Matching downloaded transactions in MD 2010
When MD 2010 thinks a downloaded transaction is a match it doesn't give me a way to override. I tried each of the selections it offered and none of them let me include the new downloaded transaction as a new transaction (it finds the earlier dated transaction and doesn't even show the new transaction date). This, of course, throws my balances off tremendously and now my accounts are out of balance as they are missing transactions.
Thanks.
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61 Posted by jwc on 17 Dec, 2009 11:06 PM
@ sgodfrey: Yes, exactly. Thank you. 2010 is unusable this way.
Bring back the old interface. Don't try to fix the current one. Just bring the old one back.
62 Posted by Jeff Y. on 18 Dec, 2009 04:34 AM
I agree that we need a better method that allows users to override the erroneous matches:
... an option to "unmatch" (i.e revert) ... an option to "manually match" to another transaction (i.e. forcing a match) ... an option to "accept as new" ... an option to "turn auto merge on/off" ... add better flags that distinguish between a match vs. a new transaction (assuming auto merge remains an option). Definitely give users the control to turn auto merge on or off.
I am not keen on going back to the MD2008 UI, since it was lacking some of the above functionality. I'm confident the MD developers can and will make the end product an improvement from MD2008.
Thanks,
Jeff
63 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 18 Dec, 2009 04:55 AM
Jeff,
What you state can work for me but I can't accept having the downloaded transactions in the register and hitting the balance even before I review them. That is completely unacceptable to me. I need to see the downloaded transaction in a separate list from the register.
64 Posted by Jeff Y. on 18 Dec, 2009 05:19 AM
I agree that there should be a separate list (like MD2008). It doesn't seem prudent to use "auto merge" (especially the way it currently works). Whatever the method, an "accept all" feature is a time-saver once things are matched correctly.
My main concern is to have the register's balance easily reconciled with the bank balance after a download (i.e. with the least amount of researching on my part). Currently, "auto merge" is creating headaches here. Better flags and flexible override capabilities would make the "auto merge" a viable option ... though not necessarily preferred. Regardless of the user interface, if my bank balance matches the downloaded balance (without extra effort from me), then I'm happy:)
Patiently anticipating a better method soon!
Jeff
65 Posted by David on 19 Dec, 2009 12:30 AM
Another problem: where are the keyboard shortcuts? In the previous version of MD, I could hit "enter" for every transaction that looked OK. That no longer works. You want me to confirm every transaction with the mouse?! There's no way.
I'm looking at build 723 right now and the matching button reads "accept_txn". That can't be right. How's a user like me supposed to interpret "accept_txn"? This feels like beta software, but it was advertised as production quality. I don't download beta software when it comes to managing my money.
Where's the download link for MD 2008? I'm going back ASAP.
66 Posted by Peter on 21 Dec, 2009 11:18 AM
Very frustrating - I also have the problem where I cannot override the auto match transaction from a dowloaded statement so I am now ending up with a mess. Please can you guys sort this out soonest as I have now moved onto 2010 not expecting something as basic as this to go wrong!
67 Posted by Randy on 21 Dec, 2009 02:29 PM
Build 729 is out this morning, and adds another possibility in the Accept box dropdown.
There is now a "merge" choice, if you have an uncleared transaction of the same amount in the register. If you have one that was supposed to match, you can edit it and change the amount to match before you accept the incoming transaction. You can also record a scheduled reminder of the same amount, and it will propose that as a merge.
Unfortunately, there is a bug in this process, in that the "merge" doesn't get rid of the source transaction, so you still have 2 transactions when the process is over. Merge should mean you only have one.
I have entered bug 2401 for this, I encourage any that don't mind voting to vote for this ticket. I don't really want to have to find these and delete them manually.
There is a list of all the changes in 729 at:
http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Moneydance2010Beta
Just scroll to the bottom. I don't think you have to have a separate Trac id to view the list.
68 Posted by Jeff Y. on 21 Dec, 2009 03:32 PM
I voted for the bug fix ticket 2401, and hope this gets addressed in the next build. I'm not going to install Build 729, since the transaction download process is still buggy.
69 Posted by Randy on 21 Dec, 2009 08:16 PM
There is one additional feature I have discovered, though I can't say if 729 is the first build to have it.
