Gnucash2Ledger

Gnucash2Ledger is a Python script based on the Github Gist by nonducor (nonducor/gcash2ledger.py). This Python script will take an uncompressed Gnucash file saved in the default XML format and write a text file in a format compatible with John Wiegley’s ledger program (Github: ledger/ledger).

Note: gnucash2ledger will only work if the Gnucash data is saved in an uncompressed XML file. If you prefer to save your Gnucash in SQL database formats, checkout the piecash project.

Features

gnucash2ledger has the following features:

• Allows for export to a text file or prints results to standard output
• Exports commodity definitions, account definitions, and transactions with splits
• Supports multiple commodities/currencies
• Provides and option to insert a default header for Emacs ledger-mode (Github: ledger/ledger-mode)
• Currency codes can be replaced by currency symbols using Python CurrencySymbols library
• Provides an option to display progress bars (useful for converting very long Gnucash files and you want to verify something is running)

Usage

Gnucash2ledger can be called with the following command:

python3 gnucash2ledger.py [-h] [-c] [-d DATE_FORMAT] [-e] [-f] [-na] [-nc] [-nt] [-o FILENAME] [-p] [--payee-metadata] [-s] [-v] INPUT_FILE

Alternatively, the following command can be used to call Gnucash2ledger if gnucash2ledger.py has permission to run as an executable file:

gnucash2ledger.py [-h] [-c] [-d DATE_FORMAT] [-e] [-f] [-na] [-nc] [-nt] [-o FILENAME] [-p] [--payee-metadata] [-s] [-v] INPUT_FILE

Command Line Arguments

Documentation of the various command line arguments can be seen in the following output from gnucash2ledger -h:

positional arguments:
  input                 a Gnucash XML file to be read

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c, --cleared         Marks all transactions as cleared and place a cleared (*) mark before the transaction heading.
  -d DATE_FORMAT, --date-format DATE_FORMAT
                        A string representing the desired format of dates in the ledger file. Defaults to the ISO standard format: '%Y-%m-%d'.
  -e, --emacs-header    Adds a default header for ledger-mode in Emacs.
  -f, --force-clobber   Force clobbering of and output file i the file already exists. If this option is provided, the output file will overwrite the existing file
                        with the same name.
  -na, --no-account-defs
                        Prevents output of account definitions to the output file.
  -nc, --no-commodity-defs
                        Prevent output of commodities to the output file.
  -nt, --no-transations
                        Prevent output of transactions to the output file. NOTE: This will cause ledger to throw an error if executed on this file.
  -o FILENAME, --output FILENAME
                        Name of file to store the output results.
  -p, --show-progress   Show script status progress while reading and writing data.
  --payee-metadata      Takes the information entered into the 'Description' field in Gnucash splits and adds them as a tagged '; Payee:' memo for the corresponding
                        transaction split.
  -s, --use-symbols     Replaces currency codes with currency symbols.
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit

Requirements

gnucash2ledger requires that the following Python packages are installed:

• currency-symbols
• tqdm

Future

• [ ] Include options to add/remove headers for different sections
• [ ] Increase parsing speed of Gnucash XML file (consider writing a verison with Go)
• [ ] Include options for splitting large Gnucash files into multiple ledger files