Let us say you are trying to migrate to another accounting and bookkeeping software. That software requires either a CSV file or a QIF file for importing. In this tutorial, we will see how to create a CSV file of all the transactions in GnuCash:
- Prerequisites: Make a backup of your accounts data file first.
- From the menu, select Reports | Transaction Report. Open the Report Options dialog and unselect Totals, Subtotals, Account Name, and Secondary Keys, leaving only the main headers other than the transactions. The Transaction Report will now appear as shown in the following screenshot:
- From the menu, select File | Export | Export Report to export that report as an HTML file.
- Open this HTML file in your favorite spreadsheet program.
- Delete all the header rows, leaving only the transaction data. Select the amount column. Change the format so that the 1000 separator comma is removed. Save this file first in the spreadsheet format. Then, save the same spreadsheet as a CSV file.
You may find that you want to export data from GnuCash for a variety of reasons:
- You have to send accounting data to your accountant. However, your accountant doesn't use GnuCash. In the chapter on reports earlier, we showed you how to create a report and export it to a spreadsheet to send to your accountant.
- Another important use for data export is in TXF Export for creating tax schedules for enclosing with your Income Tax returns to the IRS. We have covered those already in an earlier chapter.
- You want to start again from scratch but want to keep the same account hierarchy without any of the transactions. You can do this by selecting from the menu File | Export | Export Accounts. This will export only the account hierarchy into a separate file.
Let us look at migrating from GnuCash to another accounting software in greater detail in the next section.
You may want to migrate from GnuCash to another accounting package for a variety of reasons:
- You are not happy with the features, or the lack thereof, of GnuCash. This is understandable. As we said earlier, GnuCash doesn't have a payroll module, it doesn't have an inventory module or Point of Sale (POS) capability or integration. Also, GnuCash is not a multi-user software. If you need any of these features, you are better off looking for something else.
- You have outgrown GnuCash. Congratulations! Hopefully GnuCash was helpful in some little way to help your business grow. As we said earlier, GnuCash is suitable only for small businesses. If you have outgrown that, naturally, you should look for a suitable bookkeeping and accounting software that can handle the needs of your current and future needs.
There are two ways to get all of the data out of GnuCash for migration:
- As we showed in the tutorial, you can create a Transaction Report covering all the transactions in GnuCash and then save it to a spreadsheet and from there to a CSV file.
- Alternatively, GnuCash to QIF (http://gnucashtoqif.sourceforge.net/) is an open source project that takes the GnuCash account file and converts it to a QIF file. Remember to save the GnuCash accounts file without compressing it, before running this program. This can be done from the menu Edit | Preferences | General tab, Files pane, and uncheck Compress Files.
- How do you create a Transaction Report with all of the transactions, after selecting all the Accounts and Subaccounts in the Accounts tab of the Report Options dialog?
a. In the Report Options dialog, in the General tab, select All.
b. In the Report Options dialog, in the Display tab, select All.
c. In the Report Options dialog, in the General tab, select Start Date to be the same as your earliest transaction or earlier and the End Date to be the same as your last transaction or later.
d. In the Report Options dialog, in the Sorting tab, select All.