If you hold down the ALT key (Windows 7) while you hover over a matched transaction, it will show the Original description in a black window directly below the transaction that it is proposing to match to. So you can compare the descriptions of the two transactions it is proposing to "merge" at a glance, to see if it is what you want. It also shows the memo (if their was one), and the splits (if any).
Sure would be easier if we had a little documentation, but then the fun of discovery wouldn't be there :)
70 Posted by cbtengr on 21 Dec, 2009 08:42 PM
The ALT/hover works on Linux & Mac 728.
71 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 21 Dec, 2009 10:36 PM
Angie
Jessica,
Please let me know which build will contain the downloaded transactions in a separate list and not combined in the register and reflected in the register balance. I'll then take a look. Until then, I'll use 2008.
Thanks,
72 Posted by jwc on 21 Dec, 2009 11:22 PM
sgodfrey, I totally agree. Can't use it without a separate list.
73 Posted by michael.parrott on 22 Dec, 2009 02:20 AM
Is there any way possible for me to enable the old interface. If you can't, please let me know how to back out of the new version so I can use the old version interface. The new interface is unusable.
74 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 23 Dec, 2009 03:26 AM
Angie,
Just received this e-mail. "Thank you for your input. You can find a detailed discussion of this issue here."
Why did you send me back to the discussion where I posted my question?
Let me repeat my question and I would appreciate a direct answer by a MD staff member.
"Please let me know which build will contain the downloaded transactions in a separate list and not combined in the register and reflected in the register balance. I'll then take a look. Until then, I'll use 2008."
Thank you
75 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 23 Dec, 2009 03:40 AM
Sgodfrey,
The email you received was a response to a separate thread you posted earlier this month. The other thread (where the reply you received tonight posted) was closely related, and my response was intended to direct users reading that thread to this one, where we are currently posting updates.
I emailed our developer Sean the quoted question earlier this evening, I hope to have a reply from him tomorrow, which I will then post here. I apologize for the confusion.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
76 Posted by Randy on 23 Dec, 2009 02:16 PM
Build 731 is out and adds more enhancements and fixes in this area:
it appears that bug 2401 (deleting source transaction on a merge) is now fixed.
two new balances (confirmed balance and unconfirmed total) are now added to the balances button. These only show when you have transactions that have blue circles in a given account. The confirmed balance is your balance before you download, while your current balance is after the download. These update in real time as you accept transactions.
Additional wording has been added to the Accept box drop-down, and the language is familiar to 2008 users. "Repeat Payee", "Possible Match" "Similar Payee" all seem to be there in my limited testing. The downloaded transactions are grouped according to these new phrases, which brings clarification to the process.
This build does add a lot of clarification. It is the best build of 2010 I have seen.
Some will still want the 2008 interface, and I am sure it is justified. Guys, I am afraid that ship has sailed. It appears that the developers approach is to try and deal with the underlying reasons why people want that interface back. If you look at the fixes and enhancements that have occurred in builds in the last 3 or 4 days, it really doesn't look like he is simply going to drop the old interface back in.
A lot of people (not just on this thread) are uncomfortable with the downloaded transactions going in their register and hitting their balance. The items in 731 begin to address that discomfort, just not in a way I expected.
Still more could be done. For instance, while you can now tell what is a match from what is just a repeat payee, it would be a lot clearer if you could just scan through the register and tell the matches from the non matches without having to press the dropdown next to the accept button.
I hope those that went back to 2008 will at least create a test environment with 2010 build 731 and help us provide input, so we can get the most we can out of 2010.
77 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 23 Dec, 2009 02:38 PM
Randy,
Really appreciate all the work you doing for us all here!!!
My requirement concerning the downloaded transactions being separate from the register still stands.
When I balance my check book (getting old fashioned here) I need to see what the bank has and what I have. I can't easily do that with the MD 2010 interface. Under the MD2008 interface, all the downloaded transaction were in 1 list. I could also scroll through my existing transactions to search for a transaction. That meet my requirement. Sure it could be better but the basic requirement was met
I can't do that with the MD 2010 interface. With the downloaded transactions in the register they are all over the place. Very hard to find them all. Yes I can use a setting to see all the blue dot transactions but then I can't also see all my register transactions.
There are times especially with the holiday shopping, where with a Tuesday download from the bank, I can get 20 transactions. Maybe the MD 2010 works for 2 or 3 transactions but it does't work for me.
