avp2's dashboard

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 15:33 to the problem "MAJOR problem with Net Worth graph" in The Infinite Kind:

That would explain why my net worth reports looked OK. I have only had a single (mortgage) loan since I started MD and recently paid it off.

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 01:08 to the problem "MAJOR problem with Net Worth graph" in The Infinite Kind:

I checked a few dates in my system and the net worth amount shows correctly (used a calculator to check) as the sum of Bank, Investment and Asset accounts minus Liability accounts. I am running 2008r3 (631).

All my accounts are US dollar based. If you have mixed base currency accounts, maybe something like the category view total problem is happening.

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 01:00 to the problem "Minor problem with net worth graph" in The Infinite Kind:

I notice, if I specify "group by day", I get the correct day for first, and last, data points. If I specify week, or month, I get a point before and after as you have stated.

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 00:48 to the question "401(k) account issue" in The Infinite Kind:

You could include the "buy/contribution" amount in your pay deposit as a split and do a "buy with funds from another account" (the one your pay goes in). Works, but not much easier than what you are doing.

What I do is use a "cash/transfer" expense category that I buy from (and make corrections and other similar balance changes that I don't want to show in account reports/views). In other words, it is a catch all that is cleared at end of year (or when you "close").

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 00:38 to the problem "A category that is used in accounts with different currencies will not let you change the currency associated with that category." in The Infinite Kind:

Even worse the total shown in the category view for a category with sub-categories will look wrong if there are different currencies in the sub-category transactions. Took me awhile to figure that out on one of mine.

avp2 replied on February 09, 2009 00:32 to the problem "Can't add second Chase online bank account" in The Infinite Kind:

I have two accounts each in two different banks with no problem at this time. One bank is direct connect. The other is download and import.

Some time ago, however, MD (Quicken 2007 for mac also) would try to put one account in the register of the other account of the bank I have download/import at. It turns out this was a bug with the bank in that their download file had the same "account ID" for both. They have since fixed that bug and it works as expected now.

If you are doing download/import, you might examine the files to see if they look reasonable as far as account id.

avp2 replied on February 07, 2009 02:11 to the question "How can I categorise payments to a liability account?" in The Infinite Kind:

Set up the liability account with zero balance. Add money to it with your payment transfers and pay the holiday costs with liability transactions of appropriate category. Should work similar to a credit card register.

I think the confusion is that saving money for a holiday is not really a liability, but a holding (non-interest bearing savings or checking) account. However, making it one in MD makes the net worth balance sheet look like the money is encumbered, or not part of your available wealth, and an Ok idea.

A comment on the question "Beginning (or ending) balance from last reconcile is incorrect. What do I do?" in The Infinite Kind:

The only way I know to set a register balance at a particular point/date is to remove all the previous transactions and set the beginning balance in the account setup to the value you want or set the beginning value to the difference between what you want and the sum of all the previous transactions. Of course, doing the later will make any reconcile that was right before the particular point/date wrong and deleting the previous transactions dumps the history and maybe unbalances other registers that may have been transferred to and/or categories.

If your statements match your register in balances and transactions up to a point, but not after that, there is either a previously not seen bug in MD or the statement that does not balance is wrong. You would need to do a hand summation of the transactions to see which is right, if either. – avp2, on February 07, 2009 01:47

avp2 replied on February 05, 2009 19:15 to the question "Can I interface with Canadian banks?" in The Infinite Kind:

I do not know anyone personally who does OFX direct connect with ING canada; perhaps (it was some months back) the posts I recall were complaining about problems. However, someone with an ING canada account should be able to try the OFX get program to see if the OFX home info works. I see the OFX home history that the info was recently verified, but do not know precisely what that means.

I do know that ING direct USA does not do OFX direct connect, for Quicken or otherwise. They only have OFX download and import.

avp2 replied on February 05, 2009 01:09 to the question "Can I interface with Canadian banks?" in The Infinite Kind:

I have seen some web posts indicating ING canada supports (or did) OFX direct connect and their connection info is listed in the OFX home directory.

avp2 replied on February 05, 2009 01:06 to the question "Is Chase.com supported for Online Banking?" in The Infinite Kind:

I suspect Quicken "direct web access" mentioned on the Chase website is just the Quicken function that will auto open (in your default web browser) an institution's website that you have specified in Quicken as offering normal QIF or QFX download. This is not much of an improvement over just opening the site yourself; you still have to logon, do the download and import.

Email from Chase's customer service I have received in early this week say that "direct connect" is only available at $9.95 per month.

Chase bank is listed in the OFX home directory, but I get errors in trying to setup a manual connection with the info there. If you have set up the $9.95/mo option with them, the info might work for you.

avp2 replied on January 30, 2009 15:53 to the question "Does MoneyDance support ING accounts?" in The Infinite Kind:

To me, web connect means "download and import" i.e., you open a bank's webpage, login to your account, download a transaction file (OFX, QIF or other) and then use MD's "import" function to get it into your accounts.

