Import of Microsoft Money99 data
I’ve problems running Money99 on Win11. It runs but import of mny or mbf files doesn’t work. I run Money99 on two Win7 computers without problems and swap these files via OneDrive. Can I change to Moneydance, IMPORTING all data from Money99, and run Moneydance on Win7 and Win11? Have to add that both Windows are in German. Thanks for your reply which may result in a online sale. Thomas
Keyboard shortcuts
Generic
| ? | Show this help |
|---|---|
| ESC | Blurs the current field |
Comment Form
| r | Focus the comment reply box |
|---|---|
| ^ + ↩ | Submit the comment |
You can use Command ⌘ instead of Control ^ on Mac
1 Posted by dwg on 10 Jul, 2024 04:55 AM
I'm a fellow Moneydance user.
It is possible to migrate from MS Money to Moneydance, many have done it. Moneydance cannot read the proprietary Money files so you have to use Money to export the raw transaction data into QIF files and import these.
The following Knowledge Base article provides some general guidelines:
https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/importing-data-from-other-programs/importing-from-microsoft-money
I would suggest you download and install Moneydance and test out migrating in trial mode. Trial mode's only limit is 100 manually entered transactions, imports are unlimited
Another regular poster - Derek - has migrated from Money so I would normally expect to see him post here with his experiences.
Windows 7 is no longer supported by Microsoft hence most vendors will not claim support. User experience with Moneydance and Windows shows good tolerance with mixing versions, for example I have Moneydance 2012 running on Windows 11.
Note there are different kits for 64 vs 32 bit Windows.
2 Posted by derekkent23 on 10 Jul, 2024 06:55 AM
I am not support staff, just a user.
Hi Thomas
I transferred my MS Money data to Moneydance back in 2016.
Try it out for yourself.
The downloaded version of Moneydance is a full working version with the only limit being a maximum of 100 manually entered transactions, with no time limit. Imported files from other financial programs and your bank have no limit on imports, provided that you do not confirm them. If you decided to purchase you are sent a key by email that unlocks the 100-manual transaction limit. If after testing with this free trial version you purchase and change your mind see the 90 day money back guaranty at https://infinitekind.com/refunds
For the future Moneydance never sunsets the version it releases. So, you don’t have to upgrade. If you won’t to upgrade the next version is free (say 2023 to 2024) and from then on you get a 50% discount. All upgrades within a version are free.
Make sure you are running this build of Moneydance https://infinitekind.com/preview
Unfortunately, the support article at https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/importing-data-from-other-pro... is a little out of date, so I put together the following set of notes. The support article can help when importing investment accounts as they are not covered in detail below.
You need to use your old program to export your data in a QIF file type, one QIF file for each account, including any closed account that have transfers to any open accounts, re-open these accounts if necessary. If you are exporting from MS Money you should use loose as the QIF export format
Open one of the QIF files in a text editor. You are looking for the date format used in the file e.g. D25/03'2019 Day Month Year or D5/ 17'19 or D05/31/2017 Month Day Year etc. You will need this information later. If you get this wrong it will be apparent as the dates in Moneydance will be all over the place and you will need to start again creating a new data set.
QIF files were never meant for transferring data from one program to another, but it’s all that is available, you will need to spend time cleaning thing up when import is complete.
When you first start Moneydance it opens in the Welcome window click on “Create a new account set”. If you have opened Moneydance before create a new data set under FILE (MONEYDANCE on Mac) – NEW.
Select “Create New File” (Data Set) and click NEXT. Type in an Account Set Name (Data Set) and click NEXT. Change Primary Currency (base currency), if required. File Type, leave at “Standard Account set”, click FINISH.
In the Side Bar (list on left) under BANK deleted the two default Bank accounts, highlighting them in turn and using ACCOUNT – DELETE ACCOUNT.
NOTE: If you have accounts with currencies that are not in your base currency (foreign currencies) perform the steps under NOTE 1 before importing your QIF file as follows.
Select one of your QIF account files, the one with the most transfers to other accounts.
1. If in step 3 you don’t see the name of the account you are importing click CANCEL and setup the account. ACCOUNT – NEW ACCOUNT - select account type – NEXT – Enter the name of the account exactly as it appears in your old program under “Account Name” – OK.
2. Drag and dropped the QIF file into the Side Bar (list on left).
3. Wait for the Analyzing data window to close. This may happen so fast you don’t even see the window or nothing may appear to happen until the Import window opens.