This is not acceptable. So my interface requirement is to see all downloaded transactions grouped together, not combined with the existing transactions and not reflected in the register balance (looks like progress with the balance but not the interface).
Angie,
This is my interface requirement. Please let me know how this will be honored.
Thanks
78 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 23 Dec, 2009 02:58 PM
Randy
Angie,
Another way to look at this is a problem with scaling. Many times an IT solution works well for 1 or 2 items (users, interfaces, screens, etc) but then fails under load (multiple items).
As long as MD figures out how I can see BOTH the downloaded transactionS (with ability to scroll through them and not be reflected in register balance) and my current register transactionS (with ability to scroll through them) my basic requirement will be met.
Thanx,
79 Posted by Randy on 23 Dec, 2009 05:11 PM
Sgodfrey2000, thanks for the input. I really don't know how much the developer listens to us, but sometimes I think we may have a little influence.
it is possible in MD2010 to have 2 windows open that point at the same account, with the "uncleared" filter set on one and the "unconfirmed" window set on the other.
If your screen is big enough, those two windows can be put side by side or one above the other, and used for visual comparison. They can be scrolled independently (and used to edit independently).
I think it would be helpful if you described why that isn't sufficient.
80 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 23 Dec, 2009 06:30 PM
Randy,
The short answer is I didn't know that was possible.
Angie,
Where is the documentation? Also please make sure Randy receives some sort of product credit here!!!
Thanx,
81 Posted by jwc on 23 Dec, 2009 07:13 PM
Can someone explain what the feature is? Can someone tell me what we're supposed to be getting in exchange for the confusion and inconvenience of the new system?
People complain about not being able to do x, and the official response is to create a different and more inconvenient way to do x.
People complain about y, and it turns out there already exists a new and more inconvenient way to do y.
I suppose it's acceptable that we can do almost everything we used to do, just with more work and annoyance. But what is the payoff?
What is the great upside that makes up for all this?
82 Posted by Jamie on 23 Dec, 2009 07:13 PM
In the 731 build, the "Accept" Button on my investment account now says "accept_txn." Interesting.
Also, in the View Menu, we have "hide_source_list"
83 Posted by Randy on 23 Dec, 2009 07:15 PM
LOL....Well I wish I could claim to be some kind of genius, but I stumbled on it accidentally myself.
They added a "feature" a few builds back where it opens an extra window for every account that that has new downloaded transactions. While closing (and cursing) that feature I got to playing around with all those windows, and noticed that ability.
I hope they get rid of that "feature" soon (2 bugs written for it so far), but at least it served a purpose.
84 Posted by Randy on 23 Dec, 2009 07:33 PM
@jwc, I wish that the development team would explain why they felt the need to do downloading and reconciling a different way, so we didn't have to speculate.
MD2010 (especially with build 731) is more like MS Money's approach (still some gaps though). Its speed and agility are far superior to MS Money. As a former MS Money user, I am used to having unreconciled transactions go straight into the register. I never used Quicken very much, but I believe it did the same.
Lets face it, a big part of the growth market for Moneydance is all the former MS Money users and the disgruntled Quicken users.
My speculation is that some of this is to make the product more appealing to the growth market. I hope it does.
Moneydance could stand to grow a little. I hope they are able to boost sales from this.
85 Posted by Randy on 24 Dec, 2009 02:04 PM
Build 732 is out this morning, and adds 2 additional features to those mentioned yesterday.
the "automatic merge" feature can now be turned off, resulting in an entirely manual merging capability. In preferences - network tab their is a check box to turn it off.
Their is now an export back to md2008 option so that people that try MD2010 and want to go back have an easier path.
I tested item 1 above, and it worked fine in my tests. No incoming transactions were matched to manually entered transactions, when the option is cleared. The merge option is offered in the accept drop-down as an option, but the manual transaction is still preserved and shown as a separate record in the register.
I didn't test item 2 (I don't plan to go back).
This thing has really come a long way in the last few days. Transaction matching now offers more for me in MD2010 that it did in MD2008.
The algorithm for automatic matching can still be improved IMHO, and I hope some effort can now be focused on that. But this is good progress.
Good work, Moneydance !!!!!
