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MD .QIF importing

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Bob

29 May, 2023 04:36 PM

Hello all,

I have been working on a transition from Q to MD for over a month.

I just discovered that MD imports are case sensitive. In a QIF file with "NBUY" as the action, MD imports/changes this buy transaction as a Xfr. To say the least this is NOT GOOD for something as simple as a buy transaction.
Solution: Make sure all your "NBUY" QIF transactions are coded "NBuy".

I know, changing imported transactions is silly and there is a great deal of "QIF isn't for transitioning transactions from Q to MD" msgs. There isn't any better solutions for now. Workarounds are plentiful on the MD on-line help. Some work, some don't. Seems that improving these issues is not in the MD future, at least not buy MD.

I hoping that someone with the current coding expertise will take up the task. MD is a good attempt at a financial tracking and reporting front end. With several known improvements, such as actions for LtGains, StGains, Interest, and their associated "Reinvest" .... vs all being one catchall "Div/DivReinvest", to mention a few. MD could be Great.

While I'm on the subject, Not being able to export just transactions from a MD account is also weird and NOT GOOD. For those who are unfamiliar, MD exports transactions, categories, securities, etc. every time, which is totally unnecessary, when I just want the transactions in the QIF file.

MONEY DANCE SUPPORT: Please, please publish your QIF import structure, so that customers that do use QIF to correct MD import/export changes to data can avoid time consuming trail and error.

Constructive feedback is encouraged, especially from MD.

Have a nice day, bob

1. 1 Posted by dwg on 30 May, 2023 05:00 AM

   

   I'm a fellow user.

   The investment Transaction Actions are separate to the QIF specification. QIF is a file format, one item in a QIF transaction record is the action. This is the N specifier in the format and this is where the action appears in a QIF file transaction.

   Most programs on the market have modeled their actions on Quicken, either directly or with slight variations to the short names, very few have implemented all of the actions.

   The Moneydance importer maps the Quicken names to Moneydance ones where necessary. I agree the mapping could do some refinement and additional actions could/should be added.

   Actions like Short and Long Term gains as well as Interest are not technically necessary in Moneydance. Quicken has them because in Quicken the action determines the category as well as how the transactions is to be processed.

   In Moneydance the action only tells the software how to process the transaction, the category you set when the transaction is entered. In Moneydance, Div and MiscInc both describe the same way of processing a transaction so either are usable in this instance because of the way they process the transaction the only difference between the three transactions is the category selected and either of these actions can deal with the category and thus process the transaction correctly.

   The way Quicken works is one of the reasons why the software is not usable "as is" in more countries and is effectively country centric.

   I have suggested that adding some alias names to Moneydance's action list would be helpful for the users.

   The Quicken action types have been published, the latest version of which seems to be:

   https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Tell+me+about+the+investment+transaction+list%27s+Actions?_ics=1685419194644&irclickid=~yFI3ka2mISO.LKGEvqng9ZXSJKABvoked65WPKIEv

   Quicken have not publish an action type of NBUY, so we have one they have just created and used.

   The extension developers cannot do anything toward adding action types, that requires core changes in Moneydance itself'.

   I also think it is unlikely that an extension developer would take the QIF importer and enhance it, realistically I would think the expectation is that the existing importer itself that is in Moneydance should be enhanced, rather than effectively "reinventing the wheel".

   There is no published mapping list of Quicken to Moneydance actions, I expect such a list would have to be created and provided by the developers.

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2. System closed this discussion on 29 Aug, 2023 05:10 AM.