tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:/discussions/switching-from-another-personal-finance-program/15611-looking-for-a-replacement-for-subscription-based-quickenInfinite Kind: Discussion 2020-05-01T00:10:24Ztag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T16:41:20Z2020-01-27T16:41:20ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>Hi Rita,</p>
<p>A major feature of Moneydance is our absolute defence of your privacy. By default, all of your data stays on your computer, encrypted and completely under your control. None of your data or information or sent to/stored by our company, or on any cloud service or server - unless you choose to do so.</p>
<p>If you choose to enable syncing to share data with a mobile device or another computer (not required), then your data is communicated over a medium that you choose - either Dropbox, or a shared folder of your choice.<br>
If you set this up, all synced data is fully end-to-end encrypted, which means that even Dropbox (or your chosen shared file service) cannot decrypt and access the data.</p>
<p>When you purchase the program, it's a one-off payment and not a subscription or a recurring fee. You're always entitled to the next version of the program for free, and further upgrades are discounted at 50%.<br>
That being said, we never force upgrades or 'sunset' older versions of the program, so you can continue to use the same version for as long as you wish.</p>
<p>If you haven't already, I encourage you to download our free trial version and experiment with the program. The demo version is fully functional and allows you to manually enter 100 transactions. Imported transactions are not limited, so you'll be able to fully test downloading data from your bank, and importing data from other personal finance software.<br>
If you decide to purchase the program at a later date you can keep all your data, the license key simply unlocks the ability to manually enter more transactions. You can download the trial version of Moneydance from <a href="https://infinitekind.com/download-moneydance-personal-finance-software">here</a>.</p>
<p>Thank you for your interest in Moneydance.</p>
<p>--<br>
Andrew, Infinite Kind Support</p></div>Andrewtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T20:25:46Z2020-01-27T20:25:47ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>I am in the same situation. Been a quicken user for years but do not want to switch to the subscription based system.</p>
<p>However, in trying to switch to MoneyDance, I have found it to be unworkable. After several attempts, I was able to move my Quicken data over. But now, every time I update my transactions from my bank, each transaction get re-duplicated (as if it was a new transaction each time).</p>
<p>Now that Quicken is ending online banking support for non-subscription versions, MoneyDance has a great chance to gain customers, but not if the transition is so problematic.</p>
<p>I've tried several times now, and have been unable to get something that works. I think that you need to have a step-by-step tutorial on how to convert from Quicken (including set-up of online banking/bill-pay).</p></div>Marktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T20:47:35Z2020-01-27T20:47:35ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>I believe I have an idea of what may be happening here.</p>
<p>When you migrate from Quicken you use the QIF format to transfer the transaction information. QIF is the best we have available, but it is not perfect and was never intended for this task so it has its limitations.</p>
<p>When you automatically download data you are using the OFX format, this is much newer and has been designed for online application based banking using a client (Moneydance) Server (your bank) model. To avoid duplicates OFX incorporates the concept of a unique Transaction ID for each transaction thus giving client software like Moneydance something that can be used to prevent duplicates.</p>
<p>The QIF format has no idea about Transaction IDs. So they are lost when you migrate, there is no avoiding this, OFX cannot be used for migrations it has no category information in the spec.</p>
<p>Hence you download data when you move to Moneydance the result is duplicates, not the fault of the software it can only work with what it has been given. The way to populate the transaction ID field is to use Moneydance's merge function with the downloaded transactions, which would combine data from the migrated transaction with the data from the downloaded transaction and thus bring in the transaction ID.</p>
<p>If after this is done there are still duplicates occurring that would imply something is wrong somewhere.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T21:20:01Z2020-01-27T21:20:01ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>I am not support staff, just a user.<br>
Hi Mark</p>
<p>The merge process dwg suggests you need to perform to avoid duplication the next time you download from your bank is covered in this article <a href="https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/confirm-downloaded-data">https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/c...</a></p>
