Advanced tips

Mastering keywords

Two methods of keywords inputs are available. You switch from one to the other by pressing <Enter> when presented with a match prompt :

• payee (full match) : it’s the default method. The keywords must consist of successive words present in the payee field.
• any field (partial match) : you are first asked to enter a field and then a substring to search on this field content. Unlike default full words match, the substring is used as-is thus enabling creation of rules based on partial word match. Append a * character when entering the field name to unlock the regex input method.
  The two-steps prompt is repeated so you can combine rules on multiple fields. Enter no char at prompt to validate the set of rules.

Json configuration file format

Warning

Editing this file manually is not recommended, as any formatting error will make the program exit on error.

Note

qifqif is shipped with qifacc utility that automates the creation of a configuration file from a csv file of exported accounts.

Matchings are saved automatically by qifqif as a json dict. Keys are the categories, the values are their associated keyword(s).

As an example, here is a valid file defining two categories named Clothes and Bank accounts :

{
    "Clothes": [
        "REEBOOK",
        { "payee": "NIKE", "filename": "BOB"}
    ],
    "Bank accounts": [
        "10203586133",
        { "payee": r"FR\d+"}
    ]
}

Some comments :

• for the sake of readability, payee keywords – because they are so common – are stored as string. It’s just a formatting shortcut, REEBOOK can be written as {"payee": "REEBOOK"} with no difference whatsoever
• when many keywords expressions match an input transaction, the longer one (by number of fields involved and lengthwise) is selected.

Editing/removing existing data

At match prompt, press twice <Enter> if you don’t want to store a match for a given transaction.

Enter a match containing only space(s) to undo and go back to edit category prompt.

Save or discard?

Automatic saves allow you to import a large file in multiple runs. Stop whenever you are bored by pressing Ctrl+C and resume the task where you left it at next run.

Use Ctrl+D to exit brutally and discard all changes

Handling QIF files with no payee lines

Default matching method performs search on the payee field (see Mastering keywords).

The QIF file you process may have this payee information located in another field like memo for example. In such a case it’s preferable to pre-process your file by converting memo lines to payee lines by switching the line identifier.

sed is a good candidate for that task :

sed -i 's/^M/P/' my_file.qif