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davet65

01 Mar, 2011 03:54 PM

Just switched from QMac2006. So far, so good - I think I'll like MD. But nothing is perfect :) .

WISH LIST FOR MONEYDANCE
(If I'm doing something wrong, and MD already does what I suggest, please clue me in - thanks.)

The Reminders calendar is very good and flexible, but if I change the date when I manually accept the next occurrence, the date shows correctly in the register but still shows on the original date in the calendar. So I have inconsistent transactions recorded.

Add the Morningstar categories as the default SubType list for mutual funds.

Show the current total # of shares as a column on the Securities Detail view.

Make the Tools; Edit Securities show and allow editing of the security setup information, like the Type and SubType referred to above. It is a pain to have to go to the account to (individually) edit the security's info there.

Add a Total to the Home Page section that shows the Expenses/Income graphs. I can drill down wonderfully, but where is the total?

Please handle loans that I make to others. Putting in a negative principal doesn't seem to work - it takes it but then thinks no payment is due.

Remember which view has been chosen for Investment Accounts so that they open to that view.

For Category Accounts, why not have the Balance at the bottom of the window be the "balance" for the selected view period? The actual balance is the last amount in the register, but the amount at the bottom would be the amount spent/into the category for the selected period. Regular accounts should probably NOT do that.

Is there a way to force a match of old transactions that are outside of the chosen time frame for matches? I had an old check that cleared after a couple of months. A new downloaded transaction kept coming up and even if I accepted and then deleted the downloaded transaction (which showed the cleared date, not the written date), the next download produced the same transaction. I changed to time frame to 90 days, which solved the problem, but I have a foreign check that often takes 4 or 5 months to clear. Will I be forced to change the date of that check so that it can match?

1. 1 Posted by davet65 on 06 Mar, 2011 10:06 PM

   

   Any chance anyone from the support staff can comment on these issues?

   Am I missing something?

   Is the issue valid and on a to-do list - sometime?

   In particular, the discrepancy between transactions from the Reminder Calendar that are edited for date, but still show up in the Calendar with the wrong date?

   And I did find an older comment about the bizarre securities editing process. I have since discovered that I have to edit info for the same security in each account that it appears in. Perhaps not the case for new securities, but true for my imported ones.

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2. 2 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 31 Mar, 2011 12:28 AM

   

   Dave,

   I'm sorry for out delayed response, it seems this case fell through a filter. I'll try to respond to your points one by one.

   1. Reminders- this is proper functionality. Reminders occur on a set schedule, and if you want to edit that schedule you need to edit the reminder directly. If you only edit one transaction which is created as the result of a reminder, you're not editing the original reminder. (I hope that's clear, if not let me know.)

   2. Morningstar- good suggestion, I've created it and attached it to this thread.

   3. Number of shares- this is a line item in the upper right hand panel of the Securities detail.

   4. Agreed, the securities editing tools need to be better integrated and smoothed out more. We're working on it internally.

   5. Expenses/Income- Do the Income and Expenses budget bars available in the status graph meet this need, or are you also looking to include un-budgeted categories?

   6. Loans to others- Could this be handled by using reminders and an asset account, or are there other functions you are looking for?

   7. Investment account view- I've attached the suggestion ticket to this thread.

   8. Category accounts- this will likely not be implemented, in large part because encouraging people to spend much time in the category registers often leads to people editing transactions from there, which is often confusing for those not used to dealing with double-entry accounting. Generally people use reports to get this information, and memorized reports make this process almost seamless.

   9. At the moment, yes, you'll need to change the date. I'm not sure if this will change- we implemented the date restriction to avoid issues like similar checks being mis-matched, and checking being deposited 4-5 months after they've been issued is quite rare. That said, nothing is impossible.

   Again, I'm sorry for the delay and if you have any other questions please do let me know. You'll be automatically notified about updates to the tickets attached to this thread. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,

   Angie Rauscher
   Moneydance Support

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3. 3 Posted by davet65 on 01 Apr, 2011 12:24 AM

   

   Angie,

   Thanks for responding - lateness forgiven.

   My responses where called for to your answers:

   1 - You missed my point. I don't want to edit the date in the reminder string. I often don't make the actual transaction on the date in the reminder. So if I record the current reminder, but change the date since the actual date is different from the reminder date, the reminder turns into a greyed out "transaction" in the reminder calendar, but the date is not the "new" one - it is the same as the original reminder date. But the date in the register is the changed one. So I have two different dates in my file - one in the executed reminder and a different one in the register. You could argue that it merely shows that the reminder was recorded, but Q did what I describe.

   3 - I missed it!! Thanks.

