Cannot delete a "restored" ContribX account created by MD
After importing a QIF file from Quicken, I have spent the last 4 days cleaning up the accounts. One of my IRAs contains a contribution for Tax year 2003, which was actually made in April 2004. In attempting to make the MD account mirror my Quicken register, I deleted what looked like extraneous negative entries. Everything looked good, until I quit and restarted MD, after which, I discovered that MD had created a new account to serve as the other side of this particular Contribution. It's called "restored 26b11 ... from txn 20040408 2003 contribution 3500." I opened the register for the IRA account and changed the "category" for the contribution, switching it from the "restored" account to the checking account from which most other contributions were made. The IRA account is still fine. But there are still (now) three "restored Contribx" accounts. The title of one shows a +3500 while each of the other two show a tile with -3500. Two of them are empty with zero balances, while the third shows a -3500 balance. This is even AFTER opening that restored account, going to the other side and correcting to the correct bank account!! No matter what I do, it seems I cannot sort this out. How can I get rid of (or at least hide) these no-longer-necessary accounts?
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Maddy on 19 May, 2025 06:53 PM
Hi,
We are sorry to hear about the problem you have encountered.
A method that some versions of Quicken has used with initial balances is to transfer the amount from the same account, so it does a transfer from itself.
As Moneydance is based on Accounting principles this is a totally invalid thing to do so on occasions it creates another account of the same name with an "X" appended to the name. To see if this is what has happened open this account and see if it has a single entry in it which reflects the opening balance of the account.
If it does you can use the Account Info screen in Moneydance to set an initial balance as outlined here and then remove the account with the X at the end of the name and the transaction in it.
I hope this information is helpful. Please let us know if you have further questions or need more assistance.
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Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
2 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 19 May, 2025 07:05 PM
Thank you Maddy, but I have already been following the process you describe for my other accounts and have successfully deleted the "X"-appended accounts after correcting the entries in the main account. But somehow, MD has detected that this was an IRA contribution for a specific year, and even after I correct the entry in the main account, the "restored" contra account persists. And evidently, any attempt to zero it out merely creates a new "restored" contra account, neither of which can be deleted. How am I supposed to get this cleaned up?
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May 19, 2025, 14:53 by [email blocked]:
Support Staff 3 Posted by Maddy on 19 May, 2025 07:23 PM
It might be worth referring you to this article of the Knowledge Base on Possible Problems After QIF Import.
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Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
4 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 19 May, 2025 07:27 PM
Thank you, but again, I read that article before starting my data transfer. None of it applies to automatically-"restored" accounts that don't work like x-appended accounts.
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May 19, 2025, 15:24 by [email blocked]:
Support Staff 5 Posted by Maddy on 20 May, 2025 12:34 PM
Would you be able to send us a copy of your Moneydance error logs? The logs should include information on what might be causing the issue.
They are saved on your computer as an errlog.txt file. You need to navigate to:/home/(yourusername)/.moneydance/errlog.txt
Finally you can copy the full content into your next reply here.
Thank you
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Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
6 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 01:08 PM
Thank you for your help Maddy. The error logs are attached.
Support Staff 7 Posted by Maddy on 20 May, 2025 01:25 PM
Please try using this fix:
In the Menu: Transactions Tools, under "Update Functions" choose "FIX: Delete One sided transaction” and follow the on-screen instruction.
Finally restart Moneydance.
Please keep us posted on your progress, Thank you!
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Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
8 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 01:35 PM
It says I have no one-sided transactions to delete. MD automatically creates a contra-account. What's amazing is that even though the IRA account has been corrected to show that the contribution came from a checking account. MD is creating offsetting negative and positive "restored" accounts. I'd be happy if I could at least block both of them from appearing on the summary. For some reason, I can only block one of them. No matter what edits I make to these restored accounts, one of them always shows up in the summary and refuses to go inactive.
