Anyone prefer CSV importing over QIF/OFX?
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Analyzing the various financial transaction formats such as CSV, QIF, and OFX/QFX is a part of a big software/research project I'm doing for my university, and to properly explain my reasons for supporting individual formats requires some usage data.
More precisely, I'm curious if there are any circumstances where people can get financial transaction data in only the CSV (and not QIF or OFX) format? Or, where CSV data is better than the other formats? Or, are people using the Import CSV plugin only because no Import QIF or Import OFX plugins exist?
Thanks (in advance) for your responses!
From my understanding, CSV is available from almost all financial sites. From the two which I use, they also support QIF.
If you can get a working QIF import, I think it would be very beneficial to most people. From the little which I have seen of it, it seems to be a complex and poorly documented format, but it would definitely contain much more information than a simple CSV file does.
About the only situations where I can think of CSV excelling is in a) interfacing with third party software, and b) allowing users to manually edit data before import (change transaction descriptions from the poorly formatted online bank version, for instance).
Cheers
My financial institution only supports QIF and OFX. Of the two, OFX seems to be the most forward thinking as QIF has been deprecated, though many institutions still offer it. Personally, I like to mess with my own data, and CSV is far more user friendly.