Guidance for online banking, transfers between accounts and banks, how to get the two accounts to talk to each other
I've been using quicken for decades and am considering moving to moneydance. With quicken the only time I pulled data from an institution was in the brokerage firms like fidelity. Otherwise I manually entered all of my data and reconciled everything.
I'm considering starting a new approach where I download all transactions and only adjust the category and enter any useful notes.
Initially I expected to be able to import from quicken and then start importing, but that creates a lot of duplicate entries that I'd have to clean up. Also it means pulling in all of my historical accounts from quicken; that's a lot of data that isn't relevant any more. Thus I'm considering just starting from scratch, pulling down whatever historical records that my various banks etc offer and moving forward.
A complication has arisen...each account downloads independent of the other accounts. There is no link between Bank A's Savings acct and Bank A's Checking account, so a transfer from savings to checking isn't recorded like a tranfer where the category is the target account. If I change the category to show the checking account, there is an almost duplicate entry in the checking account - one from the online banking download and another that is a result of my category change. I suppose the "fix" is to delete the downloaded entry but I think it'd be downloaded again at the next attempt.
This must be a well worn topic here but I couldn't find anything on it. I didn't find anything in the KB about it. Has anyone put up articles for issues at this level around moneydance?
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1 Posted by mhoggie on Sep 26, 2018 @ 06:51 PM
just a user,
When you download from your various accounts without entering the transfers or payments manually or via reminders, then the same charge might appear separately in both accounts because the download does not have a way to determine the associated account. But if you enter your credit card payments manually or automatically by a reminder, then MoneyDance will give you an opportunity to merge the download with the activity that you already entered. No duplicates.
2 Posted by hoss on Sep 26, 2018 @ 08:24 PM
Thanks mhoggie. The same would apply to inter-account transfers I guess?
You spoke of a cc payment; mostly I have transfers between various bank
accounts. But it sounds like a lot of manual entry. I was hoping to just
be able to adjust the category...but that creates a dupe entry in the
target account. If I then remove the line that came in from online (if
that's even possible, didn't try) it will probably reappear.
I don't see a resolution to this issue...the only way around it would be
to abandon any attempt to link transfers between accounts. Hoping there
are more options?
3 Posted by -Kevin N. on Sep 26, 2018 @ 08:37 PM
Hi lighthoss,
Just to clarify, when entering a transfer transaction, you need to select the actual receiving account from the 'Category' field's drop-down list of items.
For example, to transfer funds from Savings to Checking:
Enter the transaction into Savings.
Select the actual Checking account from the list of items in the 'Category' field of the transaction. (you may need to scroll up to the top of the list to access the actual Checking account)
Entering the transaction in this manner will debit the Savings account and automatically enter a transaction in the Checking account crediting the Checking account.
When you subsequently download into these accounts, you can Merge the transactions.
There's a useful option to set in Preferences on the Network tab. 'Automatically Merge Downloaded Transactions'. It makes life a lot easier.
HTH -Kevin N. (not a member of MD support)
4 Posted by mhoggie on Sep 26, 2018 @ 09:57 PM
Yes, applies to any account to account transfer. If you have a scheduled reminder for that transfer, have it set to automatic in the reminder and merge as needed. You want your reminder to make that transfer anytime before it actually posts on the accounts so when the downloads hit for both accounts, the transaction is merged and no duplicates are created. (of course, when you are confirming the download, you can always tweak the category field to show the other account if for some reason you didn't have the transaction pre-entered). If your transfer amounts vary, just set up the reminder to allow you to post in MD a few days before the actual transaction download posts. Let the reminder allow you to modify the amount and date as needed. Also like Kevin explained, you want to be sure the other account is selected in the category field so it appears on both accounts. All this can be preset in the reminder along with automatic commit for the date as needed. I've been using that procedure for years without issues. I added another feature to my scheduled account transfers so I can capture the activity for budgeting purposes. (MD currently will not pickup account to account transfers for budgeting) To do that I just add another split to the reminder category an post the same amount to a special payment category that the budget picks up and a null category to offset the extra entry. Works perfect. That's one thing I really like about MoneyDance. You can use MD and the various extensions to benefit your situation even if MD doesn't support it directly.
5 Posted by hoss on Sep 26, 2018 @ 11:21 PM
Hmm...I don't see anything like a merge feature? I'd expect it to appear as a right click option; so I could pick a trx and then in another account the existing matching trx.
