Reconciliation/Balancing
I am looking to purchase Money Dance. I think the Reconciliation/Balancing is not user friendly at all. While I can make it work by doing some basic math, It would be a lot simpler to allow user input of Open & Close Balances as well as Open & Close Dates as they appear on a bank statement. Then you just need to pick the corresponding transactions. Also, it would allow past historical statements to be viewed. Any thoughts of doing this for the user. I should mention I use banking software off line, Thanks for your consideration.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Maddy on 22 Nov, 2021 02:04 PM
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for contacting Moneydance support.
If you wish to edit the initial balance, open the register of your account by clicking on it in the left sidebar, and then navigate to Account --> Edit Account from the Moneydance menu bar.
In the window that appears, one of the fields is for the Initial Balance of the account.
This should be set as the balance of your account before the earliest transaction within Moneydance, as outlined here.
Also, the reconciled balances in Moneydance are a calculated from:
Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments
To adjust the reconciled balance, you'll need to adjust one of these variables. Since your reconciled balance changed, that must mean that one of the following happened:
1) Your account's starting balance changed
2) One or more cleared transactions were either deleted, had their amount modified, or added
3) One or more transactions were marked (or unmarked) as cleared
Any one of the above would affect the reconciled/cleared balance of an account and could have caused the difference. Moneydance does display an extra confirmation/warning window when you try to do either 1 or 2 in the account's register.
If you had the Mark transactions as cleared when confirmed enabled, in the Network section of the Preferences window, and you performed a download and confirmed transactions with that setting enabled, then those confirmed transactions would have been marked as cleared, affecting the reconciled balance.
So, to correct the problem properly, you'd need to reverse the root cause of the change in reconciled balance.
You could also get the reconciled balance back to the correct value by simply entering an adjustment, either to the account's starting balance or by entering an adjustment transaction and marking it as cleared.
Finally, it might be useful referring you to this article of the Knowledge Base.
I hope this information is helpful. Please let us know if you have further questions or need more assistance.
--
Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
2 Posted by Maupa Ross on 22 Nov, 2021 02:24 PM
Thank you. I can’t do what you are suggesting because the accounts are imported from a QIF. Changing edit account screws up everything. What I have to do is from statements edit account to get the starting statement balance, then enter the ending statement balance. Balance the account, then change edit account back to the correct value to insure correct balances. This is too muck work around. A better method is too allow user control of starting/ending balances and dates, then balance to account without messing up any correct balances. This is what I’m used to in other software I’ve used and it makes life a lot easier. I don’t know your logic for doing it the way you do. I’m sure it has to do with online connection to a bank. I only use this software offline to keep track of things hence my request. Attached is a sample … open/close balances and dates are adjustable … much, much easier.
3 Posted by dwg on 22 Nov, 2021 07:37 PM
I'm a fellow user.
What you have described allows for reconciling transactions between select dates to user controlled balances.
The problem with this approach is that you are not reconciling the actual account to the balance it has in it. This means that there could be a transaction in the account that does not belong or a transaction in the past that has been changed etc. Moneydance does not lock previously reconciled transactions so that they cannot be changed.
Hence you could do what you suggest and it would look like the account has been reconciled but the balance could be wrong because of factors outside of the date range you are using. The method Moneydance uses should show if there is an error in the account as a whole.
4 Posted by Maupa Ross on 22 Nov, 2021 08:59 PM
My balances are not user controlled. I get a Bank Statement that has a Begin/End Date with an actual Begin/End Balance If the transactions don’t match I will not get to a zero missing value and I know there is an issue to find. The balance cannot be wrong for that period if I reconcile to the actual bank statement. I can make Moneydance work but it is cumbersome. If you have ever used MS Money or Banktivity, this is what they use and it works to balance any given statement. This is the only APP/Program I have seen that does this. Not a fan … sorry. Thanks for you response.
5 Posted by dwg on 22 Nov, 2021 09:12 PM
You are talking about balancing to a specific statement. I am taking about reconciling the account as a whole which is what Moneydance is doing. What is the point of making sure you are balacing to a specific statement period if there are entries in the account that are making the account as a whole have the wrong balance.
6 Posted by Maupa Ross on 22 Nov, 2021 09:26 PM
I believe we are saying the same thing, balancing to a statement each month IS reconciling the account as a whole. The account is balanced from its inception right up to the last statement. In the transition to the next future statement a mistake can be made but it will be caught at the next closing date. So, the account balance as a whole is correct up to the last statement. There is nothing wrong with this and I have been doing this for probably GT 30 years and everything comes out right. I agree with you but what works for me may not work for you and that’s okay as long as the bottom line is correct … which it is. Thanks again.
7 Posted by tgilbert666 on 23 Nov, 2021 07:53 AM
I'm which case the starting date/balance is already known by MD so just
enter the Closing Balance (from the current Statement) and I believe you
will be able to proceed as you expect. Entering a starting date and
balance and a closing date are all not required and available from the
register itself. They are not essential to the Reconciliation process that
you describe.
Cheers
Tony (a fellow user)
System closed this discussion on 22 Feb, 2022 08:00 AM.