IMPORTANT Checked all listed accounts are of the correct type and currency and changed if required. Find the name of the account you are importing in the list and highlight it, so it is ticked.
4. The “Date Format” should be set to the date format used in the QIF file not the date format you want to use in Moneydance. Select the correct Decimal Character. Later Builds of Moneydance may also include a Text Encoding dropdown, leave at default selection. Do not tick “File was downloaded”.
5. Click Import and wait, the process can take some time. Again, nothing may appear to be happening until the process is complete, indicated by the Merging data window closing.
Some or all of the accounts maybe hidden in the Side Bar, list on left. To make accounts visible click the “+” at the bottom of the Side Bar. If this does not help try closing and re-opening Moneydance.
Account that have transfer within the QIF file you imported will be automatically created. Don’t worry that their balances are incorrect, as you import the other QIF account files thing will sort themselves out.
Repeat the process steps 1 to 5 for each QIF account file.
Any accounts that are inactive (closed) should be made inactive. This will remove them from the Summary Page, two columns on the right, in the Account Section as well as reports. There are a number of methods to accomplish this:
To remove them from the side bar right, click and select REMOVE FROM SIDE BAR.
For investment accounts QIF file don’t always carry security prices other than buy sell prices, so investment account balances maybe wrong until you update with current security prices. Also, not all QIF Investment Account files carry all the data related to a Securities.
On the Summary Page, two columns on right, if you have Investment Securities they will be shown in a section STOCK PRICES. This may include securities in which you no longer have holdings. To remove these from the list double click on Security Name – EDIT and then untick SHOW ON SUMMARY PAGE box – OK – X. You can also use this window to correct missing/wrong data imported, e.g Ticker Symbol, Value Suffix.
Some QIF files don’t include initial account balances. If you think this is the case you can add initial balance to affected accounts as follows.
Highlighting an account, then click ACCOUNT – EDIT ACCOUNT and add an Initial Balance.
The NET WORTH value on the Summary page is the addition of selected account values. To see the breakdown click on NET WORTH. The accounts that are included are those selected under GRAPHS & REPORTS – REPORTS – NET WORTH - EDIT
Bills (Reminder) are not included in QIF files.
Now the real work starts to check balances and tidy thing up. This is especially true of investment accounts as not all action types are supported. But worth it in the end.
Note 1: This section only applies if you have accounts with currencies that are not in your base currency. For these currencies ensure “Show on summary page” box is ticked under TOOLS – CURRENCIES – highlight subject currency and double click – EDIT.
Note: QIF file do not contain exchange rates. To overcome this QIF file shortcoming the Currency/Security History window must have current and dated exchange rates filled in which cover the date range of transactions in non-base currency account. As well as manually adding exchange rates you can import CSV exchange rate files downloaded from sites on the web. Use IMPORT button in the Currency/Security History window. If you have investment account their balances will probably be incorrect. This is due to the fact that the currency set in the security history windows will be in the Moneydance base currency. You can change to the correct security currency and provided exchange rates exist the values will be converted. As you do this re-calculation occurs, but I think the results should to be correct. No guarantees the section will work correctly.
For information on how to use Moneydance see https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb
Hope this helps
3 Posted by Thomas Mohr on 12 Jul, 2024 10:29 PM
Hi Derek. I can’t believe the trouble you took to help me. Thank you so much. I by now exported all accounts - shouldn’t have opened so many :-( .
I’m somewhat unsure how to handle currencies. My base currency is the SwissFranc, I used to live there and my pension still is paid in CHF. Now I live in Peru so my daily accounting is in PEN and USD. But I also have to import accounts to Moneydance which are in EUR and GBP! In Money for reporting purposes I use 1 USD=1.00CHF, 1 EUR=1.20CHF, 1 GBP=1.30CHF, 1PEN=0.27CHF knowing full well that these rates are not today’s but guessing since 1999 (when I started Money) they are not too much off, because Money can only use one exchange rate per currency over time. Now, of course, all the transfers between accounts of different currencies use the exchange rate of the day otherwise one amount in either account would be wrong. Can Moneydance handle this? If not, is there a workaround? Sorry to bother you. Kind regards. Thomas
4 Posted by Thomas Mohr on 12 Jul, 2024 11:14 PM
Hi Derek. By now I produced all the QIF files for import to Monydance. Should not have opened so many accounts in Money99 :-( . However I use it since 1999 so some garbage has accumulated, unfortunately with transfers between accounts I can’t delete them.