I'm not sure I communicated what I'm after effectively. I'm hoping for close to no manually created new entries - all account rows would be the product of a download. As it is, when I download Checking and then Savings, any transfer between the two accounts shows in each account, but the category entry is "ATM Withdrawal" by default for some reason. I'm an old hand with quicken so I understand about how to use an account in the category field for transfers. But if I simply do that, I get a new matching entry in the other account...and it already has a "stand alone" trx for that transfer.
If I could find a way to merge the two entries, the two sides of the transfer, that's exactly what I'd like to do...how exactly do I do that?
6 Posted by hoss on Sep 26, 2018 @ 11:29 PM
Ah - I found that at least one transfer offered a merge on the right side. For some reason I don't see merge offered on most of the transfer transactions, on either the from or to sides? This feature is exactly what I was looking for, thanks for pointing it out.
7 Posted by mhoggie on Sep 27, 2018 @ 01:30 AM
For a merge to be offered, the amount needs to be the same and the date range has to be within days you can specify in the File, Preferences, Network, Observe settings at the bottom. That's why you want the reminders to enter any scheduled transfers in advance of the actual download date ( you can have MD do this automatically if the amounts are the same each month, otherwise you can just let MD notify you so you can adjust the amounts) so MD can find your entry and offer the merge option.
8 Posted by hoss on Sep 27, 2018 @ 01:52 AM
But I have many transactions which have a matching line in the From account and that use To account, same date and dollar amount. No match is offered. Am I supposed to make a change to the record after it has been downloaded? I trided switching category to the other account, on the To site, didn't offer merge...?
9 Posted by mhoggie on Sep 27, 2018 @ 02:10 AM
The transactions should be in the "uncleared" state in the register with the category all ready set and associated with the other account before your download and MD associates with the merge setting. So for that process to work correctly, the transaction should already exist in the MD account your download is associating with and set to reference the other account in the category field. That's why you want the reminder to automatically or manually enter the transaction with the category set correctly and in the "uncleared" state so when MD is processing the download it will find the transaction you want to merge with. At that point when you merge, all MD does is place a little blue O in the description field of your pre-entered transaction to indicate that it was merged and the downloaded transaction is discarded. You will notice that before you merge, another category may be shown on the downloaded transaction, but when merged your pre-entered info will be used. Once you get a taste of how all that works, you'll see how it all relates.
10 Posted by hoss on Sep 27, 2018 @ 04:39 AM
I don't really understand. I do not have a need for automatic
transactions or reminders. A day comes along and I need to transfer
money from savings to checking. I do that with the bank website. The
next time I download transactions from the bank, each account shows a
transfer. I want to have the two accounts know who was the From account
and which was the To account.
11 Posted by mhoggie on Sep 27, 2018 @ 03:04 PM
Oh I see, you just want to do basic stuff. Misunderstood. As you get familiar with MD, you will be tempted to automate to a degree.
It's simple. Just set up your accounts in MD, then when you download the transactions, MD will prompt you to select the account to received the transactions. You will see a blue dot on the sidebar for the account that received the transactions. Open the register on that account and you will see blue dots on all the transactions in that account that need to be confirmed. As you select them you will have an opportunity to select the proper category. On regular income and expense activity, just select the desired category. On future downloads to that account, MD will try to use the income/expense category you used the last time, but you will still need to confirm. Also if you don't like the default category MD uses, I would suggest editing the account and changing the default category as desired. On any transactions involving account transfers, be sure to select the other account as the category. Then when you download transactions for the other account, MD will offer to merge the transaction with the one you confirmed on the other account download. Then your off to the races. No duplicates, just a transfer type of transaction with two sides, one in each account. Regular expenses also have two sides, the other side simply being the category that was used.
12 Posted by hoss on Sep 27, 2018 @ 07:05 PM
Yes I think you've made a dent in my lack of understanding. This is what
I found.
Import the two accounts from the bank. A transfer will be shown as two
unlinked transactions, one on the From side (trx A) and one on the To
side (trx B)
On the From side, change the category from the default value (in my case
it's ATM Withdrawal) to the account that the funds were transferred to.
On the To side, a new matching transaction appears (trx C).
On the To side, select Trx B, the transaction that came in from online
which represents to To side of the transaction. Merge Choices will
appear; select the merge choice which points to the new matching
transaction (trx C) that appeared after changing the From side trx
category. Trx B will "vanish" and Trx A and Trx C will be two sides of
the same transfer event.
Thanks for sticking with me on this.
13 Posted by hoss on Sep 30, 2018 @ 05:55 AM
Does anyone know if Quicken 2012 have a merge feature like this?
System closed this discussion on Dec 30, 2018 @ 06:00 AM.