{"id":506,"date":"2011-08-03T07:10:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T14:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=506"},"modified":"2011-08-02T23:17:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T06:17:00","slug":"the-road-away-from-quicken-part-three-importing-data-into-ibank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/03\/the-road-away-from-quicken-part-three-importing-data-into-ibank\/","title":{"rendered":"the road away from Quicken, part three: importing data into iBank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is part three of an ongoing series about trying to move away from Quicken 2007 for Mac. \u00a0The previous two parts of the series are here:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a title=\"the road away from Quicken (part 1)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/13\/the-road-away-from-quicken-part-1\/\">part one: my needs for financial software<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<li><em><a title=\"the road away from Quicken, part 2: thoughts on data\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/27\/the-road-away-from-quicken-part-2-thoughts-on-data\/\">part two: thoughts about my financial data<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I maintain two separate Quicken accounts: one with my personal data, and one with my household data. \u00a0The household data is the smaller dataset of the two, so I&#8217;m using that as my test case for importing into potential Quicken replacements.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/ibankimporter1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-509\" title=\"ibankimporter1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/ibankimporter1-300x189.jpg\" alt=\"iBank importer: choose file to import\" width=\"300\" height=\"189\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/ibankimporter1-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/ibankimporter1.jpg 638w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B003WT1KAK\/littlebluewor-20\">iBank<\/a> has a 30-day free trial available on its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iggsoftware.com\/ibank\/index.php\">website<\/a>, so I downloaded and installed it. \u00a0On first launch, it detected that I didn&#8217;t already have a data file, and gave me the opportunity to import my data file from Quicken. \u00a0I didn&#8217;t expect that I&#8217;d have explicitly export my Quicken data into a QIF. \u00a0Exporting to a QIF took a few minutes, and resulted in a 360-KB QIF file.\u00a0 Then I dragged the file into the iBank importer, which (oddly) gave me a teensy preview of the file.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not quite sure what the point of this preview is.<\/p>\n<p>After selecting my QIF for import, I was then prompted to save my document.\u00a0 I was surprised that I was expected to decide the filename here, and not entirely sure what &#8220;document&#8221; means.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been using Quicken since the dawn of time or thereabouts, so I&#8217;m not used to thinking about how it stores its data. \u00a0I&#8217;m not sure what lies behind the design decision to force the user to think about both the name and location of their datafile.\u00a0 Shouldn&#8217;t they at least provide a reasonable default?<\/p>\n<p>After going through the last question of currency, it started importing.\u00a0 iBank showed a determinate progress indicator, but didn&#8217;t give me an estimate of how long it would take. \u00a0My file took about a minute to import.<\/p>\n<p>After importing, I was given a list of my accounts and account types, and asked to choose the most appropriate type for each account listed below.\u00a0 It noted that iBank supports more account types than QIF<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-506-1' id='fnref-506-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(506)'>1<\/a><\/sup>, but didn&#8217;t give any guidance as to why I might want to select a different type of account.\u00a0 For example, my mortgage imported as the &#8220;liability&#8221; account type, and iBank has both &#8220;liability&#8221; and &#8220;loan&#8221;.\u00a0 Why would I choose one over the other?\u00a0 Can I change this later?\u00a0 This drove me to check the &#8220;Quick Start Guide&#8221;, which didn&#8217;t help, so I had to go grab the full manual.\u00a0 There, I learned that a loan has a payment schedule and a liability doesn&#8217;t.\u00a0 So I changed the account type for my mortgage to loan, and also changed a couple of accounts from chequing to savings, and left the others unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, I was out of time, so I quit iBank for the evening.\u00a0 Overnight, I realized that my account data isn&#8217;t the only data that I&#8217;ve got in Quicken, and wrote that <a title=\"the road away from Quicken, part 2: thoughts on data\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/27\/the-road-away-from-quicken-part-2-thoughts-on-data\/\">blog post<\/a>. \u00a0As I was writing it, I opened iBank quickly to make sure that I had a couple of details right, and was surprised to see that iBank prompted me with the &#8220;Welcome to iBank&#8221; screen that I got on my first run.\u00a0 On doing some research, I discovered that it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.iggsoft.com\/viewtopic.php?f=34&amp;t=25464&amp;p=78610&amp;hilit=document#p78610\">a known bug with a workaround<\/a>.\u00a0 Additionally, I noticed that iBank wasn&#8217;t saving my window size and location information.\u00a0 That was pretty annoying.\u00a0 The workaround that seems to have resolved the document-prompt issue also seems to have addressed this issue. \u00a0 While I&#8217;m glad that it&#8217;s a known issue with a workaround, it undermines my confidence in the application to hit such a bug first thing out of the gate.<\/p>\n<p>My confidence is shaken, but still I&#8217;ll soldier on.\u00a0 Now that I&#8217;ve gotten my transaction data into iBank, the next step is to try to actually use it. \u00a0Wish me luck &#8230;<\/p>\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-506'>\n<div class='footnotedivider'><\/div>\n<ol>\n<li id='fn-506-1'> But not Quicken? I&#8217;m not sure what it means here, or why it would draw a distinction between Quicken and QIF. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-506-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is part three of an ongoing series about trying to move away from Quicken 2007 for Mac. \u00a0The previous two parts of the series are here: part one: my needs for financial software part two: thoughts about my financial data As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I maintain two separate Quicken accounts: one with my personal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/03\/the-road-away-from-quicken-part-three-importing-data-into-ibank\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">the road away from Quicken, part three: importing data into iBank<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadyne","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}