Thank you and one oddity...
After switching to a Mac, and getting tired of running Quicken 2002 using VMWare Fusion, I decided to give MoneyDance a spin. I had over 15 years of account information stored three separate files in Quicken 2002, and MoneyDance (nearly) FLAWLESSLY imported all of the data!! The only oddity that I experienced was that some of my split transactions occasionally, mysteriously, spawned one of the splits off as a duplicate. Since my balances were consistently LOWER than they were suppose to be, it only took a little investigation to find the culprits. In all cases the memo was listed in square brackets (something I never do). This most often occurred when one of the splits was a transfer to another account (e.g., multiple purchases, one of which I considered a transfer to my pool of capital assets). It took only about an hour to clean up the few messed up transactions, which, considering how many 10's of thousands of transactions it DID import, I was VERY VERY impressed!!
It's a beautiful product that works PRECISELY as advertised!
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1 Posted by ciaran on 25 May, 2010 09:53 PM
Oh, I should add that I followed the import instructions to the letter. Each file in one export containing all accounts, and importing the accounts only first, followed by the data.
2 Posted by ljb on 25 May, 2010 11:54 PM
FYI, when Moneydance shows the memo in square brackets, it means you are looking at the "other side" of the transaction - meaning the side other than where the transaction was created or entered. For example, if you transfer 100. from checking to savings, and make the entry in your checking account with the category Savings, and memo Transfer, then open the savings account register, you will see a deposit of 100. with category Checking and the memo will show as [Transfer].
3 Posted by ciaran on 26 May, 2010 03:51 AM
Ahhh... well that seems consistent with what I was observing, and thus not really an additional symptom. Nonetheless, something, either Quicken under the covers on export, or MoneyDance on import, forked a copy of one of the splits as a separate transaction, duplicating one of the splits. In all cases it was the flip side of a transfer to another account (hence the square brackets). I suppose I could try to grovel through the .qif file and figure out if the transaction is actually there (hence a Quicken artifact). But since it's all kinda working right now, AND I'm kinda busy, my motivation is low :-/
4 Posted by ciaran on 26 May, 2010 09:54 PM
OK, so I was needing a break from studying and I did some investigation. It looks like a MoneyDance import error! Here's the record as it appears in QIF (I changed the data to obscure private information, but the format is exact):
D11/ 6/95
U-1,724.00
T-1,724.00
CX
NEFT-W
PThe Co-Operative Bank
M125 Nagog Park, Acton, MA 01720
L[USTrust 104 Tower Street]
S[USTrust 104 Tower Street]
$-474.46 S104 Tower St.:Mortgage - Int
$-683.20 S[USTrust 104 Tower Street]
EAddition to Principal
$-200.00 S[USTrust 104 Tower Tax Escrow]
$-366.34 ^
Importing this record caused a correct transaction with 4 splits:
1) $474.46 to the mortgage ACCOUNT
2) $683.20 to mortgage interest CATEGORY
3) $200.00 to the mortgage ACCOUNT (addition to principle)
4) $466.34 to the tax escrow ACCOUNT
This transaction did not appear to update my balance in the last column.
This transaction was followed by a transaction deducting $674.46 from the mortgage ACCOUNT. The memo here indicated a backside transaction marked with [ ]. This transaction DID update my balance in the last column.
However, the net effect of both these transactions was to debit the $674.46 twice!
When I went through my account and deleted these transactions that appeared to not update my running balance (always following a split), everything cleared up and the account balanced correctly.
I'll attach images of the spit and the two transactions in MoneyDance.
Ciarán...
5 Posted by woody14619 on 10 Jun, 2010 03:59 PM
This is the exact issue I had when updating my Quicken data from Quicken 2005 (including date pulled from Quicken 2001). In my case the records were easy to spot because the duplicates were not marked as resolved. It struck me as odd when I found the first one because I intentionally resolved everything in Quicken before the transfer, and have been good about resolving items based on statements (even 401K items, which typically don't get resolved). When I found the second one, it dawned on me what was going on, and a quick search for all unresolved items found all the duplicates (about 12 out of 4,000 imports) and made resolving them easier.
MD folks: You may want to mention this in your FAQ area as a tip to help those importing lots of historic data into MoneyDance. Resolving everything before the transfer, and being able to use the unresolved status to find/correct improper imports was a huge time saver for me. :) But over all, pulling a decade of info over with so few errors from a 3rd party app is pretty impressive.
6 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 23 Jun, 2010 02:43 PM
Thank you all for this great information and these helpful suggestions. We'll work it into our FAQ on the importing process in the next few weeks.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance, and thank you again for sharing your tips and tricks for transitioning from other programs.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 23 Jun, 2010 02:43 PM.
ciaran re-opened this discussion on 23 Jun, 2010 03:02 PM
7 Posted by ciaran on 23 Jun, 2010 03:02 PM
Hi Angie,
Do you think that the debugging information provided will help unearth a
bug? I'm not quite certain if the error is in how Quicken output the
QIF or how Moneydance pulls in the information, but I'm thinking it
might be Moneydance (I use to run a software QA organization in the 90s).
Ciarán...
8 Posted by Ben Spencer on 10 Jul, 2010 08:53 PM
I think the answer is that both Moneydance and the way Quicken outputs the QIF are to blame.
