UI Improvements Needed in 2018
I have been using the trial version to see if MD is an adequate alternative to Quicken. From what I have seen so far, it may well be. Congrats! But there is certainly room to improve.
1. I have posted elsewhere about most accounts requiring a Default Category. If this is indeed required, there really needs to be a smarter/better way of handling this. To simply default to the first item (Advertising) on an alpha-sorted list is really dumb. First, in preferences there ought to be a global default. This will likely work for at least 50% of the accounts - maybe more. Second, in the account edit screen, make the field a type-in, auto-complete field like in the transaction records. Forcing one to mouse and navigate a very long list for each account is pretty unpleasant. If there is no way to do a global default, at least choose a better default that Advertising for new accounts. I would suggest Not Categorized. Better still would be blank/empty which is on the list. But in transactions you cannot auto-complete this choice. So that makes Not Categorized better for me at least.
2. In setting up Direct Connect stuff, it is important to realize that many users will have more than one user/pass for a given bank/broker. For example, both my wife and I have accounts almost everywhere. I have managed to get things to work and MD remembers things ok. So that's good. But it is confusing in these instances. Perhaps allowing multiple, named connections (a level of indirection) for the same bank/broker would make this all much more clear and easier to input/setup.
3. Some kind of button/tool bar along the top would be a nice way to give users access to commonly used functions. Menus are ok. But they are rather old school. Don't remove them. But consider a ribbon bar of buttons right under the menu bar and allow users to customize what they want on it. Common one would be "Home/Summary", "Online Update this account", "Online Update all Accounts", almost any menu item could make sense here. Also a way to "forward/back" navigation would be nice although almost a whole other topic.
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1 Posted by derekkent23 on 11 Feb, 2018 08:51 AM
I am not support staff, just a user.
You may find the following helpful regarding your point 1.
As you use Moneydance you will find that when you enter a description after a time Moneydance will lean the most used category associated with the description. For example, I shop for food at a supermarket called Sainburys. Typing Sa in the description field fills in Sainburys. I tab to categories and it automatically fills in with Food:Groceries. Occasionally I buy Petrol at Sainburys so I need to change the category. I type Pet and by this time the list in the popup window has filtered to Car: Petrol-Diesel. Tab enters this Category and move to the next field. In this case no mouse used.
Also you may find this article of help
http://help.infinitekind.com/kb/archive-moneydance-2017/archive-mon...
2 Posted by dwg on 11 Feb, 2018 09:42 AM
David,
Are you aware that you can set a default category on an Account-by-account basis.
Tools --> Account
Select the Account then hit the Edit button, then on the resultant screen change the default category for that account to what you want.
3 Posted by whitedavidp on 11 Feb, 2018 02:35 PM
Thanks very much for all your help! I am aware of the default category per account. I am not yet sure that I will find anything save blank or a category I have created called Not Categorized of much real use in my situation. I could see that a long lived CD or bond might use Interest Income as a default though. I will see if this ends up being more useful than I anticipated over time.
I was not aware of the "learning" capabilities so thanks. I am so new to this and come from years of Quicken - a habit I am trying hard to break now. Quicken sometimes tries to guess what is right based upon payee and has a memorized payee function that allows the user to tie a given payee to category, memo, and even price. So for a power bill or such it makes entry easier. Certainly not perfect though.
I will pay more attention to the link you provided and I climb the learning curve.
Cheers!
Support Staff 4 Posted by Ethan on 11 Feb, 2018 03:18 PM
Hello,
You can create a category called Uncategorized (or something like that) in Tools -> Categories and set that as the default category for your account. I know many users prefer doing something like this rather than a specific category. There's no way to make no category the default, or even a possibility. Since Moneydance is based on double-entry bookkeeping, every transaction will need to be associated with another category or account. At best one could create a temporary holding category like this, if one wasn't going to assign the correct category to transactions right away.
Ethan
Infinite Kind Support
System closed this discussion on 13 May, 2018 03:20 PM.