Creating reports and capabilities
You really need to get some things done on the reporting capabilities. Maybe because I used Quicken since before 1990, I was accustomed to their way of doing reports. I have no idea how to efficiently filter the money I receive from my different companies, and showing them by month quarter, etc. The same is true for my expenses.
The "show other side" will show me all input but it would be nice to see an associated menu that allows filtering such as show by month, quarter, etc.
Find transaction gives the boolean and or option but the description should have a pull down menu to filter by category, class, etc. I am not sure how to search for expenses to sell widget A opposed to seeing income for widget A. A search of widget A shows everything, expenses and income on one screen. Plus it also shows it associated to an account.
Program is good and I will be supporting it in the coming years. I look forward to a new and improved Moneydance
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1 Posted by Ben Spencer on 03 Jun, 2009 07:43 PM
Hi Jon
I am sorry oyu are having a hard time getting the information you need out of the Moneydance reporting system.
The way to filter the various sources of income you receive is to categorise your income transactions when you add them to the register. For example if I received income from 3 different companies I would create different income categories using the "Edit Categories" Window, creating one category for each source. Click Tools->Edit categories to add change or remove categories. Then when I receive income i would set the category associated with the transaction to record where it came from.
In order to see reports of your data click the "Graphs and Reports" icon on the top right of the main window. That is the one that has a little picture of a pie chart and a bar graph. From here you can select an "Income and expense" report and set the period to month or quarter or hat ever you need. There are also a variety of other reports and filtering options available. I realise that clicking on this icon is not intuitively obvious and I will suggest to the developer that they put it on the menu as well.
If there is a particular report that you need, let me know and I shall try to help you create it.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
2 Posted by John on 03 Jun, 2009 09:31 PM
Ok I'll give you real time examples.
My home office telephone expenses are set like this in Quicken........
Office:telephone/CRIS Office:postage/CRIS Office:commission/CRIS Office:commission/RIA auto/jaguar maintenance
At any time I can tun a report on the class CRIS that will give all breakdowns of income and expense of all categories, including the sub-categories.
In Q, I can run a report on Office:telephone and see what I spent on the telephone or a report on office: commissions to see what commissions I received. I can also filter to see how much a certain vendor paid me.
Graphs and Reports, I've been there already. That is how I started to wonder how to filter how much I paid ATT or how much I paid to Verizon, etc.
My work car is auto/jaguar maintenance. On import MD made it auto (top tag) with a jaguar maintainence ( bottom tag). I can not figure out how to run a report on the bottom tag, jaguar maintenance. I would want to see total and sub monthly.
I could use Find Transaction to find all Verizon transactions BUT it also includes my private verizon and it doesn't give a total. Also because it is a double entry system, my total shows zero. Office telephone is a debit but it also shows up under the bank checking account as a credit.
I'm fairly good on this software learning curve stuff but I am a bit stumped on how to do what I want to do in MD reports.
Last year I was thinking of moving from Verizon to another carrier. I wanted to see what I spent for Verizon for the year and with Q it was quick to do, how would I do it in MD? I have yet to find a way to get reports by payee (description).
3 Posted by snakedoctr on 05 Jun, 2009 03:53 PM
Hi,
I agree with John about the monthly report being missing. Being able to see where my money is coming/going to is a really nice report to have. eg, have 12 columns, one for each month, then each row corresponds to a category, with subtotals for each month and category.
I know there is an extension that can supply this information, and it works fairly well. Having this integrated (and perhaps with improvements) into MD by default would benefit a lot of people that don't already know about the extension.
Thanks for a great product!
-- Jason
4 Posted by Ben Spencer on 05 Jun, 2009 05:44 PM
Hi
It is not currently possible to run a report on the payee field. You can only use this when searching for transactions.
With regard to filtering transactions by tag (tags are called classes in Quicken). Use the transaction report and click the box that says "Filter by Tag". Select the tags you want to filter by from the select box to the right of the "Filter by Tag" check box.
To subtotal by month change the "Don't Subtotal" drop down selection to "Subtotal by Month" in the transaction report.
There are a number of changes planed for the 2009 release of Moneydance with regard to reporting to tags and reporting. This release will be available before the end of the year.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
5 Posted by Ben Spencer on 05 Jun, 2009 06:34 PM
I am afraid I overlooked the "Subtotal by Payee" option in the transaction report. While it is not perhaps everything you are looking for, when used in conjunction with the date field of the transaction report you should be able to get most of what you want.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
6 Posted by John Selden on 06 Jun, 2009 12:00 AM
I wanted to respond to John's comment about getting a report by payee. I'm possibly misunderstanding what he wants, but I see at least two ways that you can list transactions from a particular payee in a particular category, and I wanted to share those in case he overlooked them.
(1) use the "Find Transaction" feature: Click on the binoculars icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Enter the name of the payee you are seeking in the Description field (e.g. Verizon). Also enter the category you are curious about in the Account field (e.g. Office:Telephone). Click OK. Selecting a category in the Account field prevents you from seeing both sides of the transactions, which was the cause of your "zero sum" problem.