86 Posted by Noname on 24 Dec, 2009 03:01 PM
I just tried the export for MD2008 (also tried qif, mdxml) and none of them are recognized when I try to import in MD2008 program. Anyone have any success? If so, please list steps so I can see what (if anything) I am doing wrong. Thanks.
87 Posted by Randy on 24 Dec, 2009 03:49 PM
jbnyt, When you chose the export to MD2008, did it output a .MD file? If so, you could just open it in MD2008, you wouldn't have to import it.
88 Posted by Noname on 24 Dec, 2009 04:26 PM
Randy, As you pointed out the exported file didn't have the ".md" extension. I added it and that seemed to work. (Don't understand why the export wouldn't automatically add the extension?) Thanks for your help.
89 Posted by Randy on 24 Dec, 2009 05:17 PM
Maybe Sean is watching more than we think. I hope I don't get in trouble for this but he answered some of the questions we have been asking (at a high level), in a post on the mailing list last night. I don't know how to just publish a link to it, so I am cutting and pasting it here. It is a dialog with a user that has similar questions to the ones we have been asking:
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:43:11 -0500
From: Sean Reilly [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [moneydance] STILL BROKEN - Matching downloaded
To: General discussion related to Moneydance
Message-ID: [email blocked]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On Dec 22, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Steve Lessard wrote:
I absolutely agree and regret that I let MD2010 out the door without making this work much better. As you've probably guessed, the goal with the new workflow is to streamline the process of receiving downloaded transactions. The old process required everyone to manually accept each downloaded transaction. The new model provides that, but also lets you simply accept what your bank sends, while automatically cleaning it up and categorizing as much as possible.
To better simulate the old model, I've made some recent changes that have just been uploaded as build 732 (now available from http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Moneydance2010Beta):
1) Preferences setting to enable automatic categorization/matching upon download. The default is to allow this categorization and matching, but turning it off will yield something more like the previous behavior where downloaded transactions are put directly into the register as they were received and marked as 'unconfirmed'. Selecting an unconfirmed transaction will show possible matches and similar past transactions and also allow you to 'confirm' the transaction as is. The matching and similar-transaction-finding algorithms are very similar to those in MD2008 but with a few improvements. Disabling this preference setting, combined with using the 'Unconfirmed' register filter starts getting very close to what was available in MD2008. Disabling this setting means that you know
2) I added a 'confirmed' balance type to each account that shows the account balance if all unconfirmed transactions are ignored. You can see this balance (if it is different from the normal account balance) by clicking the balance button at the bottom right corner of any register window. I'm considering making it possible to show the confirmed balance for accounts on the home page, which would further simulate the old behavior, but am not sure if it would be too confusing for new users.
3) I've fixed a ton of bugs in the transaction matching/categorization system over the last 4 or so days. If you haven't tried build 731 or higher, please do so (turning off the automatically merge transactions option, if you like) and let me know if there's anything in the process that might be improved (short of reverting back to the old model... I don't plan on doing that).
I can picture something similar, but it basically looks like two registers: one that filters out unconfirmed transactions and one that filters our confirmed transactions. In between the two registers would be a panel, similar to the one that exists now, that lets you choose how the selected unconfirmed transaction(s) are processed. If you boil this process down, you can get something very similar by using build 732, turning off the 'automatically merge/match' option, and selecting the 'Unconfirmed' register filter.
Sorry for the long message... just trying to share some of the rationale for the new model and make it a) palatable for people used to the old model and b) work better, as the MD2010 initial release was admittedly broken in this area.
Thanks,
Sean
90 Posted by sgodfrey2000 on 24 Dec, 2009 10:49 PM
Randy,
Just downloaded the latest build. Can't seem to get the 2 windows you mentioned here to work. "They added a "feature" a few builds back where it opens an extra window for every account that that has new downloaded transactions. While closing (and cursing) that feature I got to playing around with all those windows, and noticed that ability."
Setting the Preferences to not automatically merge and categorize is a good step forward. Still can;t get use to this interface.
Angie,
When is the user manual going to be available?
Also found what I'll call a bug. If I have unconfirmed transactions, when I enter a new transaction, MD is suggesting a unconfirmed transaction and hence the wrong category. If I am entering a new transaction and there is no match to an unconfirmed transaction, it work correctly. Unconfirmed transactions should not be used for anything in MD until I tell MD to accept them.
Production is getting better but still not production quality.