tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:/discussions/problems/49435-syncing-of-remindesInfinite Kind: Discussion 2019-03-23T02:50:24Ztag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-10T22:39:32Z2018-12-10T22:39:32ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi<br>
Because of problems I have with pop-ups on my laptop I run a version of moneydance on my laptop and on my desktop. (I have already started a discussion about this topic)</p>
<p>This year I went away for 6 months and didn't have access to my desktop until my return.</p>
<p>During that time I updated many of my transaction reminders on my desktop.</p>
<p>When I returned somehow the old transactions reminders from the desktop overwrote the modifed transaction reminders that I had generated on my laptop, including generating or replacing reconciled transactions in my accounts. I had to go back and find these for the last 6 months and effectively re-reconcile all my accounts. In one case I had cancelled a transaction reminder and it reappeared and generated 6 months worth of transactions.</p>
<p>Any ideas of how to avoid this as I will be going away again next year.</p>
<p>Thanks</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T07:14:45Z2018-12-11T07:14:45ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>The Best way to stop this happening, is to copy your Data Set, to say a USB drive and manually transfer it to your Desktop BEFORE starting MoneyDance on your Desktop.</p>
<p>Choose to overwrite the file that has been dormant for 6 months.</p>
<p>Jeff – Fellow user</p></div>jefftag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T07:49:30Z2018-12-11T07:49:30ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>A little more information I think would be useful here.</p>
<p>Are you using the built in Moneydance syncing mechanism to replicate data between the machines?</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T10:00:44Z2018-12-11T10:00:44ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi Yes I am – I am syncing between the two computers. I have just updated the two computers to the most recent version of moneydance and unfortunately didn’t check that they were on the same version of moneydance before I did that. I hadn’t expected that that would impact this.</p>
<p>I also have moneydance on two iphones which also syncs.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Deb</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T10:23:05Z2018-12-11T10:23:05ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>OK I can think of a possible problem here.</p>
<p>Moneydance syncs posted transaction only, it does not replicate reminder data between systems.</p>
<p>Hence if you have reminders on one system set to auto commit and you post the transaction on another system you will end up with two transactions, there is no way to link the reminders to each other or the resultant posted transactions they are independent, a posted transaction based on a reminder is also independent of the reminder once posted.</p>
<p>Now it is fine to set the reminders up on both systems BUT you should set them to manual commit, you commit them on what ever machine you want to at the time and on the other system you skip posting that particular transaction. Thus you are ensuring that a transaction is only posted once. This is an area where you need to do some manual intervention.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T15:40:19Z2018-12-11T15:40:19ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Thanks for the explanation by dwg, The Reminders have been driving me nuts! However, the answer is DON'T USE A FEATURE THAT'S SUPPOSED TO WORK? I've had reminders that I reconciled, become an older amount and not reconciled. What is the sense of having Reminders, if we can't automate the Reminders? Now today I see another serious bug--The Account Balance in the Side Bar doesn't not even come close to the account balance of the account.</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T19:50:59Z2018-12-11T19:50:59ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>It works fine if you set reminders up on only one system and auto commit there and that machine received regular use, but you said you are going away and a system is going to be left dormant, hence you cannot fully automate them, the actual commit to the register you do yourself.</p>
<p>In the Moneydance replication system each machine is considered local, so reminders, memorized reports, preferences, passwords (except the sync password) etc are all considered local. Only data that is actually posted to the register is replicated between machines and there is no way to positively identify duplicate transactions in order to deal with them, there is no actual communication between the machines that run Moneydance to be able to directly pass information - that would be something that is extremely difficult to do given Moneydance runs under 3 totally different operating systems, I've never seen it done,</p>
<p>There are a number of different account balances, I would check to see what balance you are displaying.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-11T20:37:59Z2018-12-11T20:37:59ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi dwg. This is not my experience. Memorized reports and reminders are syncing between my machines.</p>
<p>However it is the autocommit reminders which are causing the problem as you suggest. But it is only happening with reminders which were changed or deleted while I was away. It seems as though the syncing of reminders stopped somehow and so when I restarted the desktop, if the reminder on the laptop didn't match the one on the desktop exactly, then the desktop one generated the transactions it thought were missing, and synced the older reminders back to the laptop. Amazingly to me it didn't generate a second transaction, but overwrote the original transaction generated on the laptop (and which had been reconciled), with the transaction generated by the desktop. So it knows that the transaction was generated by the reminder to be able to do that. A lot more syncing going on here than you described. Sounds like renworlock has had the same thing happen.</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-12T00:13:35Z2018-12-12T00:13:35ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>The problem I’ve experienced with Reminders seems to be with the auto<br>
