Quicken can't import transfer transactions from a QIF file

pls'

I have a damaged Quicken file that I am salvaging by moving transactions to a new file by exporting to qif and importing into the new file. This worked in early February.

Today I needed to copy another set of transactions and discovered that transfers cannot be imported. Non-transfer transactions import fine, but all transfers are silently dropped.

This is completely reproducible. I can create a new Quicken file, create two accounts, import the qif file exported from Quicken. All transfer transactions just disappear.

Is it just me, or are other seeing the same problem? I'm currently running R32.10.

Chris_QPW

Quicken doesn't do a good job of importing QIF files when it comes to transfers.
There are actually two "flows" for transfer QIF importing.
With and Without the "Special handling for transfers".

Or maybe I should say there use to be two flows, because with Quicken Subscription it always behaves as if this setting is on.

The first flow without that setting on would be leaving both sides of the transfer in and depend on matching to figure one what is a linked transfer.  Well Quicken's matching stinks especially when you are talking about transfers.  What's more it will prompt on every transfer and give very little information for you to figure out if the match is correct or not.

But as I said I have found that Quicken Subscription reacts as if the "Special handling..." is always on so it is a mute point for this use case.

What "Special handling of transfers" means is that it removes one side of the transfer, the "from side".  The assumption here is that you would be importing transactions from the accounts from both sides of that transfer.  And the "to" side of the transfer would provide the transfer transaction with [Other Account].  Obviously if you are importing just one account's data depending on if it is the "from" or "to" side it might be removed.  This is in fact why in some ways it is harder to reconstruct one account than it is to reconstruct the whole data file.

To make things worse is the very fact that they picked to remove the "from" side.  Any split transactions with transfers in it (like a paycheck) is the "from" side".

So even if you manage to reconstruct it importing from all the needed accounts, these split transactions will now be multiple transactions one for the main split categories, and another for each transfer.

The only workaround I have found is to change the transfers to regular categories.
In other words in a traditional double book accounting before computes they didn't have "linked transfers" instead they just entered two "offsetting" categories.  The accounting come up right if you have -XXX in one account and +XXX in another.
You can't jump between them, but at least everything balances.

Needless to say though again this technic only works if both sides of the transfer are done this way.
You can use my program to change transfers to regular categories:
http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/changetransfers.html

pls'

I don't know how it would work in my real Quicken file, but in my test file turning "Special handling for transfers" off make the transfers import.

I'm far enough along reentering the transfers manually that I'm not going to retransfer. But I certainly will remember this.

pls'

BTW, what exactly do you mean by "from" and "to" side of a transfer. I have splits that are transfers with a negative amount. What do you call "from" and "to" in this case?

Following the documentation, I refer to transfers as having an "original" or entered side and a "generated" side.

Chris_QPW

pls' said:

I don't know how it would work in my real Quicken file, but in my test file turning "Special handling for transfers" off make the transfers import.

I'm far enough along reentering the transfers manually that I'm not going to retransfer. But I certainly will remember this.

OK maybe I'm wrong (or they fixed this). I didn't retest for this posting, it was just something that I noticed.

pls' said:

BTW, what exactly do you mean by "from" and "to" side of a transfer. I have splits that are transfers with a negative amount. What do you call "from" and "to" in this case?

Following the documentation, I refer to transfers as having an "original" or entered side and a "generated" side.

I haven't looked at the documentation that much and just made up my own terms.  Original (from in my comment) and generated (to) is what I was talking about.

For a split transaction is always the original/from side for the simple reason that you can't create a transfer in another account and tell Quicken to put it into a split transaction in that account.

At any rate is a royal pain that they choose to remove the transfers from the original/form side, because when you rebuild them with generated/to side that causes the split transaction to be split up into multiple transactions with the transfers as separate transactions.  It also causes problems in investment transactions like BoughtX.