WEB Connect
Recently I got a informative response from Jon explaining why
MoneyDance can not connect to my bank. There are many banks that
don't support OFX. Apparently QB uses 'web connect' for non-OFX
banks. This morning, still using QB I got a message that said in
essence "Your financial institution has added either a new page to
their website or a pop-up that requires your attention..." In
essence, my bank threw an obstacle into the orderly and special way
that QB had expected, so my account transactions download didn't
work.
I'm not sure if web connect means that the software must actually log on, receive the screen buffers that we would normally see on our browser and search within each page for tags or fields, or if it is not quite that literal. But I was wondering, could there be a generic solution to this problem? For example, you invoke a function in MD which follows and records your activity on the bowser. Perhaps it displays the data and asks for the user to identify certain data elements. Then, if you have 'taught' MD the 'normal' process to go through to get transactions, it would continue to work based on the recorded session until the bank changes something on their website.
QB must have a whole department that tries to keep up with all the changes, and I can see how that would be a difficult to impossible support burden for a small volume product. However, if this could be shouldered by the users of MD it would alleviate this problem. Furthermore, there could be a database where the 'recorded process' could be uploaded to share with other MD users just in case they are using one of the banks already in the database, of course with my account number filtered out. :-)
Is such a thing possible ?
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1 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 27 Jan, 2010 03:31 PM
Rich,
What an interesting idea! I've passed this on to our developer Sean to see what he thinks.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance, and thank you for your interest in Moneydance!
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
Support Staff 2 Posted by Sean Reilly on 27 Jan, 2010 03:49 PM
Hi Rich,
Thanks for your suggestion. We actually have come up with a method to something similar to web connect, that simply involves Moneydance "handing off" a URL for your bank to your system's web browser. You would then login and their web site should tell your browser to automatically start downloading an OFX or QFX file which Moneydance will notice (because it monitors the downloads folder) and import. We'll make an announcement as soon as this system is ready for testing.
Thanks!
Sean
3 Posted by jgreer27 on 28 Feb, 2010 03:33 PM
Just wanted to throw in my support for this idea. Ben was also very helpful in letting me know why MD can't web connect to my bank, Chase. As this is one of the features of the software that I would use most often, I'm hopeful that this feature will be added.
Thanks,
Jennie
Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 01 Mar, 2010 02:27 PM.
4 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 01 Mar, 2010 02:29 PM
Thank you for your input on this issue. We're working on ways to implement this feature in future versions of Moneydance, and will let the Moneydance community know when this happens.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support