The Infinite Kind Blog

This post is a part of the Moneydance on the Road blog series.  Check out the first post here.

I appreciate tools which I can tweak to my specifications, so Moneydance is a great program for me.  I’ve been using Moneydance to track my finances for over a year, but I knew a trip with this many currencies and locations meant I needed to step up my game.

My goal was to have all of the accounts, graphs, reports, currency information, and budgeting tools I use regularly visible on the screen of my net-book without needing to use the scroll bar.  I also wanted the interface to be attractive but not too bright to minimize eye fatigue and provide a soothing experience.

First, I took advantage of the homepage customization features to create a snapshot of the most important information to me- which was my account balances, my reminders, current exchange rates, and the expenses graph.

Next, I turned on the VAT/GST option, case-sensitive auto-completion, and the auto-insert decimal places option.  This simplifies my data entry process, and will permit me to track my VAT spending for possible reimbursement when I depart these countries.  I’ve decided not to change the date format in my Moneydance file yet, so I think it would be more confusing than helpful during my adjustment to European date formats, but I may change this in a few months.

Finally, I mercilessly deleted most of the reports and graphs in the side bar, along with the accounts which I don’t use on a daily basis (such as my emergency fund and investment accounts).  What is left behind are the bank and asset accounts which I use everyday, the reports and graphs which help me to track my budget, and links to the homepage and reminder interface.

Now I have everything I use regularly easily accessible in an uncluttered, attractive format.  In my next post I’ll describe setting up a budget for this complex trip.

The information in this blog posts is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

Welcome to our new blog series, “Moneydance in Action.”  I’m Angie, one of the Moneydance support staff.  One of my favorite things about working for Moneydance is that my job is largely location independent, which allows me a lot of flexibility in work and life.  In 8 days I’ll be leaving for a 6 month trip across Europe, and I’ll be using Moneydance to keep my finances in order and blogging about my experiences twice weekly.

I’m visiting at least 12 countries and will be using a minimum of 10 currencies, so we’ll all be getting a crash course in mega multi-currency use.  I’ll be using a zero sum budgeting for the pieces of my trip when I’m moving about frequently, and experimenting with envelope budgeting for the months I’m settled down in one place.  I’ll be detailing how I set up and track my budget, working with multi-currency cash accounts, using the iPhone app in foreign currencies, creating and tracking savings goals, and of course the odd little hacks and tweaks I use to get the program to conform to my (admittedly unusual) life!

In the next few posts I’ll still be in the U.S, and I’ll be detailing how I set up my data file and budget for a trip of this magnitude.  On September 30 I arrive in Iceland, October 7 in England, October 26 in the Netherlands, October 29 in Brussels, and October 31 in Paris.  October’s posts will be devoted to using the iPhone app abroad, using multiple currencies, and a few other surprise topics.

I hope you’ll join me as I take Moneydance on this spectacular test-drive!  Next post I’ll be detailing how I customized Moneydance to better meet my needs.

The information in this blog post is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

We’ve been getting lots of email from customers of Wesabe, the online financial management web site that has sadly fallen on hard times and is closing up shop. Even though they were technically a competitor, I’ve always been impressed by their policy of openness, data portability and unselfish concern for their customers. Our concern for customer freedom is the reason our customers can export every last bit of their Moneydance information to a portable XML file.

Wesabe’s openness now enables their former users to migrate to other financial management systems, such as Moneydance, without losing any of their information. We’ve created a Moneydance extension that will import all accounts, categories, tags and transactions either directly from wesabe.com or from an XML file that was previously downloaded from Wesabe. The latter method will be necessary after July 31st which is when Wesabe has promised that they will destroy any user data remaining in their system.

To get your data from Wesabe into Moneydance, there are few simple steps:

1. Download and install Moneydance
2. Use the Extensions->Add menu to add the "Wesabe Migration Assistant" extension
3. Select the Extensions->Import from Wesabe.com menu and follow the instructions

You will be presented with two methods for importing your data, either by entering your email address and Wesabe password to let Moneydance do the work (note: will not work after July 31st 2010), or you can feed Moneydance the XML file that you previously downloaded from Wesabe’s XML download link (again, you must perform that download on or before July 31st).

