Online Banking Setup for GnuCash 2.2.6 under Windows XP

Written by jeremy on September 19, 2008

gnucash-logo

Since my linux raid decided to futz up (read I screwed it up) I’ve been using my Windows partition out of necessity until I have the time to rebuild my software raid 5 and gentoo. Until then we’ve been using GnuCash under Windows which has worked ok, but it is not as nice as the linux version by far. We use GnuCash for our business and it is critical that we have all the functions working in it. One of the things that I really missed was online banking. I could pull in all the transactions and clear them under GnuCash as well as making reconciling alot easier. The reason that GnuCash could not connect to my online bank was that the version of libofx it was saying it was an older version of Quicken and thus was denied from my bank. I read some more online and …

found that you could compile libofx with a new APPVER or binary replace the version in the library file. So I took the easy way out and replaced the string in the .dll file. Here is how I did it:

  • Downloaded xvi32 hex editor (free)
  • Opened “C:\Program Files\gnucash\bin\libofx-3.dll” under XVi32
  • Searched for 1200 as a text string
  • Found the string that says APPVER right after it and clicked on the 2 of 1200 and hit 5 to make it 1500
  • Saved the file, started up GnuCash and voila!

In all this I am assuming you already know how to setup GnuCash for Online Banking. If not you can check it out on their ofx setup page. That is it for now. Hope you find this useful as I’m sure I’ll have to come back to this at some point in time in the future!

And remember if you use GnuCash for tracking your expenses and income make sure you have a backup off-site. I recommend Mozy for windows and Mac, but any way you do it you’ll be thankful you did.

Posted Under: business, howto, money, software

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11 responses to “Online Banking Setup for GnuCash 2.2.6 under Windows XP”

  1. gina says:

    Thanks for the review. I’m seriously SERIOUSLY looking into getting rid of M$ Money and switching to GnuCash. What drives most of you guys nuts though is that, yeah, I’m on XP. That whole mid-section of your post flew right over my head 🙂 Will I have to know these kinds of things to set up online banking? I stopped staying on top of things after DOS was overtaken by Windows, and my 30-something year old brain doesn’t feel up to learning to program anymore!

  2. gina says:

    Thanks for your review on GnuCash… I’m trying to get out from under M$ Money and see it as a very possible option – especially since it’s supposed to handle some business transactions. I’m hoping it can handle my schedule C and such. I’ve always imported into Turbotax in the past…

    Anyway, the online banking is important to me, but I must admit that the mid-section of your entry flew right over my head 🙂 Something died in me after DOS was overtaken by Windows, and my 30-something brain hopes to not have to think about hex editors and such anymore! I’m hoping it’s easier than it looks.

    And I have to admit, with shame, that I’m an XP user out of ignorance. I realize no one respects me now 🙂

  3. Bob says:

    Thanks for this entry. I ran into exactly the same issue and this resolved it quite nicely. I’m glad to hear the Linux version is superior to Windows, because its not at all bad on Windows from what I’ve seen so far.

  4. Jerome says:

    Thanks for the entry. I had Gnucash on my win2000 computer and I liked it. Now that I am installing it on my new machine, I feel as though I am going to pull all of my hair out. I can’t seem to get the online business to work.
    Okay, I think that I followed you directions downloaded the editor, made my changes in libofx 2.2.6 and then closed the program. Life still doesn’t work. Was I suppose to recompile. And if so how I do dat?

    Thanks
    Jerome

  5. jeremy says:

    Jerome,

    No need to recompile. You do need to make sure you click save in xvi32 after you make the 1200 to 1500 change. If you just close it I don’t think it even asks if you want to save.

    Jeremy

  6. Jerome Bias says:

    ouch. my head hurts, but I am hard headed. I’m frustrated, because I think that I am missing something incredibly simple here.
    I now realize that in reinstalling Gnucash on my new computer I am switching from Win 2000 to Win XP, and that I am switching to the latest downloadable version of Gnucash, but this should work.

    I realized that the reason why your solution didn’t work for me is that I am having a different problem. I am getting an error of “Wrong account type,” which he gives a solution to.
    I know how to down load and extract stuff, but I ave no idea where I need to put the files or how to add/compile patches.

    I would really appreciate a little hand holding or at least pointing me in the right direction.
    Thanks,

    Jerome

  7. Jerome says:

    Well. It didn’t work, and I think I know why.
    I am getting a different error than the one that you are fixing. I am getting the “wrong account type Error.” I know that the fix for the error is on the setup page, but I need some hand holding in order to make it work. (don’t ask me how I made it work last time) I know how to download stuff and unzip files. What I don’t know is where to place them or the latest version of aqbanking or libofx is appropriate.
    Other pertinent information is that I realized that in setting up Gnucash on the new computer I switched from Win 2000 to Win XP (duh), don’t know the significances of this. In the reset I also downloaded a new version of Gnucash.
    I would really appreciate it if you could shed some light on this area for me. You help would be great appreciated.

    Thank you,

    Jerome

  8. Ron says:

    I tried replacing 1200 with 1500 and 1800. It didn’t work. I still get “Application or version is unsupported”.

    I am trying to download National City Credit Card Transactions.

    Any suggestions?

  9. Jeremy says:

    I was able to find the the appropriate version by modifying ofx-ba.py from http://www.jongsma.org/gc/ I did this on linux, but it is pretty easy to setup a python environment in XP – http://www.python.org/download/windows/

    I’m not using gnucash on windows as much so I won’t have the time to troubleshoot this, but please post back and update the gnucash wiki http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/S....._GnuCash_2 if you find a fix for your situation.
    .-= Jeremy´s last blog ..Adding PECL Uploadprogress to 1&1 shared hosting for Drupal FileField =-.

  10. Sometimes i do online banking but there were times that I get a systems error…I hope the application would be developed well soon. Thanks a lot!

  11. John says:

    My bank (BB&T) requires specific APPID and APPVER values. I had to set them to QWIN and 1700 before anything would work. I am sure other options would work, but I just picked values for the most recent version of quicken I could find. The APPID and APPVER definitely had to match up to a real product though.

    see:
    http://ofxblog.wordpress.com/ofx-appids/