Convert PDF statements to QFX

Quicken's own documentation describes QFX as the Web Connect format for downloading checking, savings and credit-card transactions, and documents the import path as File, then File Import, then Web Connect (.QFX) File. That is the mechanism this export targets.

The format itself is documented and stable, which is why a converted file is worth trying at all. What is not on offer is Quicken's help if something goes wrong with one, so the rest of this page is about what goes into the file and how to check it yourself.

The two exports differ in the signon block, and only there. Here is that block from a QFX and from a plain OFX file, both generated from the same statement.

<SONRS>
<STATUS>
<CODE>0
<SEVERITY>INFO
</STATUS>
<DTSERVER>20260403120000
<LANGUAGE>ENG
<FI>
<ORG>Northgate Savings Bank
<FID>0000
</FI>
<INTU.BID>0000

<SONRS>
<STATUS>
<CODE>0
<SEVERITY>INFO
</STATUS>
<DTSERVER>20260403120000
<LANGUAGE>ENG
<FI>
<ORG>Northgate Savings Bank
</FI>

The QFX file carries FID inside the institution block and a top-level INTU.BID, both holding the Intuit institution identifier resolved from the bank name on your statement. The plain OFX file names the institution and stops there. Everything after the signon block, the account details, every transaction, the closing balance, is byte-for-byte identical in the two files.

So the conversion that matters is not the extension. It is resolving your bank to an identifier and writing the two tags that carry it. Changing a file's extension leaves those tags absent.

Worth a look before you import, because these are the fields anything goes wrong in.

• Header. OFXHEADER:100, VERSION:102, SGML rather than XML. This is OFX 1.02, the version the Web Connect formats are built on.
• Institution. ORG repeats the bank name as printed. FID and INTU.BID both hold the numeric identifier Quicken uses to recognise the institution, and both are editable at export if you know the one your Quicken file already expects. A name we cannot place leaves them at 0000, which is a visible placeholder rather than a guess at somebody else's institution.
• Account. A bank account writes BANKID, ACCTID and ACCTTYPE; a card writes only the card number, because a card has no routing number.
• Transactions. One STMTTRN each, with DTPOSTED as YYYYMMDD, a signed TRNAMT, a FITID, a NAME capped at 32 characters and a MEMO holding the full description when it is longer than that.
• Balance. LEDGERBAL with the closing balance and its date, and DTSTART and DTEND spanning the transactions in the file.

Quicken remembers a FITID for every transaction it has taken in, and skips anything carrying one it has seen before. Ours is assembled from two facts about the row: the day it posted, and where it sits in the file. Three things follow, and the third is the one that bites:

• Two exports of the same reviewed rows are the same file, byte for byte apart from the server timestamp in the header.
• Correcting a payee or a figure changes nothing, since neither feeds the identifier.
• Removing a row shifts the numbering below it. Quicken then sees identifiers it has never met, attached to transactions it already has, and takes them for new ones.

Which is an argument for doing the review properly the first time. Deleting one row after an import is not the small correction it looks like; it is a different file as far as Quicken is concerned.

• Quicken declines to open the file. Web Connect availability depends on your Quicken product and the status of its online services; an expired or unsupported release can block the import path regardless of what the file contains.
• Quicken offers the wrong institution, or none. Quicken keys on the identifier in the file. If yours came out as the 0000placeholder, override it in the export dialog with the value Quicken already associates with that account, which you can read from an earlier download from the bank itself.
• Nothing appears after an apparently successful import. Check which account you imported into, and whether those transactions were already present from an earlier import of the same rows.
• Quicken support declines to help. Expected, given their stated position on converter-generated files. Reproduce the problem with a short file and check the fields above before spending long on it.

• QFX carries the Intuit tags and is aimed at Quicken Web Connect.
• QBO carries the same tags and is aimed at QuickBooks Desktop Bank Feeds. Our two exports differ only in the extension and the product that reads them.
• OFX drops the Intuit tags, for everything else that documents OFX import.