Provide an option to skip the Security Match window when downloading transactions from broker
Moneydance has become almost unusable for an active trader. By this, I mean that it takes over an hour to process new symbols from the prior day's trading. This process blocks all other access to the various ledgers so Moneydance is completely unusable during this process.
Here is my user experience. In the morning, I open Moneydance. Moneydance connects to the broker and downloads the transactions. Moneydance then goes through a process to lookup all the symbols received against what it knows about. I trade options. I have multiple brokers. Each broker may use different symbols to represent an option (the same is true for stocks as presented in the download stream). This causes Moneydance to popup a window asking if I would like to match it to an existing symbol or create new. 100% of the time I choose to create new (does not match an existing symbol). This morning I had over 100 windows I had to confirm. Sometimes there are several minute pauses between symbols as Moneydance adds some to its datafiles. This causes the process to take an hour minimum.
It would be nice to have an option for downloaded broker transactions to automatically add new symbols. I estimate that this would reduce the transaction download and processing time to approximately 25 minutes and since I don't need to monitor it, I can let it run, doing other things while it processes the transactions.
It is possible that I am exceeding the design of Moneydance. I have over 35 years of history as I began with an import from Quicken in 2016 when I converted to Moneydance. The data file has millions of transactions across my banking, credit card, and various brokers. Even to add a new transaction manually is beginning to take a few seconds per transaction into a bank account. If I have exceeded the design of Moneydance, please let me know and I will stop suggesting these types of improvements.
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1 Posted by dtd on 26 Oct, 2023 03:37 AM
Moneydance is intended to be a personal finance program. It isn't really intended to be a day trader program.
Given what appears to be your situation, if you trade that much, having 100 windows to confirm isn't surprising. Again, not a day trader program.
As to the pauses, well, that's not normal. MD is usually pretty fast (even if not designed for this). Do you sync your datafile to other systems? That can bloat.
Even so, grab the toolbox extension and shrink the dataset. That might help you out.
2 Posted by J Brown on 26 Oct, 2023 03:57 PM
Thank you dtd for pointing me to the toolbox extension. Before shrinking,
it reports that I have 2370 files and is 399.8MB with 28 non-core files
consuming 3.8MB. It also reported that my jvm size is 1.1GB and I'm
between 90 - 99% of that. I increased it to 2GB. Shrinking removed 1582
old change logs, reducing by 267.7MB. Restarting Moneydance was faster --
about 2 minutes instead of 5 minutes. New database size after the shrink
is 136.0MB. Toolbox now shows the jvm memory is at 2.1GB and 97% of max.
I'll play around with it a bit more to see at what point it stops being
close to 100%.
On restart, MD did connect to my brokers and pull new transactions which
caused 10 new symbols to be brought down and pop windows. Please note that
0 new transactions were introduced, only new symbols. This is because the
OFX file contains symbols for orders I have entered but the orders may not
have executed. I guess MD is anticipating the need for the symbols.
Yesterday I reported over 100 new symbols needed to be added. The actual
number of broker transactions processed and placed into my ledger were 24.
So, I'm clicking on windows 4 times more than the number of corresponding
transactions. Toolbox also reports that the majority of the symbols have a
duplicate of 2. I will use the toolbox to cleanup these entries.
Regarding sync - no, I don't use sync and it is disabled.
On the topic of MD not being a day trader platform, I agree -- there isn't
near enough capabilities nor reporting. Yet keeping track of one's assets
and transactions (banking or brokerage) is a fundamental part of a personal
financial manager software product. 24 brokerage transactions a day is not
an excessive number of transactions. I could easily have 24 credit card
purchases with 24 different vendors. While brokerage transactions are
slightly more complex, the concept is quite similar.
By now, you can probably see that there is something odd about the adding
new symbols/securities process. I observed 100+ windows that popup to add
new securities (find a match) when I only have 24 transactions (18 of the
24 were to close prior open positions opened a week earlier; 6 were part of
a buy/sell combination for 3 trades to mean that only a fraction of the
symbols were actually new). That's what's behind my suggestion for an
option to suppress the window when the source is coming from OFX/QFX/QIF.
Compound that by the frustration of needing to be in front of the computer
to click every window just so you can have current ledger information or
explore the state of other accounts (like bank accounts).
In my view, a download process is a background process and should not
interfere with a user's ability to navigate around the application -- just
like importing a QFX file doesn't prevent me from looking at different
accounts while it is importing transactions on the banking side of MD. But
the window popping process directly blocks the user and for the way I use
MD, provides zero benefit so I would like to turn off the find a match
popup windows.
Thank you again for the toolbox extension. It looks to be very useful, but
it doesn't solve the usability problem.
On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 10:37 PM dtd <[email blocked]>
wrote:
3 Posted by dtd on 26 Oct, 2023 08:40 PM
To quote Stuart Beesley (the writer of the extension): Toolbox +1
If you want a suggestion to be possibly implemented (especially one that is semi-unique) - write a succinct concept with exactly what you want implemented [and it sounds like you are knowledgeable and can do so].
I tend to be verbose, but when it comes to my profession (I/T), I say almost exactly how an improvement should be done.
MD has TONS of suggestions/bug fixes that are "taken under consideration" and then fall into a black hole... it's sort of like "will your resume be looked at". So your request, to be considered, must be expressed as "this is something everyone might want" (i.e. automation behind the scenes versus manual entry) - oh in a new thread, of course.
Hope that helps.
4 Posted by J Brown on 26 Oct, 2023 08:50 PM
I appreciate the further direction. I'll write it up as an enhancement
description instead of a "suggestion" since suggestions are very often
light on details.
On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 3:40 PM dtd <[email blocked]> wrote:
System closed this discussion on 25 Jan, 2024 09:00 PM.