Qif Download and Transaction Merge
This discussion is public.
When I download a statement from my bank and merge it with
transactions I have already entered - the merge process uses the
dates from my originally entered transactions. I'm wondering if
there is a way of making moneydance use the dates from the
downloaded statement? At the moment having downloaded a statement
and then reconciling my accounts, if there is a discrepancy, then
it is very difficult to find where it is because the moneydance
'statement' doesn't match the bank 'statement' dates. (Effectively
it uses the transaction date, not the actually debit date - which
would be much more useful). I normally have several hundred
transactions and one of the easiest ways of finding where the error
is to check the balances at the end of each day starting at the
point where the account was last reconciled up to. When you get to
a day where the figures diverge you know one of the transactions on
that day is wrong. At the moment to do this I have to manually go
back through my transactions and changes the dates to match the
bank statement, which is very long winded! And frustrating!
Any suggestions?
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1
james f
on 20 Jan, 2012 02:32 PM
The dates from the bank are usually the dates that the transaction posts to the account, not the actual date of purchase or deposit.
When manually merging transactions, you can always double click on the transaction and change the date to match the downloaded transaction date.
Please see screenshots. Pay close attention to screenshot of Picture 9. This picture is identical in situation to what you appear to be saying is happening with your downloads.
2
james f
on 20 Jan, 2012 02:34 PM
By the way, does your bank give you the option to down your file in OFX or QFX format?
If so, you are better off using one of those formats for QIF is a very sloppy format.
Oh, and Picture 4 shows the Preference set up to give you much better control of how you handle downloaded transactions. I like this method much better than any of the other "automated" methods. I find it far superior than the "automated" methods.
3
jabprice
on 20 Jan, 2012 05:35 PM
For Moneydance to use the date that the transaction books to the account (i.e the statement date) when merging transaction is what I want/need! Then at least your statement and moneydance dates would be in sync. To use the date that you made the transaction (or that you manually entered) on merging is always going to give a difference between the moneydance and your actually bank account dates, and therefore make error detection more difficult than it needs to be.
I find QIF works well enough for my purposes - I have never seen errors between my manual entries and the downloads. The only merge errors that I see are between downloads and moneydance automatically entered transactions - for some reason moneydance wont match them even if both the description and the amount are exactly the same!
4
james f
on 20 Jan, 2012 06:24 PM
I'll start with your second paragraph:
OFX or QFX file format is the preferred formats to choose when downloading transactions from a bank. I'm most confident that the Support Team would agree with me on that.
The "automated" methods use a best guess match to transactions. Even in full manual mode, I've run into this and had to choose one of the greyed out selections for Moneydance suggested the wrong description. You can have several different descriptions with the same amount and Moneydance will guess at which one to match to. That is what makes Manual merging far superior to "automated" merging. You can override the best guess situation.
As for paragraph one:
If you change the Merge method in Preferences to full Manual mode, then you can always change the date of a transaction from purchase date to posted date by double clicking on the transaction. You can change the date before or after you choose to merge the downloaded transaction.
In the end, when you choose Reconcile after you have finished merging all your downloads, it ought to show a zero difference. See attached screenshot for an example. Rarely will any PFM software match as far as ending statement balances are concerned. That is the nature of all PFM software.
5
jabprice
on 20 Jan, 2012 07:03 PM
Perhaps I'm not making myself clear. I don't have a problem with the qif download - it works fine for me. I would just like the option to, when merging, have moneydance use the downloaded date - not the manually entered date. It seems an awful lot of work to manually change the date on merging when the date is already there in the download. And as you observe PFM software will often not match your account balance on reconcile but having the moneydance dates match the statement dates would make it 1000x easier to find the discrepancy.
6
james f
on 20 Jan, 2012 09:16 PM
I understand that you do not have a problem with qif format, I am just letting you know that it is a sloppy format and that you are better off downloading OFX or QFX formatted files.
Most of us users that have been using Moneydance for a number of years have gotten into the habit of downloading transaction every couple of days or so. We also no longer rely upon any statements from the bank to reconcile against.
You might try using the Confirm option under Confirm Transaction as opposed to using Merge under Merge Choises. See screenshot Picture 9 in the previous post of mine. I have not tried the Confirm option, so I do not know what it will do exactly. It might change the date as you would like it to do, or it might register a new transaction instead. Give it a try and see what happens.
7
jabprice
on 21 Jan, 2012 08:50 AM
I have also been using moneydance for a number of years........ and while I'd love to download transaction every few days, I'm just not that........ A lot of the time I'm away and I record transactions using the iPhone app and then sync them to my PC on return. This might mean I have 30 to 40 days of unreconciled transactions (400 or so) spread over 4 different but interelated accounts ( personal , credit, business, savings ( actually 6 accounts if you include my wife's personal and credit accounts which I also monitor for her)). 95% of the time I have little difficulty with reconciling but occasionally I will either have entered a transaction in the wrong account, put in an incorrect date or I may have entered a transfer between accounts where one half of the transfer is referencing the wrong account. This is where having moneydance use the downloaded statement dates on merge would be really helpful when finding these errors. It took me 3 hours to find to find 2 minor errors yesterday because of this lack of functionality. Had the transaction dates between moneydance and my bank matched it would have taken 5 minutes. (Moneydance is supposed to make life easier not turn me into a forensic accountant.) It also means if I have to print off something or provide a record of (e.g. a statement of expenses) I could use moneydance, instead of having to print my bank statement, once the transaction dates were the actual debit dates rather than the transaction date; which would be much more useful legally and for business!
The point being - I'm not after a work around like changing the dates on downloading statements - I would like the option to use the download dates on merge. How do I make that happen? If it can't be done, then can it be added to the software functionality in the future? Surely if moneydance can be setup to use the manual entry date on merge it can be setup to use the downloaded date on merge?
8
james f
on 21 Jan, 2012 09:19 AM
There have been times where I have put the incorrect amount of a transaction into Moneydance. At the time of Merging, the only option Moneydance gives me for the downloaded transaction is that under Confirm Transaction. There are no choices given under Merge Transaction or Similar Payees. At that time, I can easily track down the guilty culprit and change the amount in question.
Moneydance cannot account for human error.
Changing from transaction date to posted date, as an option, sounds good to me.
Let's get the Support team in on this one to begin a voting process on this issue.
Calling Angie, Ben, Jessica, Jon, where are you? I believe we would like to begin a voting process to add the ability to change transaction date upon Merging to the downloaded transaction date.
9
james f
on 21 Jan, 2012 09:21 AM
I think I will start a new thread on this issue just for the purposes of voting on it.
I will call the thread "Changing Transaction Date to Downloaded Date Upon Merge".
It will be listed under Suggestions.
10
james f
on 21 Jan, 2012 09:33 AM
http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/suggestions/1005-changing-...
Here is the link to vote for this action. When voting just put in the Reply section: +1 . A +1 shows that you vote for this feature to be added.
11
carls
on 27 Mar, 2012 04:20 PM
Perhaps it might be useful if the algorithm for matching were to be described in detail. I realize that not many would see this as a good read, but, seriously, the lack of detail on which fields are used in the logic of accept, merge, or combine is perhaps the root of this problem here.
I've read and re-read the docs and am now really confused about merges (which seem more logically to be "replacements"). There shouldn't be this confusion, and I can't think of how to clarify without seeing the logical steps in the algorithm.
System closed this discussion on 31 Mar, 2015 03:43 PM.