commit items that change every month. Some never change, some change once a<br>
year, and others change almost monthly. When I make these changes, it seems<br>
to be hit or miss. It is not consistent. I have two desktops, one laptop<br>
and four mobile devices all running rather smoothly without much trouble.</p>
<p>For example, in July my wife’s retirement went up a few bucks with her<br>
annual COLA. I entered the new amount in Reminders on my desktop—which is<br>
the computer I use almost always for MoneyDance, except when traveling.<br>
Anyway two, maybe three times the amount reverted to the old amount—AFTER I<br>
reconciled. What a mess trying to figure that out! I notice the updated<br>
Reminders revert to the old value often. Just this month I entered my two<br>
electric bills in Reminders for auto commit and checked them a couple of<br>
times to see if they changed and they hadn’t until they were automatically<br>
committed and bingo—they reverted back to the previous month’s bill amount.</p>
<p>What happened with my wife’s retirement pay happened to my retirement pay<br>
as well. At first, I thought it was my carelessness, it’s not! I’ve been<br>
monitoring this problem trying to nail down the circumstances causing this.<br>
I have not opened MoneyDance on my other desktop out in the garage or on my<br>
laptop in nearly two weeks. But......my electric bills reverted back to<br>
last month’s amount. (Almost before my eyes. I no longer think I’m going<br>
crazy.)</p>
<p>If this problem can’t be fixed, then the Reminders feature should be<br>
dropped along with any other feature that doesn’t sync in Dropbox.</p>
<p>Ren</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-12T00:20:07Z2018-12-12T00:20:07ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Very off behavior for sure.</p>
<p>The only time I recall seeing really odd stuff happening was when the person was storing the main Moneydance file in dropbox, you do not see that much these days because of the messages Moneydance gives about storing the data in a shared location.</p>
<p>Others may have some ideas about what could be happening here.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-12T18:10:20Z2018-12-12T18:10:20ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>So today my wife opened up MoneyDance from her Laptop for the first time in<br>
a few weeks and I noticed my two electric bills reverted back to the<br>
amounts from TWO months ago. Can you at least acknowledge Reminders are<br>
hosed and shouldn't be used?</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-12T21:51:52Z2018-12-12T21:51:52ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I have decided to uninstall moneydance on my desktop as reminders are too unreliable.</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-12T23:20:31Z2018-12-12T23:20:31ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I’m a little confused. Is this thread known/read by the developers? Or is<br>
this a few users experiencing problems with auto-commit Reminders? I know<br>
when my wife opened MD this afternoon, after not doing so in at least two<br>
weeks, the two electric bills were overwritten in Reminders and in my<br>
register. This, after I already repaired the Reminders and credit card<br>
registers over the weekend on my main desktop.</p>
<p>I can’t just uninstall MD. I have finance data going back to 2000 (Quicken,<br>
then imported to MoneyDance.)</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-13T02:01:07Z2018-12-13T02:01:07ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I would delete the sync on the secondary file. Turn off syncing on the primary computer. Remove the hidden sync folder in drop box. Turn syncing back on for the primary computer. Set up a new sync file on the secondary computer.</p>
<p>Do not store the primary data file in a network or shared drive.</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-13T02:49:11Z2018-12-13T02:49:11ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>As far s I know no Moneydance person has yet commented on this conversation.</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-13T16:24:42Z2018-12-13T16:24:42ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Yes. No one with an orange bar above their comment.</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-13T22:09:07Z2018-12-13T22:09:07ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I have been thinking and it seems to me the issue is that the auto-commit transactions do not wait for the sync to complete before they are actioned when you first open up MoneyDance. That means that the old reminders can be committing transations for reminders that have been changed or deleted on anther computer. And since the transactions are in some way linked to the reminder, they overwrite transactions generated by the new (and correct) reminder.</p>
<p>If the auto-commit would wait for the sync to complete then it should work OK – except in the rare occurrence when another computer has changed reminders whilst off-line and hasn’t synced, or one computer is doing the auto-commit whilst another is in the process of updating the reminder.</p>
<p>So without that change, auto-commit sounds quite dangerous when running two computers. Manual reminders though should be fine.</p>
<p>Deb</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-14T00:20:52Z2018-12-14T00:20:52ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>It seems in my last case, I made several updates to Reminders. (Electric<br>
bills, phone, retirement pay, etc.) When my wife opened MD on her<br>
laptop—after not doing so in weeks, instead of downloading updates/changes<br>
from Dropbox, it appears it’s uploading Reminders. Then when I opened my<br>
main MoneyDance computer desktop, it downloads and updates (with old<br>
