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<!DOCTYPE appendix SYSTEM "gnc-gui-C.dtd">
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<appendix id="appendixa">
  <title>Migration Guide</title>

  <para>This appendix is to help current users of other financial software packages in their migration to
    &app;. We address the conceptual differences between the layout of &app; accounts versus other
    software packages.
  </para>

  <sect1 id="appendixa_accts_vs_cats1">
    <title>Using Accounts vs. Categories</title>

    <para>If you are familiar with other personal finance programs, you are already accustomed to tracking
      your income and expenses as categories. Since &app; is a double-entry system (see
      <xref linkend="basics-accounting1" />), income and expenses are tracked in accounts. The basic
      concept is the same, but the account structure allows more consistency with accepted business
      practices. So, if you are a business user as well as a home user, &app; makes it easy to keep
      track of your business as well as your personal accounts.
    </para>

    <para>Income and expense accounts give you the same information you would get with categories, but they
      also give you more flexibility in entering your transactions. In &app;, you have the option to
      enter transactions directly into income and expense accounts through their account registers.
      Other programs that use categories do not offer this option, because there is no
      <quote>account register</quote> for a category.
    </para>

    <para>You also have the option in &app; to treat income and expense accounts exactly as you would treat
      categories, if you are more comfortable with that method. In
      <trademark class="registered">Quicken</trademark> and similar programs, transactions require
      an account and a category. Substitute an income or expense account name in &app; where you
      would normally enter a category name in the other programs, and the result should be the same.
      We will discuss transaction entry in <xref linkend="basics-transactions2" /> in greater
      detail.
    </para>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="appendixa_import">
    <title>Importing Data</title>

    <para>If you want to import data from your previous application, you should distinguish between financial
      data and other data. Probably the best way to import financial data is the <quote>Quicken
      Interchange Format</quote> <acronym>QIF</acronym> . It is a specific format for financial
      data, which most financial applications for the private sector know and can use for export.
    </para>

    <para>For other data we suggest the use of the <quote>Comma Separated Value</quote> <acronym>CSV</acronym>
      format.
    </para>

    <sect2 id="appendixa_qif1">
      <title>Import of Financial Data by <acronym>QIF</acronym> Files</title>

      <para>See <ulink url="&url-wp-en;Quicken_Interchange_Format" /> for it's details.
      </para>

      <para>Some &app; users collected their knowledge about the best use in our
        <ulink url="&url-wiki-qif;"/>.
      </para>

      <para>For other formats and more details see <xref linkend="chapter_importing"/>.
      </para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2 id="appendixa_business">
      <title>Import of Business Data by <acronym>CSV</acronym> Files</title>

      <para>If you want to import customers and vendors or bills and invoices see
        <xref linkend="ch_import_bus_data" />.
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="appendixa_xmlconvert1">
    <title>Converting <acronym>XML</acronym> &app; File</title>

    <para>The &app; <acronym>XML</acronym> data file can be transformed to almost any other data format (e.g.,
      <acronym>QIF</acronym>, <acronym>CSV</acronym>...) quite easily if one is familiar with the
      <quote>Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations</quote>
      <ulink url="&url-wp-en;XSLT"><acronym>XSLT</acronym></ulink>. The &app; data file is
      well-formed <acronym>XML</acronym>, and it can therefore be run through an
      <acronym>XSLT</acronym> parser with an associated stylesheet. This allows one to transform the
      file to just about any format that can be designed, given a properly written stylesheet.
    </para>

    <para>A few steps need to be followed. The writing of a stylesheet is a task for a different time, but if
      you can get one written, here&rsquo;s what you need to do:
    </para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Copy the &app; <acronym>XML</acronym> data file to a working file.
        </para>

        <important>
          <para>If the file was last modified by a version of &app; older than 2.0, then before you continue to the
            next step you will need to modify the working file&rsquo;s &lt;gnc-v2&gt; tag to read
            something like this:
<programlisting language="xml">
&lt;gnc-v2 xmlns:cd="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/cd"
  xmlns:book="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/book"
  xmlns:gnc="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/gnc"
  xmlns:cmdty="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/cmdty"
  xmlns:trn="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/trn"
  xmlns:split="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/split"
  xmlns:act="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/act"
  xmlns:price="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/price"
  xmlns:ts="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/ts"
  xmlns:slot="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/kvpslot"
  xmlns:cust="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/cust"
  xmlns:entry="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/entry"
  xmlns:lot="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/lot"
  xmlns:invoice="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/invoice"
  xmlns:owner="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/owner"
  xmlns:job="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/job"
  xmlns:billterm="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/billterm"
  xmlns:bt-days="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/bt-days"
  xmlns:sx="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/sx"
  xmlns:fs="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/fs"
  xmlns:addr="http://www.gnucash.org/XML/custaddr"&gt;
</programlisting>
          </para>
        </important>

        <note>
          <para>You can put pretty much anything you want behind the equal signs, but a unique
            <acronym>URL</acronym> is what is typically used.
          </para>
        </note>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Create an <acronym>XSLT</acronym> stylesheet containing the transformation your desire, or obtain
          one that&rsquo;s already written.
        </para>

        <itemizedlist>
          <title>User Contributed XSLT Stylesheets</title>

          <listitem>
            <para>in our repository: <ulink url="&url-src-maint;contrib/xslt"/>
            </para>
          </listitem>

          <listitem>
            <para>in our wiki: <ulink url="&url-wiki-xslt;"/>
            </para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Install an <acronym>XSLT</acronym> processor such as Saxon (<ulink url="&url-wp-en;Saxon_XSLT" />)
          or Xalan (<ulink url="&url-wp-en;Apache_Xalan" />). Any
          <ulink url="&url-wp-en;Category:XSLT_processors">conforming processor</ulink> will do,
          really...
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Run the work file and the stylesheet through the processor according to the processor&rsquo;s
          instructions.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>You will now have a file in the desired output format. An enterprising individual could go so far as
          to write a stylesheet to transform the &app; data file to an &app-aoo;/&app-lo; Calc (or
          vice-versa, for that matter). Such things as <acronym>QIF</acronym> ought to be a little
          less work.
        </para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>

    <para>Benefits are that you don&rsquo;t need to write a Scheme module or a new C routine to do this
      transformation. Anyone who knows or can learn <acronym>XML</acronym> and
      <acronym>XSLT</acronym> can perform this task. Not much harder, really, than writing a Web
      page....
    </para>

    <para>Anyhow, I just wanted this tidbit to be captured somewhere permanently. The process works on
      &vers-stable; datafiles, and ought to work on earlier versions, too.
    </para>
  </sect1>
</appendix>
