Improve the csv import

[Maxime DOYEN]

Please improve the cvs import part to let the user link its csv column to a homebank field.

[Matthias Mailänder (mailaender)]

Could this be added via a plugin? I offer my help if I get some mentoring.

[Matthias Mailänder (mailaender)]

Is this hard to implent? Where could it be added?

[Tomas Pytelka (tom-lightcomp)]

Yes, I also miss possibility to change import csv format or possibility to write my own import plugin. It would be nice to directly import electronic bank listing, which bank monthly send me by e-mail.

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

Every country and even every bank has different standards for exporting financial information to its customers through the csv-format. I have 2 bankingaccounts with two different banks. They have both also different csv-standards for exporting financial information.
Result: I have to export the financial information into a csv-file from the bank. Open it in open office, change it to the homebank standard and import it as a csv-file into homebank. This takes a lot of time. I want to import every momth the bank information into homebank.
Is it possible to create a flexible form of importing csv-file through for example a csv-definition file or a plugin structure. Everybody can define fo its self a specific csv-format and stil have a fast and reliable import functione on homebank.

Let me know if its a reasonable wish
Greatings from the Netherlands,

Geert Jan

[Matthias Mailänder (mailaender)]

Mozilla Thunderbird Address Book has a very clever CSV-import.

[Ton (profiler1234)]

To be able to facilitate all possible csv formats, I think it will be to complex to do without a definition file per Bank-export-format (also mentioned by Geert Jan).
There is the problem of date-format, amount-format (grouping and decimal point) and "extra" build-in data concerning paymode translation and multiple accounts in a single Bank-export-file. Not including this extra data is a waste, because it is very useful within any bookkeeping program.
For private use I have written such a "universal converter" in python as well as dedicated ones for 4 different banks, and came across all these problems. It works fine for the banks (formats) that I use, but there always will be formats that fail even with the most elaborate script.
So how universal can it really be ?

greetings Ton

[Geert Jan (geertjan-projects-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Hello Ton,

So if I understand right it is to complex to do even with a definition file?
Could you please send me the python script.
So I can moderate it for my situation.

Greetings Geert Jan

[Ton (profiler1234)]

Hi Gert Jan,

No it is not. The scope of a "universal" converter is hard to oversee, for the mere freedom in the use of CSV file formats, and makes it very complex(read difficult) to accommodate all possible formats. But my personal simple attempt to create one can be found at:
<https://github.com/profiler/HB_Convert>

greetings Ton

[Alexander (istrasoft)]

I wrote a simple PHP page to convert the proprietary CSV formats of the several banks I use into QIF, and it's quite easy since all you basically need is a set of regexps because some banks are really weird (one uses a pipe character as separator in their CSV format).

This way you could easily allow everyone to compile a textfile of correspondances between CSV fields and homebank fields.

[Evan Derickson (derickson-e)]

I think that the best solution to this would be an interactive import wizard like LibreOffice Calc has. The user would select which separator and decimal symbol to use, and preview the results before importing.