Importing Files
I am a Quicken subscriber using the PC version and would like to switch to Moneydance. I recently acquired the 2020 version of Quicken and would like to migrate my data file to MoneyDance. Please advise if this is doable and how to do it ? Thanks.
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Support Staff 1 Posted by Ethan on 22 Apr, 2020 07:04 PM
Hello,
You will first need to export your data from Quicken into the QIF format, and then you can follow these detailed instructions for importing into Moneydance: https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/importing-data-from-other-pro...
We've heard that at some point Quicken will be removing QIF exports from their program, primarily to lock people in to their software. We've seen this already in some (but not all) versions of their 2019 version. I'm not sure about the status of this function in the 2020 version at this point.
I encourage you to download our free trial version from http://infinitekind.com/downloads and experiment with the program before you decide if you would like to purchase it. The demo version is fully functional and allows you to manually enter 100 transactions. Imported transactions are not limited, so you'll be able to fully test things like importing from other programs and connections with your bank. If you decide to purchase the program at a later date (from http://infinitekind.com/purchase) you can keep all your data, the license key simply unlocks the ability to manually enter more transactions.
In case you haven't found it yet, detailed information on how to use the program can be found at https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb
Ethan
Infinite Kind Support
2 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 22 Apr, 2020 08:49 PM
Ethan
I was able to Export a QIF file from my Quicken 2020 version and import it into Moneydance. I have many accounts (banking, credit card and investment) and they all seem to be there in Moneydance but some balances are not showing correctly. I will try to resolve the differences and experiment with the program before I decide. Thank you for your support.
Ralston
Support Staff 3 Posted by Ethan on 22 Apr, 2020 08:53 PM
Hello Ralston,
That's great to hear. I was worried that QIF export function would be gone already.
Here are some of the most common issues after a QIF import: https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/importing-data-from-other-pro...
Incorrect balances are the most common one. The reason for this is that QIF exports from Quicken often do not contain the initial balances of your accounts. You will have to enter in this amount manually by opening each account register and going to Account -> Edit Account from the menu bar.
Ethan
Infinite Kind Support
4 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 22 Apr, 2020 09:27 PM
Hi Ethan
I think I have discovered the reason for the incorrect balances. I have investment accounts that I occasionally transfer cash from and to my checking account. This transaction normally credits my checking account and debits the same amount from my investment account in Quicken. In Money dance however both transactions are shown in the checking account and there is no debit shown in the corresponding investment account -hence the problem. I can fix it by deleting one of the transactions but wanted to know if there is a way to avoid it from happening in the first place. Does MD allow transfers between accounts ?
Also why are some accounts showing with “X” behind their names ?
Thanks.
Ralston
5 Posted by dtd on 23 Apr, 2020 02:21 AM
Just a user here.
Your first question is a very complex one. Although the QIF import by MD is a very good import (better than Quicken!), there are some definite issues with importing information from investment accounts that deal with "not stock type" transactions, like the one you mention... I'll leave it at that for now, there is a VERY long TMI thread about these types of transactions (probably a superset of what you are encountering) that I started when I moved my own Quicken account (and yes, finally successfully).
As to your second question, the X accounts are created if you ever "wrote something off" - i.e. made the category be the same as the account. (Like I might downgrade the inventory value of an account by just charging an amount to the account itself).
In a sense this is a "creation or destruction" of money - hey - my car is worth less now. But MD doesn't allow that, so it creates an "X" account where that "created or destroyed" money can go.
The simplest solution there is just to hide and make inactive that X account and forget it exists. But many of them have only one transaction (i.e. the initial creation of the account) those are easy to fix.
6 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 23 Apr, 2020 03:20 AM
I think I can solve the transfer issue by just deleting the extra transactions which I have done and the account now shows the true balance. I’ve also discovered that it doesnt happen on every transfer-sometimes it goes smoothly so I am thinking it is operator error and not a software error. Some of the X accounts are being duplicated as a bank account as well as an investment account so it shows up twice on the left pane but only one of them has a single transaction. I will hide and make inactive or just delete the transaction on the account with the single transaction. Re downloads Bank of America is no longer allowing new MD accounts for their Direct Connect service so if you have a BoA account and use MD you have to manually download. Do you know if there is a workaround for this issue ?
