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Problem Importing Transfers with Class from Microsoft Money

• Edit

DannyM

Dec 20, 2020 @ 11:21 PM

Hi Folks,

I'm looking to move from MS Money to Moneydance. We are big users of account transfers as well as the Money's "Classification" system (the two extra "Class" labels...)
When importing transactions from Money (Loose QIF), I notice that Moneydance does not correctly identify / import Transfers that also have a classification label.

Specifically, we have renamed Class in Money to "Who?" in order to tag transactions in Money with specific people in our household. So, a Transfer from a Bank Account to Cash account, that is assigned to "Amelia" would be recorded as a Transfer with:
From = Bank Account
To = Cash Account
Payee = ATM Withdrawal
Amount = -40.00
Who? = Amelia
Memo = cash swap

The Loose QIF (exported from the Bank account) for this looks like:
D30/11'2020
Mcash swap
T-40.00
PATM Withdrawal
L/Amelia|[Cash Account]
^ This transaction does not import correctly into Moneydance. MD does not recognise this as a transfer, and instead tags the transaction as "Amelia|[Cash Account]" and leaves the Category blank.

If I edit the QIF to remove the Classification i.e.:
D30/11'2020
Mcash swap
T-40.00
PATM Withdrawal
L[Cash Account]
^ Then the transfer is correctly imported into Moneydance as a Transfer from Bank Account to Cash Account (tag field is empty)

Is this something that can be corrected in Moneydance? I suppose I could scrub the QIF files to remove the Class for transfers (not essential for our purposes) but we have many accounts and transfers are common. Doing this one account at a time will be tedious!

For the record, non-transfer transactions that use classes are correctly imported (Class becomes "Tag" value in Moneydance)
And transfers without Class are also correctly imported.

Thanks
Danny

1. 1 Posted by DannyM on Dec 21, 2020 @ 03:27 AM

   

   I noticed this post from a few years ago with a similar issue.
   https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/switching-from-anoth...

   In that post, there was a comment from @dwg that there is no delimiter between "Class" and "Category" (or transfer account in this case) in the QIF file.
   But actually there does seem to be one as shown in both that post and this one.
   If a transfer is also assigned a class, then the QIF file uses the "Pipe" symbol | to separate the end of the class name while the transfer account is enclosed in [].

   Hence, the "L" line in QIF file has format:
   l/|[]

   Hopefully this helps with an update to Moneydance to cater for this scenario on import

   Thanks

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by dwg on Dec 21, 2020 @ 06:27 AM

   

   I'm a fellow user

   L/Amelia|[Cash Account] as far as I know indicates a tag (Class)

   My understanding is that all text after a "/" is taken as a class literal

   I would expect what would work is to have L<transfer> OR >Category:subcategory>/<Class list>

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by DannyM on Dec 21, 2020 @ 06:38 AM

   

   I tested the other way. I created a transfer with a tag in MoneyDance and exported it as QIF. Result is:

   !Type:Bank D12/18/2020
   T-45.00
   C
   N
   PATM Withdrawal
   Mtest transfer
   L[Current/Amelia]
   ^

   So MD wants target account inside [], and if a tag (class) is assigned it must follow the account name with /...
   So there is a difference between handling of MSMoney and Mondeydance for this scenario with respect to QIF

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by dwg on Dec 21, 2020 @ 06:43 AM

   

   Square brackets indicates a transfer account

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by DannyM on Dec 21, 2020 @ 07:40 AM

   

   Yes, [] is a transfer account but if account has / in it, then what follows / is interpreted as a tag (class) name
   Whereas, MS Money exports it as / followed by Class name, followed by | then transfer account inside []....

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by DannyM on Dec 21, 2020 @ 07:53 AM

   

   So if Moneydance has a transfer transaction that is also tagged, it exports to QIF as:
   !Type:Bank D12/18/2020
   T-45.00
   C
   N
   PATM Withdrawal
   Mtest transfer
   L[Current/Amelia]
   ^

   If I then import that transaction back into Moneydance, it fails.
   It sets the Category = [Current (a newly created expense) and the Tag = Amelia], so not detected as a transfer either.

   I think Moneydance should be updated to handle import of QIF files containing Transfers that also have a Class/Tag assigned. At least in the format that it exports them to - but also, selfishly, in the format MS Money exports it to :)

   (I have not tested multiple tags or split scenarios - I am happy to run some tests if that helps).

   • Edit

7. 7 Posted by dwg on Dec 21, 2020 @ 08:13 AM

   

   I see what you mean but I do not think that L[Current/Amelia] is valid and I expect the software to take "[Current" as a category and "/Amelia]" as a tag.

   The QIF documentation I have seem implies that the order is Category/Class or Transfer/Class. Given that Class is a string literal and there is no specific indication for category there would be no way to determine where a tag would stop and a category would start if the order is reversed.

   The QIF specifications is far from perfect and does have holes in it.

   I agree that Moneydance is wrong in what it is exporting. I class this as a bug. It appears to only affect transfers so seems to be putting the right bracket in the wrong place.

   I have reported it on the Developers slack channel.

   • Edit

8. 8 Posted by DannyM on Dec 21, 2020 @ 09:54 AM

   

   Thanks for your help

   I will have to see how the developers decide to handle it. If they choose not to support Microsoft's way then I will have to find a way to reformat all my QIFs...maybe I could use the Find and Replace extension in Moneydance to help re-tag and convert all these incorrect imports into transfers, Some holiday fund perhaps...!

   • Edit

9. 9 Posted by DannyM on Dec 30, 2020 @ 03:00 AM

   

   An update: I tried using Find & Replace extension to quickly re-classify/categorise the tagged transfers. Unfortunately that doesn't work so well as in this may, transfers aren't properly matched when the "other side" gets corrected. As a result I get lotss of duplicate transactions.

   Moneydance likely only handles transfers during the import to avoid duplicates.
   So I will have to clean up the QIF files first prior to importing.

   • Edit

10. 10 Posted by dwg on Dec 30, 2020 @ 08:12 PM

    

    I do not see how the developers could support what Microsoft are doing. If it is a single word it would be doable but as soon as you have text strings - and neither category or tags are limited to one word the lack of delimiters that the category/class line uses is a problem.

    • Edit

11. Melissa closed this discussion on Jan 27, 2021 @ 01:32 AM.