README.HBCI
-----------
1. Introduction
2. Requirements
3. Quick Tour
4. Known Banks
5. Call for Feedback
6. Known Problems
7. Credits
1. Introduction
-----------
Since version 1.7.2, GnuCash features HBCI online banking
support. This makes it the world's first *free* HBCI-enabled personal
finance manager.
HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface) is a standard used by German
banks for offering online banking service. Through this standard,
business actions like statement retrieval, initiate bank transfer, or
direct debits can be invoked by any HBCI-compliant client application,
i.e. now also from GnuCash. Authentification and encryption is done
through a bank-issued chip card or a self-generated file-based RSA key
pair. (In the latter case, the user prints out his public key finger
print on paper, signs it, and sends it to his bank.)
Please note that the programmers of GnuCash cannot give warranties for
anything. In particular, some banks are running a poorly implemented
HBCI on their servers, which does not give you any proper feedback
when a transfer order has been rejected and will not be
executed. Please do not rely on time-critical money transfers through
HBCI for now.
2. Requirements
------------
OpenHBCI 0.9.11 or later: Get openhbci and openhbci-devel from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openhbci
which in turn requires:
OpenSSL any 0.9.x, http://www.openssl.org
For chipcard support, you also need openhbci-plugin-ddvcard from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openhbci
which in turn requires
Libchipcard 0.9 or later, http://sourceforge.net/projects/libchipcard
Then you can build GnuCash 1.7.x/1.8.x with:
./configure --enable-hbci --with-openhbci-prefix=/your/openhbci/prefix
Optionally, for automated checking of destination account numbers you
need the package ktoblzcheck,
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ktoblzcheck
And you need to apply at your Bank to get HBCI access. The bank will
provide you with some paper work which is needed during HBCI setup in
GnuCash. (For problems during compile see 6. Known Problems below.)
3. Quick Tour
----------
HBCI support is accessible through a few new menu items:
* Setup: In the main window with the account hierarchy, the "Tools" menu
(German: "Werkzeuge") now contains the item "HBCI Setup" ("HBCI
Einrichtung"). This menu item opens the HBCI Setup druid which will
guide you through the setup.
- Chip card users will need to run this only once. (see 6. Known
Problems below if this doesn't work)
- Users with self-generated file-based keys need to run this for the
first time to generate their keys and have their Ini-Letter printed,
which they need to send to their bank. After some days when the bank
has processed that letter, they need to run the HBCI Setup druid
a second time.
- Either way, eventually you are presented with a list of
HBCI-accessible accounts, and can choose which of your gnucash
account should be matched with each HBCI account.
* Account functions: In the register window of your GnuCash accounts,
you now find the submenu item "Online Actions" ("Online Aktionen") in
the menu "Actions" ("Aktionen"). Each item in this submenu invokes a
particular HBCI action: "Get Balance", "Get Transactions", "New
Transfer", "New Direct Debit" ("Abfrage Saldo", "Abfrage Kontoums�tze",
"Neue �berweisung", "Neue Lastschrift"). Of course those menu items will
only do anything if that particular GnuCash account was matched to a
HBCI account in the setup druid; otherwise, simply nothing will happen.
How to perform each action will be explained in the respective
dialog windows.
* Preference: By default, the user has to enter his password/PIN each
time a HBCI action is performed. If you prefer to have your password
cached in memory during your gnucash session, you can enable this by
activating the appropriate button in the Edit->Preference dialog
("Bearbeiten->Einstellungen") in the tab "Online Banking & Importing".
Of course the password/PIN is *never ever* stored on disk anywhere.
* HBCI Connection window preference: The HBCI Connection window can
either disappear once the connection is closed, or it can still be
left open so that you can read the bank's feedback messages about the
order. The setting of this respective checkbox in the Connection
window is remembered from session to session.
* Debug Preference: If HBCI connectivity does not work the way you
expected it to work, you can enable a whole lot of HBCI debugging
output. First, on the "General" page of the preferences, activate the
checkbox for "Show Advanced Setting". Then, on the newly appearing
"Advanced" page, activate "HBCI Verbose Debug Messages" to get much
more debugging output.
4. Known Banks
-----------
OpenHBCI/Gnucash is successfully being used with:
- Deutsche Bank
- Kreissparkasse Hannover
- Hamburger Sparkasse
- Sparkasse Wilhelmshaven
- and many more, see http://linuxwiki.de/OpenHBCI
5. Call for Feedback
-----------------
If you encounter an error, you can report it in German language on
gnucash-de@gnucash.org (Subscriber-only list; please subscribe on
http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-de ) and on on
openhbci-general@lists.sf.net. Please remember to include the version
numbers of gnucash and openhbci as well as any console output and/or
HBCI connection log (can be obtained through the HBCI Verbose Debug
Messages preference mentioned above).
Also, if you managed to successfully setup a bank that we don't have in
our list yet, please let us know as well. We appreciate any feedback on
this new functionality.
6. Known Problems
--------------
* If the compilation of GnuCash fails with 'cc1: changing search order
for system directory ...' as one of the last message lines, then
call ./configure with the additional option
--enable-error-on-warning=no and recompile.
* If you don't see the menu items mentioned above, then GnuCash was
not built/compiled with --enable-hbci. Please try to compile GnuCash
by yourself or contact the place where you got your pre-compiled
version of GnuCash from.
* If you cannot select "Chip Card" as security medium: For openhbci
0.9.10 and newer: You need to install the package
openhbci-plugin-ddvcard, too.
For openhbci earlier than 0.9.10, it means that your installed
version of the OpenHBCI library has been compiled without chipcard
support. You will need to recompile OpenHBCI while libchipcard is
installed, and then you (probably) need to recompile GnuCash.
* Currently each HBCI action can only be executed while you are
online; support for off-line preparation and queueing is not yet
implemented.
If you think you can do better on any of these issues -- why not give it
a try and start coding on yet more HBCI features? Gnucash only requires
some C and Gtk/Gnome knowledge, and other developers in the IRC channel
#gnucash, irc.gnome.org, will always assist you with problems arising
during coding. You don't need to know anything about HBCI since OpenHBCI
will do everything for you. Also, I (Christian Stimming) will withdraw
from HBCI/Gnucash development due to personal/time constraints in the
medium term. So if you want more features, why don't *you* start coding
today? We definitely welcome any new developer who contributes even the
smallest improvements.
7. Credits
-------
The excellent OpenHBCI library is written by Fabian Kaiser
<fabian.kaiser@gmx.de>, Martin Preuss <openhbci@aquamaniac.de>, and
Christian Stimming <stimming@tuhh.de>. Libchipcard is written by Martin
Preuss <openhbci@aquamaniac.de>.
By Christian Stimming <stimming@tuhh.de>
May 31st, 2003