Thanks for your help -much appreciated.
Ralston
7 Posted by dtd on 23 Apr, 2020 03:59 AM
I don't have a BofA account, so can't comment, but what you say from what I've read appears to be true - BofA for whatever reason, doesn't allow new Direct Connection logins.
There are many workarounds - but they do involve manual downloads - luckily MD has many ways to make manual downloads less onerous. I'd start a new thread in Online Downloads to ask for more info on this topic.
8 Posted by dwg on 23 Apr, 2020 04:33 AM
A couple of years ago BoA stopped enabling new accounts for their Direct Connect service, new accounts for automatic downloads could only use the Quicken proprietary Web Connect system. If your account was enabled before this time for Direct Connect then it should still work.
Without Direct Connect you can still download transactions files from the Bank's website and import these into Moneydance. OFX/QFX are the best file types to use and I understand it that BoA does provide this type (it is the file format that is used for Web Connect after all).
9 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 23 Apr, 2020 01:43 PM
I have been using Quicken web Connect with BoA now for over 10 years and so I expected it to work, but it doesn’t. The Bank is looking for a different username/password combination when I try to do automatic downloads in to my MD account. I am going to try downloading files from the bank website using the OFX/QFX format and see how that works. I will also call the bank directly and see what they say.
Thank you for your help.
Ralston
Support Staff 10 Posted by Ethan on 23 Apr, 2020 02:54 PM
Quicken's Web Connect is not the same thing as Direct Connect, so you shouldn't expect those connections to work in Moneydance. You can try asking them to turn on direct connect for your accounts, but it's usually very difficult to get someone who knows what you mean in the first place, and then almost impossible to get them to turn on those systems. That's why we say no new connections up front. The manual downloads suggested above should work.
Ethan
Infinite Kind Support
11 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 23 Apr, 2020 03:01 PM
Ok makes sense… so are you saying that I shouldn’t try exporting files from their website in the OFX/QFX format because it wouldn’t work ? Is my only option “manual downloads” ?
Ralston
Support Staff 12 Posted by Ethan on 23 Apr, 2020 03:40 PM
No, sorry for the confusion. Downloading in the OFX or QFX format is what we mean by "manual downloads," and is what you should be doing. Direct connections are what you would set up through the options under the Online menu in Moneydance's menubar, which won't work for your situation with Bank of America.
Ethan
Infinite Kind Support
13 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 24 Apr, 2020 07:47 PM
Ethan
My investment accounts transferred from Quicken are all showing incorrect negative cash balances. Moneydance is taking the market value of a typical transaction with zero cash balance, doubling that value and making it a negative cash balance. The end result is that the ending market value of the account is a large negative number. Has anyone else experienced this problem and if so can you advise how to resolve.Thanks.
Ralston
14 Posted by dtd on 25 Apr, 2020 04:51 AM
Ralston - absolutely. The QIF import from Quicken is the best I've seen, but it is only on the 5 yard line in a football game in respect to Investment accounts.
First - are all your stock investments, securities, bonds, correct? My impression is they are, but I'm checking. Is the issue the account balance? I'd bet it is. There are many doublings, "zeroed out" and such with respect to QIF imports of investment accounts.
I could wax poetic, but there is a very long TMI forum thread when I was moving my accounts over - finally successfully, but there are a lot of 4th down on the 5 yard line issues. The thread is at
https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/switching-from-another-personal-finance-program/15012-the-vicissitudes-of-quicken-to-moneydance
That all said - I fixed it. It took quite some time. For someone not as detailed as me, who wants everything perfect, you could adjust the initial balance to "whatever" number fixes the issue and makes the balance correct. Going forward, it will be fine, going backward, (assuming stock ownership is all correct of course) every single balance will be absolutely crazy.