With direct connect, you choose on-line bill payment or download transactions from your MD account register menu and MD does all the communications directly with your bank, using the OFX protocol. This is what INGdirect USA and WaMu do not support at present.

Obviously, direct connect is less work and it allows on-line bill payment from within MD.

Just want to make clear what I was talking about, in case it was not before.

avp2 replied on January 30, 2009 15:37 to the problem "MD seems to be looking for incoming network connections" in The Infinite Kind:

I just tried opening MD in my 10.5.6 work computer and no popups were triggered even though the Application FW is on and MD is not listed as excepted. Maybe this Apple article will help those who are seeing the problem "support.apple.com/kb/HT1810". The quote from it below may be a lead for MD staff.

Digitally signed applications

All applications not in the list that have been digitally signed by a Certificate Authority trusted by the system (for the purpose of code signing) are allowed to receive incoming connections. Every Apple application in Leopard has been signed by Apple and is allowed to receive incoming connections. If you wish to deny a digitally signed application you should first add it to the list and then explicitly deny it.

If you run an unsigned application not in the Application Firewall list, you will be presented with a dialog with options to Allow or Deny connections for the application. If you choose Allow, Mac OS X 10.5 will sign the application and automatically add it to the Application Firewall list. If you choose Deny, Mac OS X 10.5 will sign the application, automatically add it to the Application Firewall list and deny the connection.

Some applications check their own integrity when they are run without using code signing. If the Application Firewall recognizes such an application it will not sign it, but then it will re-present the dialog every time the application is run. This may be avoided by upgrading to a version of the application which is signed by its developer.

A comment on the question "Does MoneyDance support ING accounts?" in The Infinite Kind:

WaMu also does not support "direct connect", only download/import. The old Home Savings used to support direct connect, but it was dropped when WaMu bought them out in the late 80's, early 90's. Chase has now bought WaMu and Chase says they support direct connect as a $9.95/mo option. I have not tested it, but they do have a listing in OFXhome. However, I have tested that with my WaMu account and they are not direct connect supported by Chase at this time. Maybe some time in the future, but I have emailed them it should be free (LOL0.

ING canada may support direct connect as they also have a listing (OFX settings data) in OFX home. – avp2, on January 30, 2009 15:08

avp2 replied on January 28, 2009 02:33 to the question "Why should money have 5 decimal places??" in The Infinite Kind:

I was reading this post and its replies. It got me looking at the edit security tool and you can delete there. However, an odd thing I noticed is that the drop down currency list in my MD 2008r3 (631) on mac shows only the currency I have selected and my other securities.

I wonder if I can value one security in units of another one or it is (more likely) just a bug.

avp2 replied on January 28, 2009 02:22 to the problem "Category Subtotal Wrong" in The Infinite Kind:

I have just discovered the reason behind this. The parent total is right, but it is displayed as US dollars and one of the child category balances is being displayed as British pounds.

All the originating transactions which are being shown in the child expense category were entered in British pounds in an account that is specified as US dollars, and they show (as expected) there as dollar values (with the pound conversion rate of the time).

Seems like categories need a currency selector (like accounts) to avoid this problem. Or, maybe, a currency selector for the edit accounts and edit categories windows so the numbers shown match.

avp2 replied on January 21, 2009 03:34 to the question "online banking setup for unlisted bank" in The Infinite Kind:

Sovereign does not appear to have a listed OFX function. If they can not provide the info for a manual setup, you will not be able to do "direct connect", only download and import. MD will import both QIF and QFX/OFX files.

avp2 replied on January 21, 2009 03:31 to the question "Investment Accounts/best way to track loans going out" in The Infinite Kind:

Don't know why you would do it, vs a liability or asset cash account, but you can add a "CD" to investments which might do what you want.

avp2 replied on January 20, 2009 01:42 to the problem "MD 2008r3 (629) Batch "Change Category" Bug" in The Infinite Kind:

Turns out the batch category and batch account functions seem to be swapped with each other. If you batch change the account it will move the transaction to a different register leaving the originating transaction in the account it is in; unfortunately, it only works to move to other non-category accounts because those are all the the function's drop down menu show. Also, the column that shows the originating account is labeled "category".

avp2 replied on January 20, 2009 01:32 to the question "Beginning (or ending) balance from last reconcile is incorrect. What do I do?" in The Infinite Kind:

This could happen if one of the previously reconciled (cleared) transactions has been uncleared or changed. It could probably happen also if one was deleted.

To fix, you need to reset the problem transaction/s or correct by un-clearing all transactions back to the last correct balance (where your register and statement or bank download match) and reconcile again.

Note also that when working with downloaded transactions, I have sometimes seen the balance received in the download not be correct; for me, it seems to have bee related to when an on-line payment actually gets subtracted.