downloading duplicate transactions to those assigned to child account
I have set up a child Bank account subordinate to my Bank checking account. I use this account to track discretionary spending from my checking account. Because I enter discretionary spending transactions into the child account, the transactions aren't listed in the parent checking account register. The first time I direct connected to my bank account, it downloaded discretionary transactions (as expected). I moved the downloaded transactions to the child account and merged them. However, Moneydance continues to download these same transactions every time I direct connect to my bank account. Is there a fix? Am I doing something incorrectly? I would still like to categorize the discretionary transactions into their appropriate expense accounts.
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1 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 27 Sep, 2010 02:17 PM
Ken,
Would you try this again, but go through the acceptance process with the downloaded transactions before moving them to the child account? I think what might be happening is that Moneydance isn't "seeing" these transactions (or a record of them being accepted, even if they were then deleted) and is assuming they haven't been sent yet. This is not a long-term solution for your issue, as it means you don't get to use the matching process with these transactions once you have moved them to the child account, but it does give us a place to start. If this does turn out to be the cause of the issue then we'll move on to looking at work-arounds or other solutions. If not, we'll look at other potential causes.
Let me know how it goes, and do include your OS, versions of Java and Moneydance, and your bank's name in your response.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
Check out our new blog series, Moneydance on the Road.
2 Posted by Ken Ferrari on 28 Sep, 2010 10:32 AM
Angie - Assuming that I did what you asked correctly, it seemed to work. I
downloaded the transactions to my Checking account, accepted them, moved
them to my child account, and then deleted them. As you mentioned, this will
definitely not be a long-term solution. It gets rather confusing when
multiple transactions are downloaded and only some of them are accurate.
I'm using Moneydance 2010r3 (751) and Java Version 1.6.0_21. I'm running the
software on several machines to include: Windows 7, Windows XP SP3, and
Ubuntu 10.04. I use a cloud to keep my Moneydance file current between on
each machines (though the file is saved locally on each machine before being
automatically transferred to the cloud).
Thanks; I'm looking forward to your suggestions!!
Ken
On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Angie Rauscher <
[email blocked]<tender%[email blocked]>
> wrote:
3 Posted by Ben Spencer on 28 Sep, 2010 01:54 PM
I have created a ticket for this issues in our issue tracking system. It is not clear whether this is actually a bug as the transactions are not literally in the same account. However I can definitely see how changing the behaviour of Moneydance to check child accounts for duplicates as well would be helpful.
I am afraid I cannot provide a time line for when this ticket will be worked on and it is in the system so it wont be forgotten.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
4 Posted by Ken Ferrari on 28 Sep, 2010 02:38 PM
Thanks for following up. In the meantime, perhaps you can explain the intent
behind a "child" account. Am I trying to use them differently than they were
intended? If so, I'd rather change the way I'm doing things early on rather
than become married to a process that will never really work the way I want
it to.
Ken
On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Ben Spencer <
[email blocked]<tender%[email blocked]>
> wrote:
5 Posted by Ben Spencer on 29 Sep, 2010 03:22 PM
Sub accounts make more sense in some places than others, For example creating a hierarchy of income and expense accounts makes a lot of sense as it allows you to use parent accounts to group and total their children. The utility of creating parent and sub account with banks accounts is less clear cut. The downloading and importing of transitions as well as the reconciliation feature are not implemented in such a way as to look in the sub accounts. So while you can use parent and sub accounts with bank accounts in order to earmark funds, I do not recomend doing so if you will be using the reonciliation feature or downlaoidng transactions into these accounts.
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
6 Posted by Ken Ferrari on 29 Sep, 2010 03:39 PM
Interesting, thanks for the response. However, the reconciliation feature
does work with child accounts - there is even a check box for it. In fact, I
just reconciled my checking account and included my child account in the
process. I think that incorporating the import/downloading feature would
really set this application apart from some others that I've used. Using
child accounts to earmark funds is an excellent way to stay on a budget.