If a transfer is included in a QIF file between two accounts that transaction will be listed twice in the QIF file, once for each account. Unfortunately the QIF file format does not include any information that indicates that the two transactions are infact two sides of the same transaction. Typically this is not too much of a problem as moneydance will automatically look through all the accounts near the end of the import process and determine if there are duplicates based on the date and amount of the transaction. Unfortunately when a split is involved in a transfer the amount in the receiving account is not equal the total amount in the source account. So we end up with a situation where Moneydance cannot determine conclusively that the transaction is a duplicate.
The situation would be greatly improved if the QIF file format contained a unique id linking both sides of a transaction and sadly it does not.
I am sorry for the trouble this has caused you.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
9 Posted by ciaran on 11 Jul, 2010 02:02 AM
Hi Ben,
It was relatively easy to resolve, and I'm completely delighted with
Moneydance!!
Is there any way that the import process could apply a tag to make
finding splits with transfers easier? Then all you would have to do is
instruct users to validate tagged items for errors!
Ciarán...
Ciaran Anthony DellaFera, BSG
UMass Medical School
Class of 2012
Sent from my iPhone
10 Posted by Ben Spencer on 13 Jul, 2010 03:38 PM
That is a really interesting suggestion. I could imagine auto tagging foreign currency transfers as potential problems as well. I'll being it up with the developers and see what they think.
I am glad Moneydance is working well for you.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
11 Posted by ciaran on 21 Feb, 2011 05:30 AM
Just curious if this caught any further interest. Obviously I don't need to import anything from Quicken ever again, but others will :-)
12 Posted by Ben Spencer on 21 Feb, 2011 04:31 PM
Hi
It something we have left on the back burner for the time being. The developers are hard at work getting Md2011 ready for release and I am afraid a solution to this problem wont make it into the release.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
13 Posted by john.prewitt on 08 Jul, 2011 03:16 AM
Hi,
I'm in the process of moving all my Quicken 2007 (Mac) files to MD. During this process several of my accounts did not move correctly. I traced the problem to how Quicken handles splits. If you have more than one transaction within a split which has the same account then Quicken will sum those transactions and generate a single transaction for that account. MD sees that single transaction and since it can't find a similar one in the other account, generates a transaction to match it. See the attached register files.
In the Chicago Title Register, the TCU Payoff split on 8/17/09 had two transactions for the TUC - Line of Credit account and four for the House Base account. In each case the register for the TCU - Line of Credit account had a single transaction which was the sum ($144,797.29) of the two transactions within the split. Likewise the House Base register has a single transaction which was the sum ($587) for the four transactions in the split. In the Quicken file the balance for each of the three accounts is zero. Not so after importing into MD. These single transactions got added to the Chicago Title account. There were other similar multiple transactions which cause other account to be off.
I've attached the Splits.qif file which contains the above mention accounts. This a good test case for MD use, just in case they wish to add logic to handle multiple transactions for the same account within a split. That is, logic could be added that looked at all transactions within a split and if more than one was associated with the same account, then just sum those transactions and look at the transfer to account and check for a match.
As a work around I will remove the multiple transactions within the split and enter them as single transactions.
John Prewitt
14 Posted by Ben Spencer on 11 Jul, 2011 06:27 AM
Hi John
Thank you so much for clarifying the cause of the issue. I am quite confident that thanks to your help we will have a solution implemented.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
15 Posted by Ben Spencer on 19 Jul, 2011 03:04 AM
Hi John
We have a first pass at an algorithm that identifies and removes collapsed split transactions during the QIF import process. I ran it against your example QIF file and the algorithm identified and removed the following transactions and their balancing entries.
[ParentTxn(-1) desc=Bank Of America Payoff; val=11700; stat= ; #splits=1; chk=; acct=House Base; date=20090817; dirty; splits=SplitTxn(-1): val=-11700; rate=1.0; amt=11700; desc=Bank Of America Payoff; stat= ; cat=Chicago Title for Becado; ], ; ]
[ParentTxn(-1) desc=TCU Payoff; val=58700; stat= ; #splits=1; chk=; acct=House Base; date=20090817; dirty; splits=SplitTxn(-1): val=-58700; rate=1.0; amt=58700; desc=TCU Payoff; stat= ; cat=Chicago Title for Becado; ], ; ]
ParentTxn(-1) desc=TCU Payoff; val=14479729; stat= ; #splits=1; chk=; acct=TCU - Line of Credit; date=20090817; dirty; splits=SplitTxn(-1): val=-14479729; rate=1.0; amt=14479729; desc=TCU Payoff; stat= ; cat=Chicago Title for Becado; ], ; ]
setStatus(, 0.0)
I have attached two .md data files.
"withoutCollapsedSplitRemoval.md" which is the result of importing your QIF file without the new algorithm.
and
"withCollapsedSplitRemoval.md" which is the result of importing your QIF with the new algorithm.
Would you be willing to take a look at the two files and let me know if you are satisfied with the results. Do you see other transactions in your data file that should have been caught and removed?
Many thanks
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
16 Posted by john.prewitt on 20 Jul, 2011 03:23 PM
Ben,
I looked at the two files and they look o.k. to me. I could provide a full .qif file which contains many more such splits. Would you want such a file.
John
17 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 25 Jul, 2011 07:52 PM
John,
I think we're good with the current data we have, but I'll certainly let you know if we need anything else. Thanks for your help and energy in running and working on correcting this issue.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
18 Posted by john.prewitt on 25 Jul, 2011 08:01 PM
Angie,
Via another discussion, Ben showed that Build 792 had fixed this problem so I downloaded it and imported the full .qif and it worked.
John
Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 25 Jul, 2011 08:07 PM.
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 03:30 PM.