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YNAB4 Converter Tool [alpha]

Started by Alex, November 19, 2016, 02:11:41 PM

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Alex

Quote from: Bruce on November 20, 2016, 12:41:36 PM
@Alex is it possible to sync two budgets? Meaning can I import my YNAB4 data into a new and different budget from the one I already have synced so I can test the sync function without possibly disturbing what I already have?

I'm having trouble understanding -- Financier will always import budget data as a completely new budget and will never overwrite existing budget data.
I am the Financier owner/admin/coder dude.

Alex

Also -- I made an edit to the main post. Importing to sync should now be fine as I've had enough people try it and not have problems.

The only thing I ask is that you don't import the same budget multiple times. Even if you delete the budget (click the "x" on the budget), it still keeps a record of the documents which could slow down Financier if you do it needlessly many times.
I am the Financier owner/admin/coder dude.

Joel

Quote from: Alex on November 20, 2016, 02:59:21 PM
Also -- I made an edit to the main post. Importing to sync should now be fine as I've had enough people try it and not have problems.

The only thing I ask is that you don't import the same budget multiple times. Even if you delete the budget (click the "x" on the budget), it still keeps a record of the documents which could slow down Financier if you do it needlessly many times.

I'm assuming there will eventually be a way to clean those up... As I would hate to import now, not have it work like expected, and have speed issues when I import again at a later date.

I'm excited to play around with this. Just hosted an early thanksgiving yesterday so I've been pretty busy since this came out and just now catching up. Good work Alex
Biking and budgeting my way to early retirement!

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ottyacat

Quote from: Joel on November 20, 2016, 03:37:04 PM
Quote from: Alex on November 20, 2016, 02:59:21 PM
Also -- I made an edit to the main post. Importing to sync should now be fine as I've had enough people try it and not have problems.

The only thing I ask is that you don't import the same budget multiple times. Even if you delete the budget (click the "x" on the budget), it still keeps a record of the documents which could slow down Financier if you do it needlessly many times.

I'm assuming there will eventually be a way to clean those up... As I would hate to import now, not have it work like expected, and have speed issues when I import again at a later date.

I'm excited to play around with this. Just hosted an early thanksgiving yesterday so I've been pretty busy since this came out and just now catching up. Good work Alex

Thats a good point, after some changes are made so i can delete the last failed attempt, this will be my 3rd import. Hopefully it won't affect things too badly.

I'm also keen to hear what other people are doing with the imports. Are you using it a historic reference only or are you attempting to merge your current financier budget with the newly imported data? I think i'm just going to keep it in there for historic reference and report on it when i need to (when reports are available) in the future, the clean start with Financier is going quite well.


Joel

I plan to import my data going back to 2008 and hopefully run financier in parallel with ynab4.
Biking and budgeting my way to early retirement!

Ting referral: https://zp8h3m5ceig.ting.com/
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Bruce

#50
I've imported, reconciled with YNAB4, and will now run both in parallel.

RPNnerd

Quote from: Alex on November 20, 2016, 02:45:58 PM
Quote from: RPNnerd on November 20, 2016, 02:20:42 PM
That was interesting.  I didn't see the local .YNAB4 file so I pointed to the one on the drop box.  It was ~25MB.  The conversion seemed to work....except the budget is only caught up through April.  My allocations (or "predicted") budget is pushed through to December (which is what I was doing back in April).

So it was successful-- and the resulting jSon file was only 1.5MB.   But it wasn't my whole budget to the current point.  I'm not sure why and will dig into where my data is kept.


If you're comfortable with it, email your YNAB budget and I'll investigate.

It's possible that you may need to save a copy of the YNAB budget and try importing that. :)

How do I save a copy of the YNAB budget?  I went to "save a copy" and it lists the one that was saved at 1:27PM.  The file seems updated in the dropbox folder....   How do I know for sure?


