Moving from Quicken
Hi,
I have been using Quicken since 1996, my current version is Quicken 2002 deluxe. So I have a lot of data.
I have tried other personal finance software packages in the past but the import from Quicken has not been able to cope with the types of data I have in particular Investment transactions and Foreign currency accounts, (as opposed to foreign currency transfers).
Is there anyway I can do a trial import to see if Moneydance does a better of the import before I purchase the programme?
Comments are currently closed for this discussion. You can start a new one.
Keyboard shortcuts
Generic
| ? | Show this help |
|---|---|
| ESC | Blurs the current field |
Comment Form
| r | Focus the comment reply box |
|---|---|
| ^ + ↩ | Submit the comment |
You can use Command ⌘ instead of Control ^ on Mac
1 Posted by Ian L on 23 Oct, 2015 03:00 PM
If you haven't already, I encourage you to download our free trial version and experiment with the program before you decide if you would like to purchase it. 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 importing your Quicken data. 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 here:
http://infinitekind.com/downloads
For more information on how to get the most out of your trial period, check out our blog post on the subject.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance, and thank you for your interest in Moneydance!
Ian
Infinite Kind Support
2 Posted by ianpmitchell on 24 Oct, 2015 04:57 PM
hi,
Thanks for that. I couldn't get the import to work, then I realised was
trying to import the raw Quicken file rather than the QIF file.
Anyway I have imported my data and most things are looking good or I can at
least see how to correct the problems, (mainly around foreign currency
transfers).
My big issue is I have just started checking the investment side of things
and ALL of the transactions are duplicated. Example screen dump attached
Any ideas why?
Regards
Ian
Visit my web site - https://sites.google.com/site/amodeltractionenginebuild
3 Posted by jackie on 24 Oct, 2015 05:29 PM
Hello - can I ask you to explain this further, please? I am trying to do exactly the same thing. I tried to export my data to an external hard drive (as I normally do for backup purposes), but it said there were no files there. I therefore backed it up to C:\Program Files (x86)\QUICKENW.QIF, but when I tried to import it from here, there is nothing there. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
4 Posted by ianpmitchell on 24 Oct, 2015 07:38 PM
Hi Jackie. Not sure if you are using the same version of Quicken as me but
this is what I did:-
in Quicken:-
click File
Export/QIF File
checked the "QIF File to Export to" so I knew where it was going
In "Quicken Account to Export from" go right to the top of the list and
picked <All Accounts>
I then made sure the Dates covered all the dates of transactions in my
file, so I started at 1/1/1996
In the "Include in Export" I ticked everything except "For Macintosh Users"
The clicked OK
After that I into Moneydance:-
Clicked File
Import
navigated to the directory where the QIF file was
The Import QIF File dialog came up and I
clicked Import to New Account
From Another Program
I did the "Import Account Info Only" first because I have lots of foreign
currency accounts that need their currency setting up before importing the
transactions. I think you can skip this step if you are working in a single
currency ie leave the "Import Account Info Only" box unticked and just hit
OK.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Ian
Visit my web site - https://sites.google.com/site/amodeltractionenginebuild
5 Posted by Ben Spencer on 24 Oct, 2015 07:55 PM
Hi Ian
I am afraid I have no explanation for why you are seeing duplicates in your investment account. QIF imports are almost always problematic and the problems vary depending on the version of Quicken you are coming from. There isn't an official standard for the QIF file format and every version of Quicken produces files that differ in some way or another. I haven't seen the particular problem you are describing before but I do not think there is anything I can do to improve the situation. I think you only options are to either manually correct the data or to start new empty accounts.
Ben Spencer
Infinite Kind Support
6 Posted by jackie on 25 Oct, 2015 03:39 PM
Hi Ian - thank you very much for getting back to me so quickly. I am working
with Quicken 2002 too, though my Quicken files date back to 1995! I had
followed exactly the same steps as you describe, but the point at which the
process sticks is that, after following all the Export steps, when I check
in the file location, it doesn't include the current data (in fact all the
QUICKENW files are dated 2010, which was when I transferred the database to
this computer). I have tried several times, and Quicken asks if I want to
replace the existing file (which I guess confirms it is somewhere) but then
when I go to the location, it's not there. I've tried saving the data to an
external hard drive, but then Moneydance doesn't pick it up. This is
obviously not a MoneyDance problem, as I haven't got this far - though it
does confirm why I need to ditch Quicken as soon as possible in favour of a
sorted programme..
If I get that far, I shall follow your advice on accounts, as my accounts
are split between GBP & EUR accounts.
Thanks for the advice, anyway,
Jackie
_____
From: Ian Mitchell [mailto:[email blocked]]
Sent: 24 October 2015 20:38
To: [email blocked]
Subject: Re: Moving from Quicken [Switching from another Personal Finance
program #694]
7 Posted by Ian L on 28 Oct, 2015 02:45 PM
Hi Jackie,
Where are you saving your exports to? You can search your computer for QIF files to find them.
