Almost Final Draft of Moneydance 2010 help is now available
Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to announce the release of the “Almost Final Draft” of the Moneydance 2010.
As many of you know, we ran into some production issues with the Moneydance 2010 help documentation. The continuing updates to the Transaction importing and matching work flow have been holding up the composition and release of this documentation. We have decided to release the Almost Final Draft without these pieces, with the caveat that this is not the final version of this document. We do feel it is a major improvement compared to the 2008 help documentation.
The PDF of the Almost Final Draft is located here. If you have suggestions for improvements, or corrections to the current draft, please post them on in that location.
Helping Haiti
On January 20th we are taking part in Indie Relief, a promotion in which all of our sales proceeds for that day will be sent to a relief organization helping people recover from the devastating earthquake in Haiti. We have chosen to donate to Doctors Without Borders.
We also urge everyone who can to donate directly to the relief effort. If you donate, please be careful where you are sending your money. There are plenty of fraudulent web sites and spammers attempting to scam people who are intending to send money to relief organizations. Here are direct links to a few relief organizations:
New Year Discounts
If you are like most people your wallet is quite a bit lighter after the holidays, so what better time to get your finances in order than right now - the first month of a brand new decade? Since it is such a great time to get started tracking your finances, we’re offering a 20% discount to anyone who likes Moneydance enough to recommend it to others.
To get your 20% off discount code, all you have to do is one of the following:
- follow @moneydance on twitter and post a tweet that mentions @moneydance or our web site: http://moneydance.com. If your updates are public then we'll send you a 20% off discount code via direct message within 24 hours of your update.
- if Facebook is more your thing, just become a fan of the Moneydance facebook page. Once you've become a fan you will see our comment on the "wall" with the discount code.
This offer applies during January 2010 but we may keep it going longer depending upon the result. We also welcome feedback on this idea. Do you have a better way to encourage those who enjoy using Moneydance to spread the word?
Moneydance 2010 is Here!
You cannot imagine how happy I am to announce the first public release of Moneydance 2010. We started the public beta testing a little more than a month and have been furiously adding last minute features and fixing bugs right up until this weekend. I would personally have preferred to continue coding until reaching a state of personal finance nirvana (if such a thing exists), however we now consider the beta stable and we can no longer justify holding back all of the new features from reaching the general public.
The first thing you’ll notice about the new software is the sidebar/source-list that can be used to navigate to any of your accounts, budgets, graphs and reports with a single click. The sidebar shows your account balances in addition to “unread” indicators which mean that marked accounts have pending downloaded transactions.
The unread indicators hint at another big new feature: automatic downloading of transactions in the background. If you set the preference to download transactions in the background Moneydance will, upon startup and every few hours, automatically download transactions from all of your online accounts and put them into your account registers to be accepted. The newly downloaded transactions will be marked as “unread” with a blue dot and can be left as they are, categorized individually (with helpful defaults provided based on previous transactions), or marked as “read” in one fell swoop. This new workflow lets you do as little or as much work as you like on your downloaded transaction information.
Other great features include the nifty new Budget Bars which give you a more detailed graphical view of your budget compliance, a few new reports and graphs as well as more flexible filtering of existing graphs and reports (including by tags).
Customers who purchased Moneydance 2008 will receive a completely free upgrade to MD 2010. If you purchased a license earlier than the Moneydance 2008 release date (March 28th 2008) then you are entitled to a half-price upgrade. Moneydance 2010 will retain the same low price of $39.99 USD. What a bargain!
To download the new version just head on over to our download page!
Getting the most out of your Moneydance Trial
At Moneydance we understand that different people have different needs from their personal finance software. That’s why we offer a liberal trial so you can decide if our program is right for you.
Our demo version is fully-functional and allows you to manually enter 100 transactions. Imported transactions are not limited. If you decide to purchase Moneydance you can keep all your data, the license key simply unlocks the ability to manually enter more transactions.
Here’s how to get the most out of your Moneydance trial.
1) Import your financial information from other personal finance software
We have online guides to assist with transferring your information from Quicken or MS Money.
For help transitioning from Quicken.
For help transitioning from MS Money. This process is can be more challenging than the transition from Quicken, as there are limitations with the way MS Money exports qif files.
2) Use the Moneydance forums to get advice from Moneydance support and other users
Moneydance offers support to all of our users, even before you purchase our software. If you have questions or need help during your trial period, we invite you to contact our support personnel.
Moneydance support offers both public forums and private support. Browse our forum to see what other users are asking and saying about Moneydance. Forums posts are also answered by Moneydance Support staff. Private support requests are answered by Moneydance Support staff but cannot be viewed by the public, offering security and privacy for your more sensitive requests.
3) Set up online banking with your financial institutions
Check out our list of supported banks If we don’t yet support your bank, you can request we do so by posting to our forum, or contacting our support staff at support@moneydance.com. Please note that not all banks support direct OFX connections, which Moneydance (and other financial software) requires in order to talk directly to a bank.
Most financial institutions will require you to enable your accounts for application-based online banking. Keep in mind that application-based online banking often requires a different login/PIN than the ones that are used for ATM or web-based banking. When you enable your account for access from Moneydance or Quicken, your financial institution should let you know what customer ID/login and PIN to use. Some financial institutions charge a monthly fee for direct OFX connections, and we suggest you check with your bank to discover their policies.
Many banks also permit you to download QFX, OFX or OFC files (aka Quicken or MS Money files) from their website, any of which will import cleanly into Moneydance.
4) Get Specific
Everyone has different needs, so while the above tips are applicable to most users, most people have specific tools and functions which are most important to them. Look at the budgeting, investment, reporting, asset tracking, and graphing tools to make sure that Moneydance will meet your needs.
One Finger Discount
Thinking of buying Moneydance or know someone who is? If you buy on or before Friday November 13th you will get a 20% discount on Moneydance 2008 (which includes a free upgrade to MD 2010) by using the discount code “OneFingerDiscount” on our order form.
We are joining a host of other mac developers to offer this discount. The name “one finger discount” was chosen as 20% is one fifth of a “five finger discount” (aka free).