Convert American Express CSV export files to QIF format.

Several years ago, American Express dropped support for the QIF format for exporting statements. However, American Express still supports exporting data in Comma Separated Value file (CSV) format. This software allows you to convert the CSV statement into a QIF file on your local computer.

Here is how to run this program:

amex2qif statement.csv > statement.qif

where 'statement.csv' is a CSV statement downloaded from American Express.

This will create the file 'statement.qif' from the CSV file 'statement.csv'.

The program supports several options. Do:

amex2qif --help

to see the supported options

The program supports multiple formats of CSV files from AMEX. They are not explicitly versioned, so you need to figure out which format you need based on the order of the column headers.

Legacy format versions have all been converted to numbered versions. You may use either the older legacy version name or its new number when providing a value to the --format argument.

The supported CSV format versions are as follows:

   old      (0)=>date, ref, payee, card-holder-name, card-number, memo, amount
   new      (1)=>date, payee, card-holder-name, card-holder-number-end, amount
   new2     (2)=>Date, Description, Category, type, Amount
   default  (3)=>date, ref, amount, payee, memo
   (noname) (4)=>Date, Description, Amount, 'Extended Details',
                  'Appears On Your Statement As Address', City/State,
                  'Zip Code', Country, Reference, Category

The most recent format, #4, was added based on an AMEX csv download from May 2022

Regarding some of the legacy formats:

In the old-style, the columns are:

    1:Date, 2:Ref?, 3:Payee, 4:Card-holder-name, 5:Card-number, 8:Amount

It is unclear what AMEX expects to be in columns 6 and 7.

There is no memo in the old-style CSV files from AMEX.  However if you edit
the CSV file before coverting to a QIF file, insert a memo in column 6 and the
it will be added to the memo field in the QIF output for that item.

In the new-style, the columns are:

    1:Data, 2:Reference, 3:Amount, 4:Payee, 5:Memo

It seems AMEX is in the habit of changing the header order / format in its CSV downloads frequently. If you would like to add a new one, it is quite easy to do so.

• In formatVersions.py: add a new subclass at the bottom like the others. Replace the assignments for each of the variables in the returned tuple with the proper directives to obtain the desired values from the row set
• Increase the number at the end of the name of your subclass by one to make it distinct from the other subclasses. e.g. FormatVersion4 => FormatVersion5
• In amexcsv2qif, add your new version number (and description) to the parser setup in ArgumentParser, parser.add_argument('--format', ...)

If you provide a 'categories.txt' file in the same directory in which you execute the amex2qif program or in the directory containing the amex2qif program, it will used to automatically assign categories to transactions if the payee matches know vendors.

Format of 'categories.txt'

Each line should have the vendor name, a comma, and then the category to be used when the payee matches that vendor. Empty lines are ignored. A default version of this file can be kept in the directory of the amex2qif executable. If a copy of this file is found in the directory that this ommand is run in, it overrides the version in the executable directory.

TBD... First you must install Python on your windows system.

This work is not connected to American Express or sponsored by it in any way!

-Jonathan Cameron [email protected]