Creating new categories on the fly
ming
I've seen a couple of discussions where the ability or lack of capability to create new categories on the fly was discussed. However, I have not seen anywhere where it was acknowledged as an enhancement request. I don't know about most people but I find it very annoying while I'm entering a new transaction, thought of a new expense category and have to either temporarily save the transaction under some other category, go to create the expense category, come back to the transaction and then reassign the category. It's much more intuitive to allow the user to enter a new category on the fly.
BTW, I haven't seen this behavior change in MD2010 either.
Anyone else feels this way?
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61 Posted by mlooss on Jul 15, 2012 @ 04:51 PM
I started to evaluate MoneyDance yesterday after giving up on Mint, I like it so far but I did come across this same issue, not being able to create categories on the fly slows me down a lot.
Here is my vote for this feature!
Since I am still new and learning MoneyDance and may have not figured it out yet, I also have miss the ability to start typing the name of a subcategory, but it will only select the first category starting with starting letter and one now has to manually browse and select the correct category.
62 Posted by -Kevin N. on Jul 15, 2012 @ 06:06 PM
Hi mlooss,
Type the first few characters of the 'Category', when it auto-completes, type a colon : then type the first few characters of the sub-category.
When you do have to manually search the 'Category' drop-down list, use the UP and DOWN arrow keys to open and scan it.
HTH -Kevin N.
63 Posted by mlooss on Jul 15, 2012 @ 10:02 PM
Thks Kevin,
I still think that these are way to many steps, in Mint or my favorite task manager OmniFocus, I can start typing the sub-category and it auto-completes. I would like to see such a feature in MoneyDance.
Mint sucks, because it keeps breaking my connection to the bank every time the bank changes their security and Mint's approach in getting it fixed is unaccpetable slowwwwwwww. I have now gone twice through this and had enough with their service, they expect their users to put their financial life on hold until they get around to fix it eventually. Their business model will fail, but they have one thing and only one thing going for them, making data entry quick and painless. Their auto-complete is not perfect but it is easy to correct. Users look for easy of use, never mind it is the correct way, but that is what they want and they will give a lousy service their business because of it ease of use.
I am now convinced that managing your finances online is just not a good option at all and that is why I am looking into your software. I gave up on Quicken and Inuit and when Mint was purchased by Intuit I was not very happy but I stayed around.
So far I am very impressed with your product and I like the find and replace feature, it does help me getting my data cleaned up rather quickly, which is what I am doing this weekend :-)
I was going to take bank for a spin, but MoneyDance has me all excited now in getting up and running again, after not being able to manage my finances for a week now.
Love the Dropbox integration and iOS app.
64 Posted by -Kevin N. on Jul 15, 2012 @ 11:14 PM
Hi mlooss,
A possible problem-in-the-making with auto-completion by just a sub-category would be in the case where there is more than one sub-category with the same name.
For instance, I have 'Dividends' as a sub-category for Investment Income, Traditional IRA Income and Roth IRA Income.
With regards to creating new Categories, to be honest, once my Categories were set up for day to day operations, I've found that it's rare that I even have to add new Categories. Doing so by opening the 'Edit Categories' window and visulizing the heirarchy structure ensures that I place any new Category or Sub-category in its proper place.
The 'Edit Categories' window can be opened without exiting 'Edit' mode of the txn that the user is working on.
It would be my hope that if indeed the Category-on-the-fly ability were to be added to Moneydance that it would be an option in Preferences that the user could either choose to use or not to use.
I'm not convinced yet that ease of data entry equates to accurate data entry.
Full disclosure: I have no affiliation to Moneydance, Moneydance Support or help.infinitekind.com. These forums although actively monitored by the MD Support Staff are also home to a knowledgeable user base. I humbly include myself in the latter. :)
-Kevin N.
65 Posted by mlooss on Jul 16, 2012 @ 02:28 AM
This comment was split into a new discussion: Support for paypal?
Well, I guess I am spoiled and since I spent all weekend entering data and working with categories a lot, I can see how it should become easier down the road.
The auto-complete option actually works very nice in Mint and other apps I have seen it, I would still like to see this improved, but it is not a show stopper.
I am all for getting things right the first time, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to care, which leave us in the minority :-)
Now I have to figure out how to import PayPal transactions, doesn't seem to be supported?
Thanks for your input
66 Posted by Ben Spencer on Jul 17, 2012 @ 12:59 PM
Login to your paypal account.
Select History->Download History...
Select the Quicken QIF format.
Open Moneydance and select File->Import...
Browse to the file you just downloaded.
67 Posted by Angie Rauscher on Aug 29, 2012 @ 03:51 PM
Exciting news for this feature! This has been added to the next major update to Moneydance which we plan to make available this year. Please note that there is a minor update coming in early September that may not get this, but it is already implemented in MD2013 which we (hope) to release before the end of the year. We'll post on this thread when it's available for testing and/or full release.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
68 Posted by MoneyBag on Aug 29, 2012 @ 06:35 PM
+1
System closed this discussion on Mar 31, 2015 @ 03:30 PM.