Import from Firefly III. Categories, Accounts and Tags?

[thehijacker]

Hello,

I wish to test ezbookkeeping, but with my existing data from Firefy III. I have exported everything from Firefly to CSV and with fresh docker installation of ezbookkeeping tried the import. Not a single line wanted to get imported as I was missing Categories, Accounts and Tags. Why can't import procedure create those automatically?

After manualy creating all of them I still can't import because it finds no Categories even if I added them to Transaction Categories (Expanse, Income and Transfer). But they are not visible or correctly linked under Category column.

What else am I missing and needs to be manually done before import is successful? Can Categories, Accounts and Tags be automatically created when doing Firefly III import?

[mayswind]

Accounts cannot be created automatically, because they include required fields that must be filled in by the user and have no default values. Transaction categories and tags can be created in bulk using the batch creation tool in the top-right menu of the import tool. In general, it's very normal that data from different systems cannot be imported automatically. Each system has different storage models and required fields. The import tool in ezBookkeeping is not meant to provide fully automatic imports, but it's designed to reduce the manual effort involved in bringing data in from other systems.

Also note that ezBookkeeping uses a two-level category system. Each transaction must be assigned a secondary category. Primary categories are used only for organization and as groupings for secondary categories.

[mayswind]

Ah...It's wrong. It should be docker pull mayswind/ezbookkeeping:latest-snapshot.

[thehijacker]

Ah...It's wrong. It should be docker pull mayswind/ezbookkeeping:latest-snapshot.

Yes! Looks nice! I am always happy to see application in my mother language. I will test the translations in next few days and make another PR with updates if needed. I had to modify exported CSV from Firefly III and change the dates of initial account creation. Not sure why some transaction was before that creation date. But import was success and now I have 1:1 copy of all data from Firefly III in ezBookkeeping.

What I did next was add recurring transactions but for month I can only add 28. as the last day of month. That of course is not correct in my case because banks charge their fees on the last day of month.

May I propose to add all days (1-31) and assume that if we selected 31 and month has only 28 or 30 days make transaction on last day of month, whichever day that is. Also please add option what happens if it is a weekend, some banks do not allow transactions on weekends. If you can add some options to choose like:

If recurring date is weekend:

• create transaction anyway
• skip transaction
• create transaction on last friday
• create transaction on next monday

[mayswind]

I understand your requirement, but it doesn't align with ezBookkeeping's goal and expectation for scheduled transactions. As I said in #396 (comment) , the scheduled transactions are neither recurring transactions nor subscription transactions, they are just scheduled tasks.

I don't want users to face a dialog with dozens of options when creating a scheduled transaction. While such flexibility could technically satisfy many scenarios, it's not the goal of ezBookkeeping. ezBookkeeping aims to keep its core logic as simple as possible, so scheduled transactions are meant to just simplify a subset of automatic creation tasks. For more customized needs, ezBookkeeping provides API and MCP tools, allowing users to create transactions via the API or even with large language models.

[thehijacker]

Makes sense. I will change it to 1st in month and edit manually if it is weekend after transaction is created.

One more question. You wrote:

Transaction categories and tags can be created in bulk using the batch creation tool in the top-right menu of the import tool.

But I can not find this anywhere in UI. Where exactly is batch creation tool?

[mayswind]