switching from MS Money 2002
Morning
i have recently got an iMac. and followed the instructions form your web page to export my accounts across to moneydance.
most of the data has come across but its a total mess?
balances are wrong and the details are all screwed up... what can i do?
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1 Posted by dwg on 14 Oct, 2016 09:50 PM
You will need to give a bit more clarity to what "a total mess" means, perhaps by providing some examples of what the data was like in Money and how it appears in MoneyDance, this may give some clues as to what has happened, there are a number of things that can go wrong in the export/import process especially as the QIF file format was never really intended as a migration tool.
The most common cause of incorrect balances is that the starting balance was not in the QIF file exported from the other software, this is not all that unusual in that it is not always represented by a transaction, the fix for this particular problem is to edit the account details in Moneydance to set an initial balance.
2 Posted by phillip kite on 14 Oct, 2016 09:58 PM
My data in MS Money 2002 was pretty basic, 5 accounts 2 credit cards - transfers between each, all dated and reconciled. most of that has transferred but in MD these some of these are list with future dates up to 2018?!? is there any other way to transfer or i might have to scrap the old data and start afresh?
3 Posted by dwg on 14 Oct, 2016 10:38 PM
The most common cause of date problems is not specifying the date format when importing that matches what is in the QIF file, what you specify the date format to be on your computer is not honoured by the programs, financial software programs often write out a predetermined format, Quicken is especially known for this.
To determine the date format open the QIF file in any test reader you have, it is just a text file, and you should be able to see the format used and match it to what you specify when importing.
QIF is about the only format that is available that is reasonably universal, other formats like CSV can be used with bank and credit card accounts but these can be even more work, especially if they are not in a pristine format.
Perhaps another user has particular experience with MS Money, I do not as it never really suited my part of the world.
4 Posted by phillip kite on 15 Oct, 2016 02:15 AM
thanks will try the txt file date thing, other wise i will try and edit what data i have got.
Anyway Im loving MoneyDnace AND my new iMac!
5 Posted by derekkent23 on 15 Oct, 2016 07:09 AM
I converted from MS Money 2005. When importing it is vital to set the correct date format in the import QIF file window, that is set the date format to that used in the QIF file. The QIF date format may well be different from the one you used in Money and the one you have set in moneydance preferences. Don’t spend time trying to change the dates once imported, you must start again or you will get frustrated. Importing with the wrong date format will make a mess of account balances. As dwg stated initial balances for an accounts need to be cheeked. I think I also had a few transitions that I had to delete, not sure where they came from, but they were obvious as they were for large amounts.
Good Luck
6 Posted by phillip kite on 24 Oct, 2016 08:11 AM
IT WORKED!!!!
Thank you derekkebt23 and dwg! if i was wearing a hat i would take it off to you.
It was QUITE an effort and took a couple of days to get my head around.
because i transfer funds from one account to another, as soon as i imported one account it created all the others, but with strange balances, but once i sorted out the date issue using notepad, (one of the accounts was mmddyy when the rest were ddmmyy) and imported all the other files AND found two old closed accounts....
IT ALL BALANCED. I have all my details 14 years worth!
MONEYDANCE is up and dancing! Thanks guys... i nearly gave up!
7 Posted by dwg on 24 Oct, 2016 08:33 AM
Glad it worked out for you.
2 days ain't all that bad I was working on it for well over 2 weeks, but I mostly had investment accounts and they can be diabolical to deal with.
FWIW no matter what software you had moved too it was never going to be trivial there are no real solid standards in the personal financial software space.
System closed this discussion on 23 Jan, 2017 08:40 AM.