Updates
I am looking at what comes with the one time purchase and it seems that Money Dance would only act as a dashboard that displays only what is personally entered. Is this correct? In other words balances for something like net worth would not alter until an account was manually updated, correct?
I do see the Plus option but that is updating transactions which is not of any concern to me.
Finally, how frequently are financial institutions updated? I see some big names like Chase Bank(#1 ranked by size) and Ally Bank missing.
Thank you
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1 Posted by dwg on 26 May, 2023 10:17 PM
I'm a fellow user.
Your post appears to contradict itself.
In the first paragraph you appear to make the hypothesis that all transactions are manually entered, which is not true unless you choose to.
In the second paragraph you talk about the Plus option which is one method of automatically downloading new transactions, but then say you are not interested in updating transactions.
Then you ask how often are financial institutions updated.
I'm at a loss to understand what you want.
With Moneydance you have the ability to manually enter data, you can also import it from downloaded transaction files.
For automatically updated data Moneydance supports Direct Connect, your bank must also support this, or you can use the optional Moneydance +, which uses an aggregator to obtain the transaction information.
With Direct connect updates are dependent on how often the bank updates that system, some do it in close to real time others may not.
With Moneydance+ is depends on the aggregator. it can be up to a few days at times.
Chase is one bank that has recently dropped support for Direct Connect so using an aggregator or manually downloading transaction files is to only way of not having to manually enter each transaction.
2 Posted by David Rodriguez... on 26 May, 2023 10:33 PM
Thank you for the reply. I apologize for my lack of clarity. When I say I am not interested in transactions I am referring to the line item movement of money in and out of an account; such as a checking accounts' debits and credits. However, when it comes to updating gross balances for net worth computations this is important to me.
If I understood your reply it seems that the Moneydance has the embedded Direct Connect which is not part of the Plus option. If this is correct then it should work for me.
Thanks again
3 Posted by dwg on 26 May, 2023 11:02 PM
Moneydance is based on accounting principles hence the only way to arrive at totals is by having the transaction history.
Moneydance is not a dashboard program that just obtains the latest balances and displays those.
You mention Chase and Ally Bank, as I said Chase stopped supporting Direct Connect in recent times and Ally has never supported it as far as I am aware.
Support Staff 4 Posted by Maddy on 30 May, 2023 10:33 AM
Hi David,
Thank you for purchasing Moneydance!
In addition to what it's been already suggested on this thread, please note:
currently, Moneydance supports automatic downloads using Direct Connect (mainly in the US) or Moneydance + (US and Canada).
Without Direct Connect and Moneydance +, you are still able to easily import your data into the program using the OFX or QFX file format, if either of these are available from your bank's website. If not, you can use the QIF file format.Please find the steps for manually importing your data in this article.
In order to get started, please refer to this article of the Knowledge Base and follow the links listed on the right hand side of your screen.
I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have further questions or need any assistance.
--
Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
5 Posted by David Rodriguez... on 01 Jun, 2023 08:02 PM
Thank you. I was able to link a few of my accounts but they are only downloading recent transactions and not actual balances. This leads all figures to be off quite substantially. Should I be deleting these accounts and then downloading the files manually? I assume that after I do that the transaction downloads would adjust the balances.
I reviewed the article for manual downloads but it is not clear that this will solve this problem. I see that I can enter an "initial balance" after reviewing other articles but this seems more appropriate for a savings account and not an investment account with multiple security holdings.
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6 Posted by dwg on 02 Jun, 2023 12:03 AM
Downloads from institutions are of transactions not balances, and it would be extremely unlikely you would download every transaction for that account, even optionally they are unlikely to provide that much data.
Moneydance on it Account Information screen has provision for entering an Initial balance i.e. the balance of the account prior to the first downloaded transaction.
That screen is accessed via the Account --> Edit Account menu option.
Support Staff 7 Posted by Maddy on 02 Jun, 2023 09:19 AM
Open the register of your account by clicking on it in the left sidebar, and then navigate to Account --> Edit Account from the Moneydance menu bar.
In the window that appears, one of the fields is for the Initial Balance of the account.
This should be set as the balance of your account before the earliest transaction within Moneydance, as outlined here.
After downloading/importing your data, you should go through the confirmation process, as outlined here.
To begin the confirmation process, you should select the first transaction in the register with a 'blue dot'. A panel will appear on the right of your screen which shows the 'Current Transaction' details. You should amend the category within this panel, then select 'Confirm'.
You'll see the solid blue dot change to a blue circle. Moneydance will then move to the next unconfirmed transaction in the register.
As you go through this process it will become quicker and easier. Moneydance will begin to recognize the information you have previously confirmed, and start to suggest the correct categories within 'Similar Payees' in the panel on the right.
The next time you download from the bank many of the correct categories will automatically be assigned, and this will improve as you confirm more transactions.
Please check the following:
The filter at the top of the register should be set to "All".
Are you in split register or combined mode?
The button that toggles between split and combined mode is at the top-right corner of the register, next to New Transaction.
If this is in split mode then all unconfirmed transactions will be shown in a second register which appears below the regular register. This can sometimes be collapsed, so that all it shows is a bar with a label that says "N unconfirmed transactions". If you see that bar, drag it up vertically and you'll see the unconfirmed transactions in that list.
Finally, the reconciled balances in Moneydance are a calculated from:
Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments
To adjust the reconciled balance, you'll need to adjust one of these variables. If your reconciled balance changes, that must mean that one of the following happened:
1) Your account's starting balance changed
2) One or more cleared transactions were either deleted, had their amount modified, or added
3) One or more transactions were marked (or unmarked) as cleared
Any one of the above would affect the reconciled/cleared balance of an account and could have caused the difference. Moneydance does display an extra confirmation/warning window when you try to do either 1 or 2 in the account's register.
If you had the Mark transactions as cleared when confirmed enabled, in the Network section of the Preferences window, and you performed a download and confirmed transactions with that setting enabled, then those confirmed transactions would have been marked as cleared, affecting the reconciled balance.
So, to correct the problem properly, you'd need to reverse the root cause of the change in reconciled balance.
You could also get the reconciled balance back to the correct value by simply entering an adjustment, either to the account's starting balance or by entering an adjustment transaction and marking it as cleared.
Please keep us posted on your progress, Thank you!
--
Maddy, Infinite Kind Support
System closed this discussion on 01 Sep, 2023 09:20 AM.