OFX / QIF File Format - No Longer Supported

  • theron's Avatar
    Supervisor
    OK, I'll keep an eye out for 'older parts' of the website and try not to use them in case they vanish !

    It's far from ideal but there seem to be a number of free online .csv to .qif converter tools that I'll now investigate to try and work around this problem.

    Thank you for responding and passing our comment on.
  • silverreader's Avatar
    Eagle eye
    Theron, if you find a satisfactory solution, eg. a .csv to .qif converter, it would be good to know which one.

    But it would be better if Tesco took note of these observations and reinstated the "Manage My Account" button. Another example of an "improved" service which is actually worse than before.
  • theron's Avatar
    Supervisor
    First step figured out.

    For some reason they've decided to encode the newer .csv/.tsv downloads in the UTF16-LE encoding. I.e. every character is encoded as 2 bytes. So the first step before you can import these files into a standard .qif converter you have to convert them back to a single-byte encoding. Open the downloaded file in Notepad, then go to Save As and choose 'ANSI' from the encoding drop-down, then save the file.

    Then you'll be able to use one of the online tools to convert the file to .qif format. Of course by using one of these online services you may be uploading your transactions to a 3rd party so you should be wary of security at this point ! If you can find a command line script then that will probably be safer.
  • tiffer's Avatar
    I looked at a couple of tools but the fact that Tesco have for some reason chosen to have inflow and outflow both as positive numbers (with a "credit/debit flag") it's not a simple mapping. Nice and user friendly...

    On the up side I'm sure the code-base is simpler and cheaper to maintain, which I'm sure is an excellent metric for management.

    The decision is now if it's worth writing a converter or finding a new bank.
  • theron's Avatar
    Supervisor
    @tiffer Yep, I had spotted that.

    So, here we go. I've knocked up a quick project on GitHub called TCCQIF. Rough and ready but seems to do the job. Feed it a Tesco CC format .tsv file and a get a .qif out.

    - - - Updated - - -

    https://github.com/timothyheron/TCCQIF/
  • ditchdigger's Avatar
    Window shopper
    Like others I'm really disappointed the .qif download has disappeared and that the Manage Account section of the website has been removed.
    I'm sure there are plenty of people still using Microsoft Money.
    Can you please explain why you've decided to remove this functionality?
  • MartinC's Avatar
    On the look out
    Like others I'm really disappointed the .qif download has disappeared and that the Manage Account section of the website has been removed.
    I'm sure there are plenty of people still using Microsoft Money.
    Can you please explain why you've decided to remove this functionality?

    +1

    - - - Updated - - -

    @tiffer Yep, I had spotted that.

    So, here we go. I've knocked up a quick project on GitHub called TCCQIF. Rough and ready but seems to do the job. Feed it a Tesco CC format .tsv file and a get a .qif out.

    Looks really useful, but I get the following error when compiling:
    tccqif.cs(1,29): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'FileIO' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft.VisualBasic' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

    Please ignore me if this is an error on my part. :-)
  • theron's Avatar
    Supervisor
    @MartinC Ah, I missed a parameter on the command line. Try this:

    csc /t:exe tccqif.cs -r:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.8\ Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll"

    I've also added a compiled version to the repository.
  • MartinC's Avatar
    On the look out
    I've also added a compiled version to the repository.

    Many thanks for this temporary work-around, it is greatly appreciated.

    I'm waiting to discover whether Tesco Bank is likely to reinstate the ability to download transactions in the .qif format before considering other options. It's a deal-breaker for me.
  • cjholliday's Avatar
    On the look out
    For the FEEDBACK - I am another customer that is very annoyed that the ability to download to .QIF format has been removed since 1 May 2021 (not last Summer).

    The new csv format does not work with my finance software because it you have decided to have one amount field which makes no distinction between positive and negative amounts and relies on a separate field to identify what it is. I'm sure this must be the only place in the Tesco Bank where they don't either have separate fields for debits and credits or a single signed field - why have you made it complicated.

    Also the fact that the download dumps the previous 90 days worth of transactions with no ability to filter or limit the range means de-duplicating a load of transactions every single time.

    I hope more thought has gone into the design of the rest of your IT systems than has gone into this customer facing feature.