Oct. 2, 1993 (Braves win - Giants win - Still tied - When will it end!)
This is a quick description of my D&S to QIF program to help you get started...
From the outset let me tell you that all of this stuff is very dirty and requires alot of work on your part to clean up. Still, I found this little gem indispensible in helping me move 2 years worth of data from my Dollars and Sense account file to my new love, Quicken! I hope you find this helpful too.
Throughout this document I will assume that you a very familiar with the working of both D&S and Quicken; if you aren't then please refer to the respective manual for anything you don't understand.
Overview:
Both D&S and Quicken use a form of double entry accounting where an entry made into one account (paying account) is also registered in a distribution account (receiving account). Quicken is different in that it separates accounts (Checking account, Credit Card accounts, Asset accounts, etc.) from categories (things like Gas & Electric, Telephone, Cable TV, Auto Maintenance, etc.) It will be upto you to help Quicken out with this stuff after the conversion. Next, Quicken is sort of picky in how it imports QIF data. It only allows you to import data one account at a time, which means that you can't dump all of your transactions from D&S and simply import them into Quicken. Oh well! So let's get started...
Getting the Data Out of Dollars & Sense:
The easiest place to start is with your main money account (in my case it was my Checking account). This will probably be the account you use most often to pay balances on your other accounts.
Under the REPORT menu in D&S choose the TRANSACTION REPORT item. Select the account you want and enter the proper date range. Also, make sure to select STYLE: DETAILed and LIST BY: DATE. Most likely for this account you will also want to include all payments, purchases, fees and refunds (both cleared and uncleared). Once everything looks good then click OK and a nice detailed report will appear. Now under the FILE menu chose the EXPORT... item and thus save a D&S export version of this transaction report. (note: please use a fairly short and descriptive filename for these export files as it will help you keep track of what you are doing and the translation program will require that you type the filename in exactly. Short filenames are much easier to type that long ones!) This is the file that the D&S to QIF program will use as input. To save time repeat the above for all the accounts that you want. You really only need do to this for accounts that would truely be considered accounts in Quicken (Checking, Credit Cards, Loans, Assets, Investment accounts, etc.) Don't do this process for D&S accounts that would be considered categories in Quicken (Bank Fees, Housekeeper, Salary, Utilities, etc.). When you are done you will find an export file in your D&S folder for each account you want to move.
Export File Clean-Up:
Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and there is a little work to do on each of these files prior to translation. I suppose if I had more time and the inclination I would have had my program handle this appropriately but I didn't and I don't so there in lies the problem... Anyways, D&S outputs a nice header and footer with each Export file. It will be up to you to edit these headers and footers out of each export file prior to translation. Simply chose your favorite editor (TeachText works just great!) and select the header and hit delete or CLEAR under the EDIT menu. Do the same for the footer. Here is what a typical Header looks like:
Distribution Payment/ Purchase/
Date Number To/From Account Refund Fee C Flag P Descriptor Description
Funding account: MasterCard
And here is a typical Footer:
Grand Total of 104 transactions MasterCard 1,026.16 1,911.93
Net of 104 transactions MasterCard 885.77
Simply removes lines that look like this including any stray empty lines at the top or bottom and save the file. Do this for each file you exported and go onto the translation phase.
Translation:
I would put the D&S to QIF program in the same folder as the files you just exported, that way it will be easy to track the translation. Double click the D&S to QIF program icon to launch the program. It will immediately ask you to enter the filename of the file you want to translate. Enter it exactly and hit RETURN. Next, it will ask for the QIF header type (refer to the Quicken Online Help file for info about headers). Choose that one that is appropriate for the type of account you are translating (ie. Bank for your checking account or CCard for your Visa account). Hit RETURN and the program will go to work translating your file. The output will be your input filename with ".QIF" appended to the end. This is the file that can be imported into Quicken.
Importing Into Quicken 4.0 for Macintosh:
Now here comes the fun part and most of the work... Presumably you will basically be starting from scratch with Quicken. Again start with you most active paying account, Checking account. Create a Checking account as instructed to in the manual and open the Checking register. Don't enter a beginning balance until after the import. Next, choose IMPORT from the FILE menu and select the appropriate .QIF file that was created by the translator. You will see Quicken loading those transaction into your register. When it is done check the balance. It may just coincide with the balance you had in D&S but it probably (usually) won't because you probably had a beginning balance entered "way back when" you started using D&S. Anyways, I simply did the math to find out what Opening balance I'd need now to give me the current balance I have. Enter that number in the Opening balance entry now and give that transaction the date of oldest transaction now in your register. You have just created one (and the most important) account. As you scan through it you will see that everything should be there but all of the distribution accounts (a D&S term) are listed as categories. In fact now is a good time to view the categories window (select CATEGORIES under the VIEW menu). You will see your old familiar distribution accounts there mixed in with Quicken's pre-done categories.
At this point I suggest continuing on and creating all the accounts you want and them import them all as above. When you think you are pretty much done with all the accounts the we need to do alot of cleanup. Ok?
Quicken Clean-up:
We now need to do several things: 1) Rename items that are listed as categories to accounts, 2) Eliminate the problem of duplicate transactions resulting from cross account transfers, and 3) clean up the category list.
1&2) This part will take some time but luckily unlike D&S, Quicken includes a handy Search and Replace command. As you may know from looking at the category view, accounts are also listed there but they include square brackets "[ ]" around the name to distinguish them as accounts. Pretty much anything without square brackets is a category. If you look at your Checking register you will see that everything has been imported as a category. What needs to be done is to rename them as accounts. Here is an example: Every month you have transfered money from your checking account to your VISA account. You now need to find every occurance of "VISA Card " in the Category/Class item within your checking register and replace it with "[VISA Card]". This will then apply that money to the [VISA Card] account rather than that category. You will probably need to look in other accounts (depending on how you used D&S) and do the same. Once you have complete this you will can then delete the VISA Card category because that category is not necessary. Now when you open up the VISA account register you will see check payments made to this account repeated twice. One comes from the ACCOUNT [CHECKING] and the other comes from the CATEGORY CHECKING. You now need to delete the payments coming from the false category CHECKING. Once this is done everything should balance out! I hope that made sense!
You need to do this for each and every account (rename true account to actual accounts with "[]'s" and then eliminate payments or transfers made from a category. Please let me know if you need more information on doing this but this is the best way I can describe it. After you've done a few accounts, it will quickly become obvious what needs to be done and why.
3) This is the easy part. Simply sift throught the Categories view window and eliminate any bogus categories that are really accounts and delete any of Quicken's pre-done categories that you don't need because they duplicate categories that you bought over from D&S. Finally, check all account balances and you are ready to go.
I really hope that you find this useful, I did, and I couldn't have moved to Quicken without it. I have no plans to improve this program/procedure but I did include the "C" source code if you are so inclined. If you do make improvements in the program I would appreciate it if you would let me know what you did! You can always email me here on CIS. Thanks...