<p>Hope this helps.</p></div>derekkent23tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T21:27:56Z2020-01-27T21:27:58ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>Thanks for trying to help, but if that's the procedure, I don't see how Moneydance could ever be usable.</p>
<p>I have thousands of transactions, that I would need to individually merge, and then the next time I download from the bank I would need to do this all over again.</p>
<p>I don't know how Quicken avoided this problem, but they did it somehow.</p></div>Marktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T21:34:27Z2020-01-27T21:34:27ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>The Bank's OFX servers generally keep between 30-90 days worth of transactions on them so it generally does not involve anything like all of your data. The problem should only occur if you migrate between different Financial Management software products and only involve the transferred data, not any newly downloaded data.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-27T23:01:47Z2020-01-27T23:01:47ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>Just to add: as long as you are connecting to your bank directly, or importing a QFX or OFX file, the merging of duplicates should only be a one-time process. Those formats contain a unique transaction ID for each entry, which allows Moneydance to know if it has seen a transaction before. After that point, even if you download the same transaction again, Moneydance will recognize that it is already there, and just ignore it.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the QIF format, the only mostly usable format Quicken allows for exports, these unique IDs are not included in exports from Quicken.</p>
<p>Ethan<br>
Infinite Kind Support</p></div>Ethantag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-29T22:10:41Z2020-01-29T22:10:41ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>Just a user here who converted in the last couple of months.</p>
<p>Everything above is good advice. And this should be a one time event.</p>
<p>In my case, I found the following easier than a merge (which is necessary to have the transaction id which prevents this happening over and over.)</p>
<p>Before you make the QIF file, reconcile EVERY transaction. Then create the QIF export.<br>
(It is easy to start over in MD, I did it many times).</p>
<p>Once you do the initial download for each account, you can now easily distinguish between Quicken and new downloads because of the reconcile item. Do a sort, then delete the OLD transactions from Quicken which match the new ones. Then you should be done, as the QIF items did not have the transaction id and the new ones do. Shouldn't happen again.</p>
<p>I found that preferable to the merge option, at least for myself.</p></div>dtdtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-30T23:05:26Z2020-01-30T23:05:28ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>I'm a newbie to Moneydance this week, hoping to be a permanent convert but not quite there yet due to some challenges.</p>
<p>Mark - if you really want to dump quicken, you might have to give Moneydance more time and effort to get it humming. From what I've read on several threads and played with in the trial version so far, I think the downloading of xans will work out. My 1st amex download had 171 xans that I had to "merge" with all the ones in my register. A bit of a pain, but I think my next download will be cleaner. In the meantime though, there's a little button in the upper right corner of an account register, just to the right of the New Transaction Button. When you click that, it will create a separate lower frame for that acct with the downloaded unreconciled xans in it. The upper frame will have your acct and the balances all intact as imported. Maybe that will help you a little if you are still willing to try getting Moneydance to work.</p>
<p>Rita asked if there are tags or class groupings. I'm not sure about the latter, but yes there are tags in Moneydance. Mine imported over from quicken. For some reason, the QIF import (i did the "all accounts" QIF file method) created an account called Unknown with a subaccount called TAGS. This did not appear to have any relevance to all of my transactions that were tagged. I deleted the $0 entries in the TAGS account, then deleted both TAGS and Unknown. This didn't affect any of my xans.<br>
In terms of reports, on the left side pane with your accounts, if you scroll down there's a section for Graphs/Reports. One of them is a Tag Summary. I haven't dug in deep there yet, but it appears to be a good start.</p>
<p>Question for Infinite Kind tech support regarding TAGS - is there a way to manage the tags? For instance can I "hide" tags or add descriptions to tags?</p></div>jkosatag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/480432572020-01-31T00:04:25Z2020-01-31T00:04:25ZLooking for a replacement for subscription-based Quicken<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>Tags are effectively just text strings, you can use them to further categorize transactions or to isolate or group them in reports.</p>
<p>There is no structure behind tags, so you cannot add descriptions or hide them, they either exist or they do not exist.</p>
<p>You can add, modify or delete tags from a transaction that is about it. The Find and Replace Extension is the general way of working with them.</p></div>dwg