values) Reminders from the laptop.</p>
<p>My wife was traveling with the laptop and there were long periods of<br>
off-line time. Still, if syncing is working right, the most current value<br>
should remain and not replaced with older data. There’s definitely a<br>
handshaking problem here. I have a desktop out in our garage hobby room<br>
that is powered off. If I walk over there, power up and start Money Dance,<br>
I’ll be able to see the accounts updating from Dropbox. That all works<br>
fine. But I suspect (rather know) there’s a serious bug in the Reminders<br>
sync and Dropbox. I don’t know if I want to try that or not. I’m tired of<br>
messing with it.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if I’m talking to a troubled user or support. I’ll add, no<br>
changes were made to Reminders on the laptop. I’m the only user that uses<br>
this feature. The only time Reminders are updated on the laptop is when my<br>
wife and I are traveling for long periods—like on a multi-state RV trip.<br>
Our last trip ended early September.</p>
<p>Thank you for looking into this. I’m trying to provide as much info as<br>
possible without seeming computer illiterate or too confusing.</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-14T00:39:41Z2018-12-14T00:39:41ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi renworklock</p>
<p>I am also a user – I was the one who started this thread. As far as I can see no-one from MoneyDance is actually looking at this conversation.</p>
<p>I have stopped using the second machine so no longer have the problem.</p>
<p>Good luck with resolving this.</p>
<p>deb</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-14T01:12:06Z2018-12-14T01:12:06ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I thought so. I submitted the problem today to support.</p>
<p>When I came back from vacation, my end of October reconciliations were way<br>
off. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized my<br>
beginning balances were off from the amount I entered from my statement<br>
from the previous month. It made no sense. I submitted the problem to<br>
Support and they said, make sure everything is using the latest version,<br>
delete my sync folder turn off sync on all devices, turn sync back on,<br>
standup, turn around, and sit back down.</p>
<p>Then I realized the problem. My auto commit Reminders that were previously<br>
reconciled were all incorrect. Once I changed all my deposits and bills<br>
back to the values they were when I reconciled—all accounts were back to $0.</p>
<p>I’ve been watching the entries closely and until my wife returned from her<br>
visit with her mother, everything was working fine. It seems everything is<br>
syncing in the right direction—except Reminders. They’re backwards.</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-14T01:27:36Z2018-12-14T01:27:36ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Good luck – I had a similar issue and had to go back to March to reconcile all my accounts – what a pain.</p>
<p>Cheers</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-14T01:34:25Z2018-12-14T01:34:25ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I would try starting a private discussion on the issue and see if you can get support involved that way.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-15T07:40:55Z2018-12-16T08:13:34ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>For some years I used Reminders with auto commit on two syncing computers. Most of the time I didn't have problems, but every few months I would get the problems described in this thread. It seemed to be random but I eventually figured out that auto-commit was the problem and happened to transactions which had been edited and reconciled. Since I stopped using auto commit I have never had a problem.</p>
<p>I posted it in a thread at the time....see my post 7 in this thread <a href="http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/problems/42048-syncing-between-computers-macs-in-this-case">http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/problems/42048-syncing-bet...</a></p>
<p>There should be some warnings in the help documentation about using auto commit when syncing.</p></div>borehamtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T12:30:46Z2018-12-16T12:30:46ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Hi Deb,</p>
<p>It seems a shame that you’ve uninstalled MoneyDance on one of your computers to get round this issue. I do think it’s unreasonable to expect two computers to sync perfectly after being apart for 6 months as you described.</p>
<p>I go away from home regularly & found the same issue as you. Copying data set between the computers on return gets round this issue completely. I recommend copying the data set as this does not upset syncing. You can do an Export Backup & Restore from backup, but the process is designed to disable syncing.</p>
<p>If one syncs computers regularly this does not seem to be an issue.</p>
<p>It’s not really too onerous to do the copying & certainly easier than hunting for all the errors if you don’t.</p>
<p>Jeff – waiting for the fall out</p></div>jefftag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T13:11:58Z2018-12-16T13:11:58ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I guess there are a couple of work around options. I’ve decided to turn off<br>
auto commit on items that change monthly. My retirement incomes only change<br>
once a year (if I’m lucky) and I can watch them closely. The sync problems<br>
with MoneyDance has come a long way from when I started using this<br>
application. (I’m a former Quicken user.) I don’t understand why the<br>
developers haven’t chimed in with some sort of assurance they’re working<br>
on. To me, a retired hardware engineer, this should be a simple fix. Of<br>
course, that’s what I always told the software engineers on my team when we<br>