(2) use the "Transactions" report (this is the same one Ben mentioned above): Click on the Graphs and Reports icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Select the "Transactions" report on the left side of the window. On the right side, select the category you are curious about in the Account field (e.g. Office:Telephone). Select "Subtotal by Payee." Click Generate.
Wouldn't both of these methods let you find out how much you've paid to Verizon in office telephone expenses? If not, please let us know what information is missing and perhaps we can come up with some more options.
7 Posted by mike on 14 Jul, 2009 08:47 PM
We need a generalized reporting system. I'm trying to generate a report of uncleared transactions with no luck. It seems we're stuck with whatever the MD development team has with very minimal customization capabilities.
Same goes for tax transactions. I'm creating an entire category hierarchy just so I can do my tax reports.
Michael
8 Posted by SteveH on 14 Jul, 2009 10:30 PM
Might I suggest allowing the information in MD to be mined through a database like MS Access ("read" capability, not "write to") so that we can create a lot more reports, manipulate data more easily, etc.?
9 Posted by Ben Spencer on 15 Jul, 2009 01:01 PM
Hi Steve
I realize that the reports available in Moneydance do not meet everybodies needs. However if you wish to use the data in another application for reporting you can export to a tab delimited file which can be imported in Access or Excel. Select File->Export and set the format to tab delimited.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
10 Posted by mike on 15 Jul, 2009 11:35 PM
I'm not sure I understand this exactly. If the MD team can write reports, why can't the report writer be made available to your customers? Why do I need to export the data and find another program to do what I want, when you apparently already have one that seems to works.
Michael
11 Posted by Ben Spencer on 21 Jul, 2009 12:54 AM
Hi Mike
I am not sure what gave you the impression that the Moneydance team has a report writer tool that it is not making available to its customers. We do not have such a tool. And if we did we would most certainly make it available.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
12 Posted by tonyt on 21 Jul, 2009 10:59 AM
I agree with you ALL and have posted about this before! I am glad I am not the only one!!
Seems to me the only REAL solution is a generic 'open - ended' report generator.
It would allow the selection of:- Which accounts to search. What date / date range to search. What to search for - amount / payee / category and / or sub categories / etc. Allow sub totaling per account. Provide a final total. PLUS? I'm sure I've missed some. Also - I have posted about the need for the ability to print out a list of current direct debits and standing orders for the month / quarter / year / bi-yearly / tri-yearly / etc. I know mthbuilt's money program uses an external report generator. What chance MD?? Here's hoping!!! (Not holding my breath!)
13 Posted by Ben Spencer on 22 Jul, 2009 09:51 PM
Hi All
I am in agreement with you. And to that end I have created a trac ticket to create a flexible report allowing filtering on all available fields. Here is the ticket link:
http://moneydance.com/trac/ticket/1999
The way we prioritize suggestions is by the number of votes a suggestion gets on trac. The more votes the more likely a suggestion will be implemented. If you register and log into trac you can vote on tickets. I encourage you all to vote.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
14 Posted by mike on 22 Jul, 2009 11:06 PM
Ben,
I made an intellectual leap based on the fact there are canned reports for MD. How did you write them?
Mike
15 Posted by Ben Spencer on 23 Jul, 2009 12:04 AM
Mike
The reports that are built into moneydance are written in the java programming language. Java is the language that the entire program is written in. In order to create additional canned reports it is currently necessary to know how to program in Java.
Ben
16 Posted by rozlandsman on 18 Aug, 2009 09:16 PM
Just switched from Money to MoneyDance and couldn't beleive how easy it was to transfer my data. No as pleased with the reporting capabilities. You mention
"However if you wish to use the data in another application for reporting you can export to a tab delimited file which can be imported in Access or Excel. Select File->Export and set the format to tab delimited"
Can you do this with data from a single report, or must you export all the data from an account.
Please elaborate!
17 Posted by Ben Spencer on 20 Aug, 2009 06:49 PM
Hi Rosland
You are correct in that selecting File->Export will export all data in the system. However if you generate a report you will see that there are a number of buttons at the bottom of the report. The second button from the left is labeled "Save" if you click this button you can save the contents of the report as either HTML or as a tab delimited file, which can be imported into excel.
I hope this helps.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
18 Posted by mike on 23 Aug, 2009 08:32 AM
Ben,
So you recommend Excel for report generation? What other apps could be used?
Mike
19 Posted by Ben Spencer on 23 Aug, 2009 01:29 PM
Hi Mike
I don't particularly recommend excel over any other application. rozlandsman specifically asked how to export data such that it could be used in access or excel. Most modern spreadsheet applications are pretty much equivalent and would likely meet your reporting needs. If you don't want to use or don't have Excel I highly recommend Openoffice Calc. it is part of the free openoffice suite of applications and can be downloaded here www.openoffice.org.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
20 Posted by john phillips on 04 Sep, 2009 11:24 AM
HI, just wanted to add to the request for all the reports to be more customizable. I particularly would like to be able to select categories and have monthly breakdown in the transaction report. I realise tags can do this, but I think I would have to manually add the tag to each transaction.