Before I proceed I have a question which I should have asked before:
What does “loose” QIF mean? My German Money99 has only QIF as export format.
Sorry to bother you again and kind regards. Thomas
5 Posted by dwg on 13 Jul, 2024 12:10 AM
I've attached a screen shot from Microsoft Money to let them explain it.
6 Posted by dwg on 13 Jul, 2024 12:14 AM
FWIW I have never seen any limitation in length of names in any version of the QIF specifications.
7 Posted by dwg on 13 Jul, 2024 12:41 AM
Different currencies are tricky but generally workable if you have the information.
QIF files contain no currency information about the transaction or the account, so it requires planning since the transaction data will not help you.
At the very least you must have the exchange rates loaded before you do any imports and ensure the base currency of the account is also correct.
When importing each QIF file you must make sure you set the currency of the account(s) correctly, this will be the account that is being imported as well as any accounts that will be create as a result of transfers
I expect there will be some trial and error required, you are working around limitations of QIF, which as it was designed is meant to load data into an existing correct structure and initially you do not have the structure
The Toolbox extension does have a tool in to change a currency of an account/category how well it would handle changes on such a large scale I do not know, I have not tried it.
Toolbox also has a tool that uses the older QIF importer which can be set to just build the structures without loading any data, after which you fix up the currencies - which you can do easily if there are no transactions, then load the data.
You will probably have to try different approaches and see what works best for your situation.
Derek may have some other ideas.
Moving from any finance program is really a migration. Depending on your circumstances it can be relatively easy or somewhat complex. Investments and multi-currency are two of the things that make for complexity.
8 Posted by derekkent23 on 13 Jul, 2024 06:46 AM
I am not support staff, just a user.
Hi Thomas
I think dwg has covered your question well. Having accounts with different currencies does complicate things, but as explained in theory it should work as laid out. However when I transferred by accounts were all in the same currency so I have no practical experience to go on. But setting up exchange rates as described is vital.
Best is to try it out and see what happens leaning from the results. Repeat the process a few times leaning from what went wrong in previous attempts.
As a last resort you could always just start afresh with Moneydance.
Hope this helps.
9 Posted by Thomas Mohr on 17 Jul, 2024 03:50 AM
Hello Amigos. When I started to import I quickly realized that Moneydance would not meet my requirements because categories of expenditure and revenue are not migrated. In Money every accounting entry (except account transfers) is a set of data. E.g: A gift bought for a my daughter would contain: “Family”/daughter’s name/shop where bought/price. This information would be lost. For the fun of it I imported some accounts but had to give up because with many amounts and many account transfers between currencies and changing forex rates, the analyzing took the program a long time. Sorry to have bothered you for no result. Maybe your guidance helps somebody else. Btw, the German Money99 V.7 can only produce strict QIF files.
10 Posted by Thomas Mohr on 17 Jul, 2024 04:09 AM
Hello Amigos. When I started to import I quickly realized that Moneydance would not meet my requirements because categories of expenditure and revenue are not migrated. In Money every accounting entry (except account transfers) is a set of data. E.g. A gift bought for a my daughter would contain: Source of funds e.g. credit card account/ “Family”/daughter’s name/shop where bought/price. This information would be lost in Moneydance. For the fun of it I imported some accounts but had to give up because with many amounts and many account transfers between currencies and changing forex rates, the analyzing took the program a long time. Sorry to have bothered you for no result. Maybe your guidance helps somebody else. Btw, the German Money99 V.7 can only produce strict QIF files. Best regards. Thomas
11 Posted by Thomas Mohr on 18 Jul, 2024 03:39 PM
Hello Amigos. When I started to import I quickly realized that Moneydance would not meet my requirements because categories of expenditure and revenue are not migrated. In Money every accounting entry (except account transfers) is a set of data. E.g. A gift bought for a my daughter would contain: Source of funds e.g. credit card account/ “Family”/daughter’s name/shop where bought/price. This information would be lost in Moneydance. For the fun of it I imported some accounts but had to give up because with many amounts and many account transfers between currencies and changing forex rates, the analyzing took the program a long time. Sorry to have bothered you for no result. Maybe your guidance helps somebody else. Btw, the German Money99 V.7 can only produce strict QIF files. Best regards. Thomas