Joel

@RPNnerd - you would have to zip the entire .ynab4 folder and then send it as a zip file.
Biking and budgeting my way to early retirement!

Ting referral: https://zp8h3m5ceig.ting.com/
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Alex

Quote from: Joel on November 20, 2016, 03:37:04 PM
Quote from: Alex on November 20, 2016, 02:59:21 PM
Also -- I made an edit to the main post. Importing to sync should now be fine as I've had enough people try it and not have problems.

The only thing I ask is that you don't import the same budget multiple times. Even if you delete the budget (click the "x" on the budget), it still keeps a record of the documents which could slow down Financier if you do it needlessly many times.

I'm assuming there will eventually be a way to clean those up... As I would hate to import now, not have it work like expected, and have speed issues when I import again at a later date.

I'm excited to play around with this. Just hosted an early thanksgiving yesterday so I've been pretty busy since this came out and just now catching up. Good work Alex

The reason is technical and has to do with syncing. Basically, the db needs to know what was deleted so it keeps tombstones around of the old budget documents. Not too big of a deal unless you import a huge budget 30 times or something, and even then not too big of an issue...

QuoteCouchDB doesn’t completely delete the specified document. Instead, it leaves a tombstone with very basic information about the document. The tombstone is required so that the delete action can be replicated. Since the tombstones stay in the database indefinitely, creating new documents and deleting them increases the disk space usage of a database and the query time for the primary index, which is used to look up documents by their ID.

From https://docs.cloudant.com/document.html#delete
I am the Financier owner/admin/coder dude.

asromzek

Could you log out and clear local budgets, then import and fix your budget (as many times as needed). And when you have the budget just how you want it... export the Financier json, clear all local data, log in, and import the final budget to your synced account?
/s implied, unless stated otherwise.

asromzek

That way you can import as much as possible offline to test things out and get the budget how you want it, and then do one final import into Financier to keep the synced database size small.
/s implied, unless stated otherwise.

Alex

Quote from: asromzek on November 20, 2016, 05:08:55 PM
That way you can import as much as possible offline to test things out and get the budget how you want it, and then do one final import into Financier to keep the synced database size small.
Quote from: asromzek on November 20, 2016, 05:07:39 PM
Could you log out and clear local budgets, then import and fix your budget (as many times as needed). And when you have the budget just how you want it... export the Financier json, clear all local data, log in, and import the final budget to your synced account?

Absolutely! 👍 As long as it doesn't sync, you should be fine. Just make sure you press 'clear local budgets' and not just press the delete budget button on each budget and then log back in. While they look like they do the same thing, the first actually completely removes everything.

Another (safer, easier) option is to simply use Chrome's incognito mode and just never login.
I am the Financier owner/admin/coder dude.

Joel

Does the file size of your YNAB4 budget matter when converting it?

Would it be a good idea to compact the file before migration?
Biking and budgeting my way to early retirement!

Ting referral: https://zp8h3m5ceig.ting.com/
Lastpass referral: https://lastpass.com/f?27278462

Joel

So I just converted my YNAB4 budget that has historical data going back to YNAB4. It converted super quickly. I remember every time YNAB had a migration tool it would take forever, so that immediately impressed me.

It created two master categories that were not in my old budget: "Income" and "__Internal__".

Other than that, it appears everything came over correctly!
Biking and budgeting my way to early retirement!

Ting referral: https://zp8h3m5ceig.ting.com/
Lastpass referral: https://lastpass.com/f?27278462

RPNnerd

Quote from: Joel on November 20, 2016, 04:42:37 PM
@RPNnerd - you would have to zip the entire .ynab4 folder and then send it as a zip file.

Yes, I'm hesitant to do that as the first step... I'm wondering how to tell YNAB to save the latest or financier which file is most recent?

I think YNAB is saving the latest-- under the file.  I see the latest via the timestamp (ls -al).

I don't see any particular file that ended on April 28th (last transaction date recorded in the conversion)