Will QFX files dominate over OFX?

March 20, 2010 at 5:45 PM · Filed under Microsoft Money ·Tagged Bank of America QFX, Chase QFX, ofx downloads, PocketSense, QFX files

As Money gets closer to going OFFLINE, I can foresee some financial institutions dropping OFX (sometimes referred to as Microsoft Money format) downloads and only offering QFX downloads instead.

If this does occur, it should be very easy to adapt the scripts to also have the capability of downloading QFX files, and then “scrubbing” them by merely changing the extension to OFX, since everything in a QFX file is OFX compliant.   The  unique  “INTU.BID” tag’s value that Quicken uses to makes a connection back to Intuit (“call home”), and verify that the financial institution has licensed (PAID for annually) the right to import that file into Intuit’s software, isn’t of any consequence to Money.   By scrubbing the QFX file, it wouldn’t be necessary to register the QFX extension with Money’s Import Handler (which is an alternative fix though).

It is only Quicken, which is after all a proprietary application, that will not process plain vanilla OFX files; apps that can process plain vanilla OFX (like Money) can process QFX.   I only bring this up as I keep wondering what our financial institutions plan on changing as we get closer to the January OFFLINE cutoff, and what else we can do in preparation of any potential changes.

If you download QFX files from your financial institution’s website (that is the default choice on Bank of America’s Mastercard website now) , you can Save and then import them directly into Money [File->Import->Downloaded Statement...], but you may have to click on type: ALL FILES to see the file. You can skip the Save step and have the file import on it’s own by following the registry addition below.

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Cal Learner has developed this registry fix that you could run, so that QFX files will behave just like OFX and will import into Money automatically:

Here is a 2-step way to create that registry file:

1. Open a new Notepad file, and paste the following lines between the ===delimiter lines=== below into the file.

==================begin QFX2OFX.reg========

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.qfx]
“Content Type”=”text/qfx”
@=”ofx.Document”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.qfx\ofx.Document]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.qfx\ofx.Document\ShellNew]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/x-qfx]
“Extension”=”.qfx”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\text/qfx]
“Extension”=”.qfx”

================end QFX2OFX.reg==========

2. Save the file as “QFX2OFX.reg” and Run.

-ameridan

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[UPDATE fromPocketSense comments March 20, 2010 7:32 PM ]

Robert said…   Regarding the Money OFX and Quicken QIF files, I don’t think any changes will be necessary for scripted downloads.    The scripts currently default to “looking like” Quicken to the server (not Money), and the file extension of .ofx is created by the script… not the institution. 

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