We’d like to note that you can migrate your data without having to purchase a Moneydance license or commit in any way. You can even migrate your data into Moneydance and then immediately export it into another format not exportable by Wesabe such as QIF.

Finally, we’d like to wish the people behind Wesabe luck in their next endeavors. They put a lot of hard work into a great product, and thanks to the efforts they put into data portability their customers are not stranded without options.

We at The Infinite Kind, LLC are pleased to announce the third significant update to Moneydance 2010. This release includes oodles of new features and bug fixes that are detailed after the break. If you already use Moneydance then you simply need to click the Check for new updates/extensions link on the home page and then follow the instructions to upgrade. If you are on a Mac we recommend downloading the whole app in order to benefit from improvements to the application wrapper/launcher.

We’re not resting on our laurels after this update, either. We’ve already begun working on more updates such as a significantly improved interface for categorizing/merging/confirming downloaded transactions, increasing the number of supported online banks and mind-blowing budgeting improvements.

Now for the full list of changes in Moneydance 2010r3:

• Updated Norwegian and French translations
• Added Danish translation courtesy of Stig Bøgelund Nielsen
• UpdatedBrazilian/Portuguese translation
• Added Asset Allocation Report
• Added Tag Summary report
• Added Transaction Search report
• Added an Investment Portfolio report
• Added an Investment Performance report
• Full redesign of downloaded transaction matching/merging feature
• Added Duplicate Transaction item to the default register action popup menu
• Added support for CLIENTUID tags that uniquely identify the OFX client installation
• Fixed bug in Quit menu handler on Mac OS X
• Add option to mark online transactions as cleared when they are confirmed/accepted
• Allow investment registers to perform limited batch change-account actions on transactions
• Only allow sorting on columns that map to sort fields
• Improve register scrollbar positioning when changing filters
• Added license/registration status bar to the top of the home page until registration
• No longer ask to save changes to a transaction if all you did was open the splits window
• Added Entrust OFX SSL certificate
• Enable 'drill down' on most reports so that virtually any row can be double-clicked to go to the transaction or account
• Relocated user guide and documentation to moneydance.com where it will be updated more frequently, is printable and available in more formats
• Allow investment account registers to do batch-change-account and batch-change-category operations only on bank (ie xfr or non-trading) transactions
• Improvements to QIF importing, including handling of apparently new syntax for embedding bank transactions in an investment register
• Add user-selectable currency to the Net Worth report, making Net Worth report and graph consistent
• Fix issue when using 'Go To Transaction' if the transaction is invisible due to filtering. In such cases, we just turn off filtering before selecting the transaction.
• When importing currency/security history, status bar now shows appropriate message if there were any failures
• Add a summary section to the end of cash flow reports
• Added transaction search report, providing incredible flexibility for sorting, grouping, filtering and displaying transactions
• Budget bars now use the same calculation method as budget reports and dashboard
• Budget bars now show actual spending even if there is no budget item for the category, or if the budget item is out of date
• Fix a bug in the budget report in cases when no budgets are defined in the file
• Add the 'as of' date back to Account Balance report, valid only for the 'Current Balance' option
• Correction to tag filtering in the detailed cash flow report
• Fixed issue in account balance graph related to account creation dates
• Updated icons
• Fixed QIF export of investment transactions
• Changing locale now updates most sidebar items without requiring a restart to take effect
• Fix total column in Transaction Report
• Fixed register issue in which double-clicking on transactions always selected the first column. Now the field which is clicked on is selected
• Fixed issue in which doing a batch selection of transactions didn't allow you to deselect transactions by reversing direction
• No longer mark the data file as changed when opening a budget report from the home page
• Fixed sidebar tooltip formatting
• Allow adding categories to the sidebar
• Sort the memorized reports and graphs to the top of reports/graphs section of sidebar
• Fix minor display glitch in multi-account selector
• Fixed budget dashboard display and remember the previously selected budget
• View dashboard menus now have radio buttons to show which type of Dashboard (if any) is being displayed
• Fixed bug preventing some registers from being printed
• Fix right click menu in budget bars
• Fix the Annual ROI % computation for the Investment Performance report
