Warning : do not confuse the accounts file which contains all the data of all the accounts created for the management of an accounting entity (in Grisbi, this file has the extension .gsb), and the account files, which are files that contain only data from one account at a time, and created only to export or import that data from one accounting application to another. These account files must have a file format (or extension) that must be compatible with the original application AND the destination application.
Grisbi currently supports Gnucash, OFX, CSV and QIF personal accounting data formats.
If you want to use account data that has been created in another accounting application in Grisbi, you must first export each of the accounts of this application individually to a set of files, then import these same files into Grisbi.
The first step is, in the originating personal accounting application, to export each account in a file in the chosen format. The chosen format must be compatible with the export formats supported by the original application and compatible with import to Grisbi.
The export procedure is obviously different for each accounting application, so refer to its documentation. If you want to export all accounts, you will need to get as many files as you have accounts managed by the application.
Note : Grisbi allows you to import one or more account files in one operation. Although you can import the account files one by one, it is important to import all the account files at the same time, so that Grisbi can recreate the links between the accounts, especially with regard to the transfer operations.
For more information on the account types that Grisbi can manage, see the 7.7, Grisbi account types section.
You can define which date will be used for assigning a financial year to each imported operation, see 22.1.3, Definition of Financial Year.
When you import a file, Grisbi allows you to establish an association between a string of characters in this file and a payee. For example, all labels containing rent may be associated with a payee that represents your landlord. This must be configured in the Edit - Preferences menu (see the 22.1.4, Associations for Import section).
In the Grisbi File menu, choose the option Import file… , which opens the import wizard window. The import of the account files takes place in five steps :
Figure 5.1: Setting up each imported account
If, and only if you have created your account file just before this account data import, return to the end of the 3.3, Creating a New Account File. Go directly to the end of the account file creation process, at the paragraph beginning with In one way or another… , which will prompt you to create other accounts right away.
Otherwise, you can start using the account you just created.
If you want to use account data created by Grisbi in another accounting application, you must first export this data to files and then import them into the other application using these files. The file format chosen must be compatible with the export by Grisbi and compatible with the import by the destination application.
In the File menu select the Export accounts as QIF/CSV file… that opens the Export Accounts Wizard. There are four steps to exporting accounts:
Figure 5.2: Acount export
Warning: in general, it is inadvisable to have accents or spaces in the names of directories and files used by Grisbi. If so, rename them now. For example, spaces can be replaced by underscores (_).