   5 - The bars don't meet the need, though they are fine and useful. I would like to see a $ Total of the various items in the bars. For example, if I chose the bars for Expenses - This Year, then a numerical value equal to the sum of all the values from the bars would be the total Expenses for This Year. Wouldn't that be nice?!

   6 - A loan that I make to others could be handled as you suggest. But what I would like, and what is in Q, is a choice during set-up of the loan of whether I am borrowing or lending the money. All else is the same in terms of documenting the loan, except I pay out the principal and receive the payments. I tried putting in a negative Principal in the Loan Account setup, but MD didn't like that and didn't compute the payments TO ME correctly. It thought that the loan was already paid off.

   8 - I accept your explanation.

   9 - This is a problem, though perhaps I didn't state it clearly. It has been posted by others. Let me try again. Today, I downloaded from my bank. A check transaction came through, with a check # 999, an amount of $115 and a date IN THE DOWNLOAD of 2/4/11 [I checked the .ofx]. That check, #999 for $115, was written on 12/4/10 and is listed and already reconciled in my transaction register. The downloaded transaction is outside of any match date zone to the register transaction. The only way I can see to handle this is to remember to Delete the downloaded transaction, since MD doesn't see the match. And if I delete it, MD doesn't remember that I did download the late transaction and downloads it again next time.

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4. 4 Posted by dave on 05 Apr, 2011 08:39 AM

   

   Hi Davet65!

   I'm another user, and I've found that workarounds are pretty much the norm in MD, so here's one you might try for point #9 above:

   I make my car payment on a specific date each month. Using my bank's billpay system, I have to register the payment at least 5 days in advance. I set up my reminder for at least 2 weeks in advance, and when it comes up I enter the payment into billpay (I distrust automatic payments!).

   Once entered into billpay, I record the reminder in MD for the ammount and date of payment, which puts it at the bottom of my check account register and highlights it in yellow. This does not affect my account balance in MD until the cheque actually clears or that proposed date passes.
   

   In your case, where the cheque can take 4-5 months to clear, you can simply keep altering the date to a bit further in the future until it actually clears. This means that the balance shown for your cheque account will be accurate (until that cheque clears the bank, the funds are still in the account, simply unuseable), while your cheque register will show your true position in the balance immediately above the first yellow highlighted line.

   Once the cheque actually clears, you can alter the date of the register version to reflect the clearance date and it will reconcile quite happily. I can see what you are trying to do, so here's an alternate method that may work better.

   Create a hierarchy of accounts, all type Bank:
   

    Bank Account
         Chequeing
         Future Cheques
   

   Your cheque account points to 'Chequeing" and downloads transactions to that account. When you write a cheque for one of these long term payees, you transfer the funds to "future cheques" from Chequeing. Both accounts accumulate to "Bank Account", and the total here will reflect the true state of the bank account - the check has been written but the funds are still in the account. The Chequeing account will show your real state of affairs, how much ready cash you have available, while "future cheques" shows how much cash you have that is tied up in promissory notes.

   Once the cheque finally clears the bank, you create a simple transfer from 'future cheques' back into 'chequeing' and then download the transaction. In this way, the register reflects when the cheque was sent, reduces the value of the account by that ammount, and then shows when the cheque was finally cashed (with a temporary increase in the account level to cover it).

   I hope that makes some kind of sense and is helpful to you !

   DaveyB

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5. 5 Posted by avp2 on 05 Apr, 2011 02:38 PM

   

   Many of your suggestions are pretty good and a few have been made by others in the past - the income/expense totals for instance. BTW, I personally find the thermometer graphs a really big feature that should developed more by MD and I have put in more than one suggestion for that purpose. I also agree that having to edit the same stocks/funds by investment account is tedious. Similarly annoying is the fact that custom fund types are not kept in MD's main data file (apparently they are in the user preferences of your profile) so that you see only the defaults when you work on a different machine than the one you made the customs on.

   However, the MD staff are actually pretty good at checking these posts, responding and adding selected suggestions to their "Trac" system (a kind of "to do" list); users can even vote on the Trac tickets (items) to provide some feedback on importance. They also are actually add many of the suggestions into the program in a timely (relative to many other app developers - way better than Quicken for instance) many. Of course, an on-going problem is the Trac system contains all the work items ever done (it seems) on MD by the developer - so it is hard to work with quickly as a user. What we need is a current to-do that we can vote on that is posted, or linked to directly, in the "suggestions" area of this forum and that has its items cleared as they are done, or no longer relevant.

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6. davet65 closed this discussion on 17 Jun, 2011 02:16 AM.