Aside from creating a specific expense account for discretionary spending,
do you have any other suggestions for keeping track of earmarked funds? I
would really like to group my discretionary spending into meaningful
categories. I initially started out with an Asset account, but I didn't like
the idea of entering the same transaction twice (once into my checking
account and once again in the asset account). Also, by using an asset
account, the Net Worth summary is not as accurate.
Thanks for being so responsive!!!!
Ken
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Ben Spencer <
[email blocked]<tender%[email blocked]>
> wrote:
7 Posted by Tom Freeman on 01 Oct, 2010 08:16 PM
Ken,
Have you tried the budget manger. You can keep track of divergent categories within a budget. And The budget is listed on your home page.
Tom
8 Posted by Ken Ferrari on 06 Oct, 2010 04:21 PM
I'm trying to keep track of my discretionary spending. I set aside a
specified "allowance" every 2 weeks that I use for whatever I want, i.e.
dining out, cd purchases, movies, whatever. How do I create a budget that
allows such flexibility? Don't I have to define certain expense accounts to
use the budget manager as an allowance tracker? I'd still like to categorize
each of my discretionary purchases into their appropriate expense accounts
rather than creating an expense account called "Allowance." The child
account feature seems perfect for this.
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Tom Freeman <
[email blocked]<tender%[email blocked]>
> wrote:
9 Posted by Ben Spencer on 07 Oct, 2010 08:49 PM
To create such flexibility with the budget system you would have to create a parent expense category called "Allowance" and set the respective expense categories as children of Allowance. You could then create a budget on the Allowance category.
Ben
10 Posted by Ken Ferrari on 07 Oct, 2010 09:17 PM
Hmm. It's unfortunate. Using a child account subordinate to my checking
account is ridiculously easy and effective for tracking my allowance
spending, and it works nearly perfectly. The budget manager seems like a
complex solution that doesn't easily allow me to see how much I've spent in
a select category without consulting multiple expense accounts that track
the same types of purchases.
Hopefully, the folks at Moneydance will eventually incorporate the "download
transactions" function with child accounts. I'm open to more suggestions.
For now, I will most likely continue using the child account method and
either not download transactions or get used to repeatedly deleting the same
downloaded transactions.
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Ben Spencer <
[email blocked]<tender%[email blocked]>
> wrote:
11 Posted by Bruce Blum on 20 Jan, 2012 08:37 AM
I second the request in this thread for improved capability to work with sub-accounts within bank accounts, including some way to handle downloaded transactions and perhaps even more attractive, a way to send online payments from the sub accounts. Any word on these suggestions?
12 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 20 Jan, 2012 01:50 PM
Bruce,
These suggestions are not in current production, but I will bring it up to our developer the next time we discuss our development road map.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
13 Posted by Bruce Blum on 20 Jan, 2012 06:36 PM
Thanks Angie,
I have been watching MD for a while and have tried to switch over from Quicken more than once--partly because of Quicken's sunset policy, and partly because Quicken does not allow sub-accounts. At first I couldn't make the switch because MD's reporting was not robust enough. That has improved significantly, since the last time I looked. And sub-accounts are still very attractive to me for the following reason. I classify money in my checking and savings accounts for different things, much like using cash envelopes for different kinds of expenses. In Quicken I use classes (tags) and a class report to keep track of these virtual sub-accounts--it is cumbersome, but it works. I would consider switching to Moneydance even without the sub-account capabilities I asked about above, but I still cannot get a detailed enough class/tag report to keep doing things the way I have in Quicken.
If Moneydance would smoothly function with "virtual" sub accounts that would play nicely with online bill pay and online banking, I would be willing to pay much more than you are currently charging for it. As it is, I would have to do two transactions for every payment from a sub-account--one to move the funds back to the main account and one to make the payment. So far this is less trouble in Quicken using classes and reports.
I am impressed that MD supports including sub-accounts in reconcile--it may be complicated to extend this function to online banking and billpay, but it would make this a very valuable product for me, and I would certainly tell all my friends and enemies about it!
Thanks for the fast response.
Bruce
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 03:30 PM.