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May 20, 2025, 09:25 by [email blocked]:
9 Posted by dtd on 20 May, 2025 10:03 PM
CONTRIBX transfers from Quicken to Moneydance are an evil dance.
I moved in Nov 2019, and I figured out all the "vicissitudes" of moving to MD from Quicken. Except one. CONTRIBX. What you are describing above is indeed what happens, and figuring out how to fix these transaction types is a true detective struggle.
You are past where I ended up fixing them (removing/replacing them in the Quicken file and then importing), but I'm sure there is a methodology to fix them after the fact, but yes, it's a struggle to figure out what hoops you have to jump through.
10 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 10:06 PM
I could not delete them, but somehow I got them to hide. I clicked on them in the sidebar and then clicked "copy" the account. Nothing seemed to happen. But after that, I was able to edit the account to stop showing up on the summary, or the sidebar! Hooray.
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May 20, 2025, 18:03 by [email blocked]:
11 Posted by dwg on 20 May, 2025 10:18 PM
There are a couple of reasons for accounts to keep reappearing.
1. You are using syncing and the sync information has become confused. Rebuilding the shared data is often the fix for this.
2. There is an internal inconsistency in the file. This is harder one to fix you will often have to follow the transactions in the account in question and either change or delete those.
12 Posted by dtd on 20 May, 2025 10:21 PM
My initial thought would be to expunge anything contribx on BOTH sides of a single transaction, get rid of anything peripherally created (i.e. totally destroy them) and then recreate a normal transfer between the IRA account and the cash account to fix the transaction value discrepancy. I'm not saying I know this works, but I think it is a direction to explore. Always make a backup before you begin of course.
I just hope you don't have many of these to deal with... (I had a lot.)
13 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 10:22 PM
Thank you for your help. I am not using sync (yet), but I'll keep that in mind. And I know what you mean about having to hunt and hunt to resolve inconsistencies.
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May 20, 2025, 18:18 by [email blocked]:
14 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 10:24 PM
That's a very good idea. I'll try that, right after I get my newly set-up download accounts reconciled.
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May 20, 2025, 18:22 by [email blocked]:
15 Posted by dtd on 20 May, 2025 10:26 PM
@dwg - if I remember correctly, when we discussed this in 2019, it indeed could have been 1. (but I didn't sync early on), but it seemed more likely something like 2... - i.e. how MD managed the QIF import of CONTRIBX - we even looked over the QIF file together trying to figure out what MD was doing with these.
And "follow the transactions in the account in question and either change or delete those" was more the direction [and then replacing the ones changed/deleted with one that wasn't inconsistent]
16 Posted by marsupial.wrigg... on 20 May, 2025 10:31 PM
The thing that's really weird about all this is that I had a whole series of IRA accounts, due to changing custodians over the years. This is the only one I had trouble with, probably because it was the first one I dealt with and I didn't pay as close attention. All the rest seemed to have two entries for the contribX, a positive and a negative. Only one of those two entries contained the ContribX label. So I deleted the other one, which happened to be the positive one. And then I changed the sign of the remaining entry, to reflect the deposit correctly. Evidently, I didn't do it that way for this one account, and I've been "punished" for it!!
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May 20, 2025, 18:26 by [email blocked]:
17 Posted by dtd on 20 May, 2025 10:38 PM
That sounds plausible. So now you have to fix the one remaining account (which now has tendrils into unintended strangely named accounts (i.e. MD is trying to deal with the inconsistency created, but can't do so properly)
18 Posted by dwg on 21 May, 2025 12:37 AM
@dtd Yes in your case you were not using syncing so it was a case of the second option.
Quicken has a lot to answer for in how it handles data.
ContributX has proven to be one of the more difficult transactions to handle and following the money seems to be the only way to resolve it once in Moneydance.
There is no really good way that Moneydance can handle what are effectively invalid transactions, it mostly does a reasonable job, but given the limitations of QIF and the creative transactions inherent in Quicken it will never be perfect. We have had many discussions of where detail changes could be made to improve it, but never make it completely perfect.