swaitsandClaude Opus 5.5
c72a762ef1
New vendored sources (docs/spec/sources/): Intuit's bank CSV upload and
IIF formats, ECMA-376 / Excel number storage, and the IRS form lines the
tax categories map to.
IIF export (rewritten to Intuit's IIF Import Kit):
- declares every account first (!ACCNT NAME, ACCNTTYPE, ACCNUM): an
undeclared account is created in QuickBooks "as a new bank account";
the MCP export types them (cash accounts BANK, the control accounts AR
and AP, registered fixed assets FIXASSET, the rest by type);
- subaccounts by colon path, parents first; colons in a name replaced;
- ASCII only (IIF is ASCII text), dashes and quotes transliterated;
- the kit's 2007+ journal layout and M/D/YYYY dates; an entry using an
undeclared account is refused.
Bank CSV:
- the 4-column layout is money out then money in by position, which
matches Intuit's "Credit, Debit" and banks' "Debit, Credit" both (the
doc's "Expense, Income" labels were wrong, the parsing was not);
- a slash date's order comes from the file (a part over 12 settles it)
or the caller's new date_order, never a guess: Intuit recommends
dd/mm/yyyy, US banks write mm/dd/yyyy;
- fractions of a cent and double negatives ("(-5)") are refused; the
header is recognized on the first non-blank row.
Chart CSV: a blank code or name is refused with its row (found by the
new fuzz_import_csv target), and the core now refuses a blank account
code or name too (replay keeps older books).
MCP:
- books.import_chart_csv and books.import_bank_csv rehearse the whole
file on a copy of the ledger first: a bad row anywhere refuses the
file (before, a duplicate within the file, a parent after its child,
or a date in a closed period left earlier rows behind);
- bank rules: the longest matching pattern wins (they arrive in a map,
so "first match" changed from run to run).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GWVo7x3UHw5kwCUaWxiejX
5.1 KiB
QuickBooks Online bank and credit-card CSV upload format
Governs ledger_import::bank_csv (the QBO-style bank/card CSV parser). Intuit's help articles are © Intuit Inc., not public domain, so per the vendoring rules (docs/spec/README.md) they are cited, with short quotes only; everything not inside a > blockquote is our description of the page, not Intuit's words. Intuit states two layouts: 3 columns (Date, Description, Amount) and 4 columns (Date, Description, Credit, Debit). The pages were read in a browser; the hashes are of the HTML the browser fetched at retrieval (a dynamic page, so a later fetch will differ).
Format CSV files in Excel to get bank transactions into QuickBooks (US, updated 8/24/2026)
Source: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/bank-transactions/format-csv-files-excel-bank-transactions-quickbooks/L4BjLWckq_US_en_US
Retrieved: 2026-10-13
SHA-256 of the retrieved file (L4BjLWckq_US_en_US.html, 533,442 bytes): cbdd8c42ddda944b639db450b0a5c7986c17516c7e699612bea24b950e115bd0
Layouts
You can upload CSVs with either the 3-column or 4-column format to QuickBooks.
Cited (not quoted): the 3-column layout's columns are Date, Description, Amount; the 4-column layout's columns are Date, Description, Credit, Debit, in that order.
Sign and column meaning (from Intuit's example tables, transcribed cell by cell)
3-column example (header row, then two rows):
| Date | Description | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 1/1/2018 | Example of a payment | -100.00 |
| 1/1/2018 | Example of a deposit | 200.00 |
4-column example:
| Date | Description | Credit | Debit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1/2018 | Example of a payment | 100.00 | |
| 1/1/2018 | Example of a deposit | 200.00 |
Cited (not quoted): in the 3-column layout a payment (money out) is negative and a deposit (money in) positive. In the 4-column layout Intuit's example puts the payment in the Credit column and the deposit in the Debit column, each amount positive, the other cell empty. The page has no sentence stating which of Credit/Debit means money in; the example is the only evidence.
Header rules
Cited (not quoted): remove the word "amount" from Credit/Debit headers, so they read only "Credit" and "Debit". The page does not say whether a header row is required or optional; both examples have one.
Zeros
Remove any zeros (0) from the file. Leave those cells blank.
Description column
Cited (not quoted): correct transactions whose Description cell shows numbers.
Dates
Cited (not quoted): keep every date in one format; Intuit recommends dd/mm/yyyy (its own examples are written 1/1/2018, which reads the same either way). A day-of-week suffix in the date cell (its example: 20/11/2018 TUE) must be split off and removed. No list of accepted date formats is given.
Credit card files
Cited (not quoted): card CSVs may show signs reversed relative to a bank account (payments to the card can appear as negative deposits); upload them into the credit card account, not a bank account.
Platform note
Cited (not quoted): Mac users must save as a Windows CSV file.
Manually upload transactions into QuickBooks Online (US, updated 8/24/2026)
Source: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/import-transactions/manually-upload-transactions-quickbooks-online/L0rE9OXBz_US_en_US
Retrieved: 2026-10-13
SHA-256 of the retrieved file (L0rE9OXBz_US_en_US.html): b32d52c6efe6e4e6dced48876cc93b351ac66168bf2f80e0bedef27b4b4337d7
File limits and columns
Your upload file must be in English and 350 KB or less.
Cited (not quoted): each file needs either 3 columns (Date, Description, Amount) or 4 (Date, Description, Credit, Debit); cells in Amount, Credit, or Debit holding only zero are left blank; dates in one format, dd/mm/yyyy recommended. During upload the user matches the file's columns to QuickBooks fields on screen (so QBO does not rely on header text or position alone).
Fix bank upload errors (US, updated 8/4/2026)
Source: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/bank-transactions/fix-bank-upload-errors-quickbooks-online/L6FBh3zDC_US_en_US
Retrieved: 2026-10-13
SHA-256 of the retrieved file (L6FBh3zDC_US_en_US.html): d730b312cd5b0583f9e6947b30e4bca0a9be8f5935363c6e3f96d264d19f784c
Amount size limit
Cited (not quoted): the error "The uploaded file contains invalid transaction amount information." occurs when a transaction has 12 or more digits; QuickBooks cannot upload amounts that large.
Not found in any Intuit source
Searched 2026-10-13 (the three US articles above; Intuit's other regional editions were not read); none states:
- whether thousands separators (
1,234.56) are accepted in amount cells; - whether currency symbols (
$) are accepted; - whether parentheses for negatives (
(100.00)) are accepted; - whether the 4-column order may be Debit before Credit, or other header names (Expense/Income, Withdrawal/Deposit) are accepted;
- an exhaustive list of accepted date formats, or how QBO disambiguates
1/2/2018; - whether a header row is mandatory.
Rules wanderbooks applies on these points are CONVENTION or DECISION, not Intuit's.