were confronted with bugs. 😂</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T15:44:30Z2018-12-16T15:44:30ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Well as someone who writes a lot of control software it is not a trivial or simple fix. You have two machines controlling the account with auto commits. Since they are separately running they will do their auto commits from each machine and then try to sync the transactions through Dropbox (or other data folders). At that point which transaction is the real one? Especially the ones that are edited reminders? Since they are now different amounts it is hard to recognize that they are the same transaction or that the user did not want two different transactions.</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T17:02:55Z2018-12-16T17:02:55ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>One thing I learned, nothing is really easy or it wouldn't need to be done.<br>
I would be happy if if Reminders could be disabled or enabled on each copy<br>
of MD. A Master could be enabled, and others disabled and act as Slaves. It<br>
may be difficult to develop and it may not work for all Users--and I can<br>
already think of problems with that. Like, if I'm using my Laptop for six<br>
or seven weeks on a road trip as a Slave, and I get home and turn on my<br>
DeskTop--the Master.</p></div>renworlocktag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T20:52:48Z2018-12-16T20:52:48ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Agreed, that might be one way to do it. As you said it would have issues. I was just pointing out that a lot of comments in this forum include "this would be a simple fix" and it turns out that for decent software there is nothing simple as you say!</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T20:56:16Z2018-12-16T20:56:16ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Thanks Jeff. I really only had Moneydance on the second computer as pop-ups weren’t working on my laptop so I couldn’t edit reports. Now I have them working again so it is no problem to turn off money dance on that computer.</p>
<p>Deb</p>
<p>Sent from my iPhone</p></div>debkeirtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-16T21:05:25Z2018-12-16T21:05:25ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I think at this time the best approach it to not use auto-commit, by all means have reminders present on all machines but just manually commit them on one and skip them on any others.</p>
<p>In other words take control of what transactions are posted and when and where they are posted.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-17T03:23:34Z2018-12-17T03:23:34ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>After some reflection I think I may understand at least some of what is happening with these transactions.</p>
<p>We know that when syncing there is the concept of the primary machine and all other systems are secondary. I think we can also think of the primary machine as being the master, when you have any sort of multi machine relationship there has to be something that can make a decision if there is any type of contention, in the case of moneydance I believe that would be the Primary machine. I envisage most would set up the desktop to be the primary system and a laptop as a secondary.</p>
<p>Now with the reminders, if the reminder transaction is changed before the next posting and is synced between all machined before the next auto-commit, I think it will probably behave as it should.</p>
<p>If however you post on the secondary machine and then edit the transaction, say as a once off change, I think that could create a problem. This transaction gets replicated back to the primary system. I do not believe the primary can accept that this is an update of the reminder it has, so has to assume either it is an unrelated transaction so it posts its reminder and you have two transactions or it says this transaction is wrong it does not agree with the reminder I have therefore I will change it (since I am the boss).</p>
<p>Now if you edit a reminder, it gets posted on the secondary machine before anything gets replicated then I think the result could be dependent on the order you do things in and perhaps also even the order transactions are replicated and posted.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-17T04:32:47Z2018-12-17T04:32:47ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>@dwg, I think you have expressed the issue quite nicely and this is probably the root of the problem. Having two systems synchronize but have incompatible actions in this case auto committing two different transactions that should be a single transaction is the problem. I am not sure how the software would logically solve this issue other than asking the user for guidance.</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-20T17:15:55Z2018-12-20T17:15:55ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>I am not support staff, just a user.</p>
<p>The following rev notes are included for 2019 beta (1824)<br>
- Delay auto-committing of reminders until after the first sync pass is complete - Added preference setting for whether auto-committing reminders should be processed for the current file on the current compute</p>
<p>You should not replace your 2017 build until stable release.</p>
<p>Hope you find this of interest.</p></div>derekkent23tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-20T17:28:59Z2018-12-20T17:28:59ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Thanks Derek this may solve a bunch of issues for a lot of folks. Don't have time to test the beta but I thank you for that work!</p></div>sthtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-20T17:32:08Z2018-12-20T17:32:08ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>derekkent23, thanks for the heads up.</p>
<p>I am not sure I fully understand those release notes.</p>
<p>I have been so much happier with Moneydance since I stopped auto commit I am reluctant to stop doing it manually......a burnt child fears the fire!</p></div>borehamtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/466457862018-12-22T02:50:12Z2018-12-22T02:50:12ZSyncing of remindes<div><p>Boreham,</p>
<p>If you are happy manually committing transactions then I say go ahead and continue with that approach, it will give you complete control of the process.</p></div>dwg