Importing National Australia Bank QIF Data Into GnuCash

Importing National Australia Bank (NAB) account transactions into GnuCash is reasonably straight-forward. It saves considerable time when entering more than 10 transactions. The process took some time to figure out so I've documented the relevant steps here.

1. Export your transactions:

Log into NAB Internet Banking and view your transaction history. While GnuCash detects duplicates of existing transactions, it takes time to tick them off. To avoid duplicates hit "Show Filter" and set a date range with minimal overlap. Next hit "Export data".

Select "Quicken version 7 or above / Microsoft Money (QIF-local date)". Hit OK and save the file TransactionHistory.qif



2. Verify the QIF file.

The GnuCash import will fail with a generic error if any payee fields are blank in the QIF transaction export. The NAB lists recent transactions as "PURCHASE AUTHORISATION" and take a few days for the payee field to be filled in. This step may be unnecessary if you have no recent transactions.

Open the file TransactionHistory.qif in a text editor. Each account transaction takes a few lines and ends with ^. This page describes the QIF format. Check the top-most transactions to make sure the "P" lines are complete. Either fill the payee information manually, or delete these transactions.

3. Import the QIF file.

Open GnuCash, click "File > Import > Import QIF...". Click through the wizard and load the TransactionHistory.qif file for a single NAB account. Choose the "d-m-y" date format. In the next dialogue "default QIF account name" enter your corresponding GnuCash account name.

Click through the wizard, at "QIF import" it will take some time while it performs fuzzy-matching of the new transactions with your existing ones.

At the "Select possible duplicates" wizard dialogue carefully check through each potential match GnuCash finds. Tick the "Match?" box for each matching transaction. Ticked transactions wont be imported. I've never had an incorrect match suggestion at this step.

Each NAB transaction can be matched with the appropriate expense account in the wizard. I tend to skip this step and fix the account matches in the ledger later. Unmatched transactions appear in the account "Unspecified".