• Fixed bug in matching OFX account types with Moneydance account types. This especially helps when dealing with CREDITLINE accounts.
• Improved expenses and income graphs
• Allow payee/description search to match descriptions in splits
• Allow amount search to match amounts in splits
• Show the application icon when the password dialog appears when running under Java 6 or higher
• Fix gaps in sidebar caused by duplicated nodes (rare occurrence related to renaming and deleting accounts)
• Fix issue when all accounts of a type were in the budget bars
• Fix source account filtering in expenses graph
• Fixed problem with main split view misbehaving when window was resized while sidebar was hidden
• Change potential transaction merge detection so that downloaded transactions can combine with much older local transactions (default: 90 days) but not as distant newer local transactions (default: 14 days). If the user has chosen an override in the preferences then the date window is the same in both directions (older/newer).
• Improve sidebar account selection - clicking home will always work even when a non-sidebar account is selected
• When opening a new window for a side bar node, ensure the side bar node is selected in the new window.
• Repair keyboard focus issue - the balance button had keyboard focus and was consuming all key presses
• Fixed behavior of OR in advanced search
• Limit recent files to 30 (really only useful for testers/developers). Also put full path and file name in recent file menu item tooltip, useful for everybody who opens the same file name but in different folders.
• Added initial running balance in beginning of transaction report
• Show both account and category in transaction report
• Use base currency when 'all accounts' option is selected in the transaction report
• Improve sorting by check number in some cases
• Fixed issue in which identical previous transactions which were not originally downloaded are not offered as categorization suggestions for processing downloaded transactions
• Repair online error message window sizes which were too small, making it hard to tell whether there is more information or not
• Always roll up child categories in the budget detail view
• Implemented export-by-account for QIF and tab delimited exports
• Change budget report to allow non-budgeted categories to be shown, and also to hide items that are all zeroes
• Repair memorization of the subtotal option on budget reports
• Improve the default settings selections for the budget reports
• Fix an issue caused by forcing the account selector to 'all accounts' mode, make Net Worth Graph behave like the Net Worth Report
• Make the account selection list control aware of the different types of accounts
• Revamp the expense report so that individual accounts can be included
• Repairs to various algorithms to handle stock splits correctly, including Net Worth Report, Net Worth Graph and Portfolio Report
• Consistency and ease of use improvements to Expenses and Income graphs
• No longer overwrite a non-empty memo field when accepting a downloaded transaction
• Show or hide the info text / filter toggle in certain add/remove dialogs
• Do not allow selecting security currency types as the base type for accounts
• Reduce clutter in the account selection list control
• Sort securities / currencies lists
• Fixed typo bug with (very rare) OFX delete transaction display
• Added transaction and account/category filtering to the Income and Expense graph
• Added account column in the detailed income and expenses report
• Improve report column auto-sizing
• Show parent description of splits if split description is blank
• Properly calculate cost basis when the stock splits. Fixes for both average cost and lot-based cost
• Rearrange currency/security import window and workflow
• Allow OFX connections to certain banks using OFX version 1.0.3
• Changed calculator shortcut to command/ctrl-shift-L
• Collapse budget items of the same category into one budget report row
• Hide zero balance securities in net worth report
• Improve consistency between budget report, budget dashboard and budget bars on home page
• Add sale transaction commission to lot-based costs (already included in average cost)
• Revise the Annual ROI percentage when 'all dates' is used, locking the date to the last transaction
• Change budget report to allow non-budgeted categories to be shown, and also to hide items that are all zeroes
• Allow category accounts to be marked 'Tax Related' and to use this marking with the income and expense report
• Clarify that the start date is as of the start of the day, not the end in the investment performance report
• Fixed cut/copy/paste menus and shortcut keys
• Improved subtotaling and totaling in the transaction report in some cases
• Fix an issue with tag settings in memorized reports
• Disable the Next button while downloading/updating FI connection information for a quick fix to the situation where a user clicks Next multiple times while waiting for the download
• Fixed dates of transaction reminder notifications when invoked from calendar view
• Create formal enum for investment transaction type
• Properly handle all transaction types in the investment report
