Import data from AceMoney?
Hi,
I'm considering switching from AceMoey to your product. I have two questions:
1. Can I import my data from AceMoney so I don't lose my account history?
2. Is there a list of financial institutions that Moneydance interfaces with? I bank at a small credit union, Cedar Point Federal Credit Union. I'd be interested in downloading data for balancing my accounts monthly. I manually enter my data - would not want to have to merge every single transaction that's taken place in the month. Is that the way the process works?
Thanks.
Ann
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1 Posted by dwg on 25 Apr, 2025 11:47 PM
I'm a fellow Moneydance customer.
I can answer some of your questions. I tested AceMoney many years ago when looking for another Finance solution after using Quicken, but was not happy with how it worked or its capabilities.
You can export non-investment account data from AceMoney into individual QIF files and import these into Moneydance.
In fairly recent times I have tried this with AceMoney's demo data and it was successful also Moneydance handled duplicate data correctly.
AceMoney does not export Investment data in any sort of useful way. The exports are in CSV format, the data is quite fragmented and is incomplete. I do not think any software would be capable of working with these files, even a custom written program would have considerable problems.
There are two ways of having automatic downloads with Moneydance:
1. Direct Connect
There is no Moneydance charge for this (institutions may charge) there is a list of institutions known to support this service at:
https://infinitekind.com/fi
2. Moneydance+
This is an add on service (charged for) that uses an aggregator to provide the data - you are paying for the aggregator. You need an account or to have signed up for a trial to see what institutions are supported, there is no list available, I do not have an account, so cannot tell you if they support your institution.
Moneydance also support importing transaction files you manually download from any institution, there are no costs associated with this.
If you manually enter data then download transactions, there has to be a process to being the data together. No software program can be absolutely certain that a manually entered transaction matches a downloaded transaction. Data like date and amount are not sufficient. I would not envisage any finance software trying to guess, or make assumptions in this space.
The process in Moneydance is the confirmation process, this is documented in the Knowledge Base. The software will learn correlations as it goes and will often suggest the right match.
https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/confirm-downloaded-data
https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/online-banking-and-bill-pay/merging-downloaded-transactions
2 Posted by Ann Scharpf on 26 Apr, 2025 12:06 AM
Wow! Thank you for such a complete response to my questions!
I've been using AceMoney since Microsoft Money stopped working. It always
felt pretty rudimentary to me. I've finally bit the bullet and replaced my
11 (yes, eleven!) year old laptop. I'm going to play with the trial version
and see how I like it. I think I saw a 90-day money back satisfaction
guarantee.
I hadn't thought of using QIF as an intermediate format. Now that you've
given me an import process, I think I will end up buying the license and
trying it out.
- Ann
On Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 7:48 PM dwg <[email blocked]> wrote:
3 Posted by dwg on 26 Apr, 2025 12:16 AM
I would suggest you just try Moneydance out in trial mode, imports are unlimited in this mode and if you later purchase the software the key simply unlocks the 100 manually entered transaction limit.
I recently replaced my 13 year old Windows desktop system, it however became my "new" Linux desktop replacing an 18 year old system.
4 Posted by Ann Scharpf on 26 Apr, 2025 01:09 AM
Ooh! I thought the import would blow away my 100 transactions. Thanks
again.
On Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 8:17 PM dwg <[email blocked]> wrote:
5 Posted by dtd on 26 Apr, 2025 02:13 AM
Imports don't count at all for manual transactions. Nor do downloads from a bank (i.e. can I get Cedar Point FCU to work with either Direct Connect or Moneydance+ (yes you can get a demo of MD+ as well for X days, but then you do have to cancel if you don't like it).
The 100 manual transactions are literal "type in the transaction bits", so it's fairly liberal, and you basically can test the entire program for free for quite some time (MD+ is a free trial period, so a bit different).
So, yes, you DO get a 90 day refund period, but you can start out for free for quite some time.
6 Posted by Ann Scharpf on 26 Apr, 2025 02:29 AM
Thank you for replying.
I'm feeling good about this software just based on the helpful user
community!
Ann
On Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 10:13 PM dtd <[email blocked]> wrote:
7 Posted by dtd on 26 Apr, 2025 04:35 AM
Thanks! We try. Also glad you recognize both dwg and I are "user community" - neither of us are part of MD/IK... (though we are both software testers).
Just looked up Cedar Point - it is listed as available in both OFX Direct Connect (built into Moneydance) and in Moneydance+. ---- though I give less credence over time to the Direct Connect list as banks are dropping like flies from that download method (long story).
That said, my FCU (Suncoast FCU in Florida) is listed in Direct Connect and still works in that.
8 Posted by dwg on 26 Apr, 2025 06:51 AM
An observation.
It seems to be the "big boys" are the ones dropping Direct Connect support. It could well be that the smaller players, who I expect to be more customer focused, continue to support it.
9 Posted by Ann Scharpf on 26 Apr, 2025 05:02 PM
:blush:
I worked various roles in IT for nearly my whole career. Tester, trainer,
support (both formal and informal), tech writer, developer of Excel &
Access tools. Believe me, I treasure robust user communities!
I poked around a little bit on the company's site last night. AceMoney has
NOTHING like it. I'm feeling pretty sold.
I got my accounts imported last night and Moneydance went a step further
and created EXTRA accounts - I think for CDs I'd only half accounted for. I
imported all my data, all the way to the beginning of my records in 2011
and Moneydance created a boatload of accounts with negative, instead of
zero, balances. I see that I can exclude them from my net worth
calculation. But I'd like to delete them if I can do that without wiping
out the corresponding transactions in my checking account. Do you know if
that's possible? If you don't know, I'll try the account with the fewest
transactions and make note of the changes.
BTW, I'm emailing from my phone. Are these messages posting to the web page
also?
Thanks again!
On Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 12:35 AM dtd <[email blocked]> wrote:
10 Posted by dtd on 26 Apr, 2025 08:26 PM
Have you checked if the difference for these several accounts is that they don't have an initial balance set? i.e. for each of these negative accounts that "should be zero", you should have an initial balance of X.xx if the balance you have at the end is -X.xx ?
If these accounts ever interacted with other accounts, you should absolutely not delete them. If nothing else, make them inactive, and does not affect net worth to hide them from your sight (appears you didn't know they were there anyway...)
If you have ACCOUNTX accounts, there may have been times when you made a transaction and assigned the category as itself. That violates double entry accounting and thus MD created an offset account. These can be fixed in many ways. Ask if you have them but don't know how to change them properly.
As for emailing from your phone, there are many times that does NOT work properly, but you seem to be "doing it right".
11 Posted by Ann Scharpf on 26 Apr, 2025 09:01 PM
I think I figured out what happened but I have been busy with other things
today and have not had a chance to get into the application and look.
I had another large accounts which I have since closed and I believe I made
electronic transactions from those accounts to start the accounts that now
have negative balances. I had deleted those accounts on Ace money after I
closed them , so this could be the source of the problem. These other large
accounts did not get imported into Moneydance.
I will definitely dig into this in the next few days.
Thanks again for your help.
On Sat, Apr 26, 2025, 4:27 PM dtd <[email blocked]> wrote:
12 Posted by dwg on 26 Apr, 2025 09:49 PM
If that is the case then you can use the initial Balance field on the account information screen for the amount or you can create an initial balance category and place the transaction there.
Either way works it just depends on which approach you prefer.