I wasn't satisfied with crazy past, as my 35 years "had to be correct". That's why the thread is TMI - I explored it all - and spent a lot of time on that five yard line.
15 Posted by dwg on 25 Apr, 2020 06:25 AM
I'm a fellow user.
Some years ago I migrated from Reckon (think Australian Quicken)to Moneydance. Some 70 odd accounts were involved, banking and Investment, open and closed. There was never really any possibility of not migrating closed accounts due to the relationships between accounts.
QIF imports into Moneydance were always quite good, but they are more capable in Moneydance 2019 based on my testing.
Bank and credit card imports have always been pretty straightforward, there are known issues but most are fairly quickly and easily resolved.
Investment accounts are more than likely going to be problematic, from my point of view I see a number or reasons for this.
1. Moneydance only supports a subset of possible transaction types
2. Some "transactions" are handled differently e.g. stock splits
3. Some transactions are invalid from an accounting perspective
4. Some transactions could possibly be handled in a better way
Moneydance support staff and even the owner are, or at least should be, well aware of where I think improvement should be made :)
I spent a considerable time on investment accounts and getting them right. I have had to make some decisions on just how far to go with Moneydance, however. I could go further than I have but the amount of work and ongoing work vs the benefit make it marginal, also to go further than I have would make it difficult if one of my most requested improvements were made (Return of Capital).
Instead I have created a small spreadsheet for each investment that keeps track of capital returns on a lot by lot basis
16 Posted by Maloney Ralston on 25 Apr, 2020 09:41 PM
I have spent quite a few hours today trying to sort out the importing investment accounts issues with Moneydance and am not sure I have gained any traction. I have also read the post recommended by Dantedavis which I found very useful.
The issues surround cash balance and the way MD treats buy/transfer transactions. These transactions should be zero cash balance and I could not find a way of fixing it unless I put in a fictitious initial balance to make the account balances in Quicken and MD match. Dont really like doing it this way but dont know of any alternative way. It would be nice if MD allow us to edit at the transaction level so that we can make adjustments like we do in Quicken. Having got the accounts to match I then downloaded the latest transactions from the financial institution that has my investments thinking that going forward the cash balances issues would resolve itself.
However…not so. To my surprise the downloaded transactions did not match the transactions on the financial website it was d/l from…share balances and prices did not match and in some cases by quite a lot. Thus new cash balance was way off. It included securities I had owned and had already sold and so my portfolio value was ..you guessed it …way off . (It matched quicken prior to the download from the financial institution).
It seems to me that the download of data from the Financial Institution is not being handled the way it should be by MD and is very problematic. Maybe these problems are fixable as mentioned by Dantedavis, I am just not sure how to proceed to the next step.
17 Posted by dtd on 26 Apr, 2020 02:08 AM
Ok. Next Step.
First - you appear to have accepted the crazy balances over the past because of what MD does not do properly. You talk about hours - it took DAYS to not accept this and resolve it. Especially for IRA accounts.
As to fixing it - the one thing I'd comment on is you CAN adjust each transaction in MD, but it takes forever if you have many inputs. I did most of my fixes at the Quicken level and then re-imported (I did close to 100 imports to a new file) [XIN/XOUT is your friend!]
But you read the thread so lets move on. This isn't the current issue, as you seem willing (and saving yourself tons of time) to just put in that fictional value so that the current value is correct. Good for you.
So let us begin again.
Your issue now appears to be downloads. Let's look at that. The issue here is that MD cannot know that these are in your file - that's a QIF issue - they don't "report" that these have been downloaded already, so you might have 90 days up to 2 years of data downloaded initially. And of course that will mess up everything.
BUT DO NOT delete them. They are the items that say "hey you downloaded me - and I won't do it again" - if you delete them, you will be plagued with them yet again.
Instead, merge them with your previous entries. Then the "out of sync, bad values" will disappear. With ME, I deleted all the old entries, and accepted the new - same result. I didn't know I could merge at that time. Either way - the new has to win, so it doesn't keep downloading.
Hope that helps.
System closed this discussion on 26 Jul, 2020 02:10 AM.