• Don't always include zero in security price graph Y axis on the security detail panel
• Investment performance report: Add the ability to hide zero balance accounts.
• Investment performance report: Fix issues with dates older than securities
• Clean up some issues with report dates older than securities in portfolio report
• Add the cash balance to the account total balance and cost basis in portfolio report
• Allow security and currency price history to be imported from a text file (comma separated, tab separated, or '|'-separated)
• Fixed issue in which using the up/down arrow in the transaction cleared status field would display the status popup menu as well as select the previous/next transaction in the list, putting the register into a funky state
• When searching for similar transactions to an online transaction, if a candidate for matching was not downloaded, use the manually entered payee/description for matching. Otherwise, the description as originally downloaded is used to match
• Change batch-change-category behavior so that it properly deals with investment transactions.
• It also now works with split transactions, although setting every split to the same category is a bit silly
• Really hide sidebar when toggling visibility (it no longer re-appears when the window is resized)
• Allow reverting of auto-merged downloaded transactions in new matching interface
• Reduced indentation of nodes in sidebar (and allowed all nodes to be indented)
• Improved performance and resource usage of sidebar view
• Made download-all-transactions not open registers for all accounts that are downloaded.
• When transactions are deleted through the register they are also removed from the (hidden) selection
• Prevent saving of window size and location when the window (frame) is minimized/iconified
• Repair issue in account balance graph when the price of the security is exactly $1
• Make the default size of the graph and report options window larger to avoid controls being cut off
• Support searching on the Tax Date field
• Generate a search report right from the search results
• Budget bars: add a 'this week' and 'last week' option for those who track weekly budgets
• Budget bars: allow multiple budget items to be specified for the same category
• Add information to the splits window about the parent transaction to which they belong
• Added print function and double-click handling to quick-search register on home page
• Add cleared status and tag searching
• Fixed an issue in which stock splits were not correctly displayed in the currency/security graph
• Fixed a summation bug in net worth report
• Fix cost basis calculation in multiple locations. Sale fees/commissions apply only to the sale transaction.
• Fixed columns in investment transaction reminder editing (as opposed to notification)
• Capital gains fixes - handle short sales better, add sales fees to the basis (short term basis first, then long term)
• Add the share balance to Net Worth when showing securities, providing a way to see share balances as of a given date
• Fixed a bug with copying reports or graphs to the clipboard
• Fixed a bug in which a modified but not memorized report displayed a blank title
• Allow integer percentages to have trailing zeroes to look nice on a report
• Fixed bug where thousands delimiter (usually a comma) wasn't displaying for values in currencies that had zero decimal places
• Set the title of embedded reports to the memorized report name in order to be consistent with the previous (and new-window) memorized reports
• Update the amount shown when a register search is updated

I can’t tell you how happy I was to find the following words from Apple in my inbox today:

Your application has been approved for sale on the App Store. Pending any application availability issues, your app will be Ready for Sale and live on the App Store within 24 hours.

We at The Infinite Kind, LLC are pleased to announce that Moneydance for iPhone OS is now available for immediate download.

The Moneydance mobile app is a free companion to the desktop version of Moneydance, and is meant to allow entry and modification of transactions while on the go. Accounts, categories and recent transactions are synced to your iPhone or iPod Touch and transactions entered or modified on your mobile device are synced to your desktop once you’re back on the same wifi network as your desktop.

The device syncs via your local network and protects your information using industrial-strength encryption (192-bit DESede; one of the reasons it took so long to release).

Please check it out and send us feedback!

The final version of help documentation for Moneydance 2010 is ready for release.  You can find a PDF of this documenthere). This document includes instructions for the new transaction importing and matching capabilities of our Moneydance 2010.

I’m also thrilled to let you all know that our iPhone app has received government approval and has been submitted to Apple for review!  We’ll post on the blog when we hear back from them.

As always, if you need additional assistance you can contact our support staff through our forum here, or by emailing us at support@moneydance.com.