Ian
Infinite Kind Support
8 Posted by jackie on 29 Oct, 2015 10:16 AM
From: Ian [mailto:[email blocked]]
Sent: 28 October 2015 14:46
To: [email blocked]
Subject: Re: Moving from Quicken [Switching from another Personal Finance
program #694]
// Hi Ian,
Thanks for the reply - however, I have just about given up on Moneydance,
having spent so many hours trying to import data from Quicken. I did finally
manage to do it, but then every single transaction (20 years worth - my data
goes back to 1995!) had been imported to a single defunct account. I deleted
the lot and tried again from the start, but with the same result. I also
found that all my categories & sub-categories had been lost. The totals
don't match anyway, but then as I have 5 euro-based accounts, I guess they
would be skewing the position (having read about the issues around foreign
currency transfers). I think it's not a runner for me. As I am about to get
a new computer and am fairly sure the switch to Windows 10 will make Quicken
2002 impossible (though I will try it), I am now considering the
alternatives of keeping the old computer just for a Quicken archive &
starting from scratch with a new package - sadly, I'm not sure there is
anything else I can do. After being let down by Quicken in the UK, who's to
say Moneydance won't follow the same route?? Have you succeeded with your
own transfer satisfactorily?Please reply above this line
9 Posted by ianpmitchell on 29 Oct, 2015 02:23 PM
Hi Jackie,
I am now up and running with Moneydance and there is very few things I miss
from Quicken. The only 2 I can think of at the moment is a) getting a
transaction "report" for a particular security, (You can get a list of
transactions for the security but it will not allow you to copy it to the
clipboard and therefore get it into a spreadsheet)
b) You can sub total transaction reports but not show a report that is only
the sub totals. I needed this to find out which month had a transaction
that was causing a transaction imbalance. In the end I exported the report
to excel and did the sub totalling there.
So Things to be aware of.
Quicken works perfectly well on Windows 10, I run on windows 10.
I have tried at least 2 other software packages and given. I used to work
on big software projects and data conversion was always the thing that
caused most trouble.
The import from Quicken.
1) if I were doing it again I would delete the 2 dummy accounts in
Moneydance, ie Current and Savings before I did anything else. I had
transactions with a category of "Savings" and rather than putting them in
the correct account Moneydance put them into the Dummy Savings account.
This was quite easily fixed.
2) The Import is a 3 part process.
(a) run the import with the "Import account info Only" box ticked
(b) Set the currency on the none GBP accounts, in your Case the Euro
accounts
(c) run the import again and you should get all your accounts with their
categories etc.
3) Transactions between foreign currency accounts are a mess and its just a
bit of a slog to fix them. *If *I remember correctly there are 2
transactions created for each foreign transaction transfer and one of them
can just be deleted, this is the one that doesn't have an exchange rate.
One of the transactions has the correct Foreign currency amount the other
has the correct GBP amount. I found I had enter both of these amounts into
each transfer transaction. Just entering the Euro amount changed the GBP
amount because of the exchange rate that already existed. I had both
Quicken and Moneydance open at the same time side by side on the screen
whilst I did this fix.
4) Transaction between Foreign Accounts of the same currency also got
screwed up, Euro to Euro. The transactions had an exchange rate. These were
very simple to fix, just clicking on the amount removed the exchange rate
stuff, so a couple of clicks and an Enter and they were fixed. (I had
foreign Currency Current accounts and Credit cards accounts and each
payment from the current account to pay the credit card bill had this
problem.)
5) Not sure if you have investment accounts, ie shares etc but these were
by far the biggest problem. Luckily it was always the same type of
transaction that caused the problem so it was easy to pick just those
transactions and change them, usually it was things like DivX transaction
missing the "To Account"
After this most accounts balanced.
6) All of my standing orders and direct debits had to be re-keyed.
My current account has over 6000 transactions and was out by £0.65p and I
even managed to find this by running reports in Quicken and moneydance that
summarized transactions by year to start with, Once I found the problem
year I run the same report for that year sub totalled by month, once I had
a list of transactions for the month that was problem it was very easy to
spot the missing transaction.
I downloaded a couple of the "Extensions" in Moneydance, the Find and
replace extension worked very well.
I found that a number of accounts had transactions that showed as
reconciled when they shouldn't have been or not reconciled when they should
have been. Once again this was a very quick fix once Support had told me
how to do it, less than 30 seconds. For example my current account had
100's of unreconciled transactions, mostly coming from our Shares Account.
I Clicked of the "Uncleared" button, clicked the first transaction, held
shift and clicked the last transaction so that all transactions were
selected, then held down the Control key and deselected those transactions
I didn't want cleared, right click, click "Cleared" and it was done. (It
took me longer to type this than it did to do the job....).
It took quite while to get everything moved across but I'm there and happy
with the result.
Regards
Ian
Visit my web site - https://sites.google.com/site/amodeltractionenginebuild
10 Posted by jackie on 29 Oct, 2015 05:16 PM
Thank you Ian for such a full reply, with much helpful advice which I'm sure I'll return to in due course. Congratulations on completing the process successfully! I had decided to give up on Moneydance, but decided to try again following your advice. However, the data set I had downloaded is so bizarrely random that I decided to start again. I am in the process of doing that & will let you know if it works!
System closed this discussion on 19 Mar, 2016 05:01 AM.