OFX Statement

Ofxstatement is a tool to convert proprietary bank statements to OFX format, suitable for importing into personal accounting systems like GnuCash. This package provides a command line tool to run: ofxstatement. Run ofxstatement -h for more help. ofxstatement works under Python 3 and is not compatible with Python 2.

Rationale

Most internet banking systems are capable of exporting account transactions to some sort of computer readable format, but few support standard data formats, like OFX. On the other hand, personal accounting systems such as GnuCash support standard formats only, and will probably never support proprietary statement formats of online banking systems.

To bridge the gap between them, this ofxstatement tool was created.

Mode of Operation

The ofxstatement tool is intended to be used in the following workflow:

1. At the end of each month, use your online banking service to export statements from all of your bank accounts in a format known to ofxstatement.
2. Run ofxstatement on each exported file to convert it to OFX. Shell scripts or a Makefile may help to automate this routine.
3. Import the generated OFX file into your personal accounting system.

Installation and Usage

Before using ofxstatement, you have to install a plugin for your bank (or write your own!). Plugins are installed as regular python packages, with easy_install or pip, for example:

$ pip3 install ofxstatement-lithuanian

Note that ofxstatement itself will be installed automatically this way. After the installation, the ofxstatement utility will be available.

Users of Ubuntu and Debian operating systems can install ofxstatement from official package repositories:

$ apt install ofxstatement ofxstatement-plugins 

You can check that ofxstatement is working by running:

$ ofxstatement list-plugins

You should get a list of your installed plugins.

After installation, the usage is simple:

$ ofxstatement convert -t  bank_statement.csv statement.ofx

The resulting statement.ofx is then ready to be imported into a personal accounting system.

Known Plugins

There are several user-developed plugins available:

Advanced Configuration

While ofxstatement can be used without any configuration, some plugins may accept additional configuration parameters. These parameters can be specified in a configuration file. The configuration file can be edited using the edit-config command that opens your favorite editor (defined by environment variable EDITOR or else the default for your platform) with the configuration file:

$ ofxstatement edit-config

The configuration file format is in the standard .ini format. The configuration is divided into sections that correspond to the --type command line parameter. Each section must provide a plugin option that points to one of the registered conversion plugins. Other parameters are plugin specific.

A sample configuration file:

[swedbank]
plugin = swedbank

[danske:usd]
plugin = litas-esis
charset = cp1257
currency = USD
account = LT123456789012345678

Such a configuration will let ofxstatement know about two statement file formats handled by the plugins swedbank and litas-esis. The litas-esis plugin will load statements using the cp1257 charset and set a custom currency and account number. This way, GnuCash will automatically associate the generated .ofx file with a particular GnuCash account.

To convert the proprietary CSV file danske.csv into the OFX file danske.ofx, run:

$ ofxstatement -t danske:usd danske.csv danske.ofx

Note that configuration parameters are plugin specific. See the plugin documentation for more info.

To use a custom configuration file, pass the -c / --config option:

$ ofxstatement convert -t pluginname -c /path/to/myconfig.ini input.csv output.ofx

Development / Testing

ofxstatemnt uses pipenv to manage the development environment and dependencies:

$ pip install pipenv
$ git clone https://github.com//ofxstatement.git
$ cd ofxstatement
$ pipenv sync --dev

And finally run the test suite:

$ pipenv shell
$ pytest

When satisfied, you may create a pull request.

Writing your own Plugin

If the plugin for your bank has not been developed yet (see Known plugins section above) you can easily write your own, provided you have some knowledge about the Python programming language. There is an ofxstatement-sample plugin project available that provides sample boilerplate and describes the plugin development process in detail.