On a positive note the import of QIF from money which i used previously in windows was very good. the best of any of the mac finance programs.
cheers
john
21 Posted by Ben Spencer on 05 Sep, 2009 03:36 PM
Hi John
I am glad your MS Money import went well. It nice to hear some positive feedback about that process.
Hopefully the improvements to the reports in the next release of MD will meet your needs.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
22 Posted by Christa on 08 Apr, 2010 08:44 PM
Hi - I also would like to request greater flexibility in reports. I wanted to switch over from Quicken 2007 Mac to Moneydance. I downloaded the trial, was amazed at how quickly I was able to import my quicken information and get started. I really like the look/flow of the program in general. But when I tested out the report generation, I was put off first by the inability to effectively select the exact accounts I wanted for income/expenses, and second by the lack of 'click-through' to the original account from the report.
In quicken, no matter how thorough I am I always forget some to enter categories for some expenses. It's really easy to find these by generating an expense report, and clicking through any entries with missing categories to get to the original account entry. In Moneydance I see the missing categories but have no idea how to track down the original entry.
Until this feature set is upgraded I guess I'll have to stick with Quicken. I don't have the patience to track all my information in one program then export it to another to generate my reports. :)
23 Posted by Kelly on 16 Aug, 2010 10:46 PM
I agree the reporting in MD needs improvement. I am a long time Quicken user and was forced to change to MD when I purchased a MAC. My only complaint with MD is the lack of flexibility in the reporting. I just want to see the inc/exp for my checking account, not for all of my accounts. I can't seem to figure out how to do this. Am I missing something here?
24 Posted by Ben Spencer on 16 Aug, 2010 11:22 PM
Hi Kelly
The reporting functionality has improved quite a bit since this thread started back in June last year.
To run an Income and expense report only for your checking account:
Select Tools->Graphs and Reports.
Select the "Income and expense" report from the list.
In the report options for the "Accounts:" field click the "Select" button.
Click the checking account in the list on the right and click the "<< Remove Except" button.
Click OK, Click Generate.
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
25 Posted by Kelly Fitzgeral... on 17 Aug, 2010 07:37 PM
When I go to the Report: Income and Expenses, the "Select" button is not available. It shows as a heading, but it is not selectable. I can choose "All Accounts" or "Account Type" but I don't see how I can choose an individual account like my checking account to see all exp/inc for that specific acct.
My current version of MD is 2010rs (735)
Thanks,
Kelly Fitzgerald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer" <[email blocked]>
To: [email blocked]
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 4:25:04 PM
Subject: Re: Creating reports and capabilities [Suggestions]
26 Posted by Ben Spencer on 17 Aug, 2010 07:44 PM
This feature on available in Md2010r3 build 751. You should update to this version for free by downloading it form the website:
http://moneydance.com/other
Ben Spencer
27 Posted by Kelly Fitzgeral... on 20 Aug, 2010 02:34 PM
Thanks so much that is great! How do I keep up on new versions in the future? I wasn't aware that there was a newer version available.
Kelly Fitzgerald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer" <[email blocked]>
To: [email blocked]
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 12:46:44 PM
Subject: Re: Creating reports and capabilities [Suggestions]
28 Posted by Ben Spencer on 20 Aug, 2010 02:46 PM
You could subscribe to the RSS feed on our blog here:
http://moneydance.com/blog/
Or you could install the Moneydance Updater extension by selecting Extensions->Add. There are knows problems with the extension if you are running windows vista or Windows 7 that prevent updates form happening. If you are using one of those operating systems I would subscribe to the blog instead
Ben
29 Posted by Kelly Fitzgeral... on 20 Aug, 2010 03:07 PM
Thanks Ben,
When I went to the MD website I downloaded the upgrade for Mac and then replaced my old version in my applications folder with the new MD version that I had downloaded. Now when I go into MD my net worth totals are fine, but my Bank account totals are all off - by $10's and $100's of thousands of dollars. I have restarted my machine and I still see the same thing.
What do you recommend? I'm hesitant to do any uploads to my bank account until this is resolved in my MD.
Kelly Fitzgerald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Spencer" <[email blocked]>
To: [email blocked]
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 7:48:45 AM
Subject: Re: Creating reports and capabilities [Suggestions]
30 Posted by Ben Spencer on 20 Aug, 2010 05:23 PM
Hi Kelly
First of all do you have a backup of your data file from before the upgrade. It may be necessary to revert to that backup. If you do please put it in a safe place.
This seems very strange. I cannot think of a mechanism that would allow for the networth to be correct but for the account balances to be so wildly off. The networth is the sum of the account balances.
Could you take a screenshot of your home page and send it to me. I think it would be best if you started a new discussion this is off topic for the current thread.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer