avp2's dashboard

Oops. Forgot 8, 9, 10.

8) Auto-add user entered tags, such as "EFT", to the transaction "check#" drop down list similar to remember tags for description.

9) Auto-insert "EFT" into the check# for on-line transactions that are marked as completed in a download/import. Similarly, auto-insert "Pending" for on-line payments that have been acknowledged/scheduled (by the institution), but not "completed" yet.

10) If supported by OFX, show a "limited available amount" deposit to on-line setup accounts as two deposits with the available amount, and date available, in one and the balance in a "pending" transaction with date of when the bank says it will be available/cleared.

If it the institution has OFX capability, it is probably listed at "http://www.ofxhome.com/index.php/home/directory". There is a lookup function you can download there that may help. If it is not there, your institution probably does not have OFX capability. And, I have found at least one error in the list/index data (for Capital One). Check with your institution if there is a listing for it, but the data does not work.

There is a "loan payoff" item that you can add to your "home page" (the overview screen) using the home page preferences. It has a short summary of loan status that might be what you want.

You definitely have one of those creative financial situations. You may need to get hands-on help from an account.

What you seem to be describing is a loan where the first (re)payment is different in amount from the rest. The only built-in function MD has for handling such a situation is the "points" field, which covers the normal home finance situation. You enter the percentage of the loan that the payment included in the loan amount is and MD figures the correct schedule. Normally, that payment is an "origination" fee, not loan interest, and tracked separately for (US) tax purposes. I don't know how MD tracks it, or even if it does, other than the initiall setup. You would need to try it to see.

If a payment (vs origination fee) was included in the loan amount and is different from the rest of the payments you will need to make, I think you would need to know what the loan balance is at the time your "normal" payments start and how many are left to enter in the loan fields for MD to match your bank.

Worse case, you can set a MD liability account for the loan principal and expense categories for escrow and interest, set their initial balances to whatever match what your bank says you owe and paid, then, manually split your payments as correctly as you can. You won't have any automation (like running balance & interest projections), but it will work. I did this with my loan because it did not import as a loan account when I moved from Quicken and I did not bother fixing it as I only had a few payments left.

The down payment should not even show in your MD (you did not make it), unless you want to include it in an asset account for your house. If so, it would be a transaction (or transaction split, say of the original balance) with appropriate ("gift" income say) category, I use such an asset with the initial balance set as the purchase price and add any "real" improvement costs for cost basis tracing.

I think this about all I can do for you. Good luck, especially if your bank can't figure the payment schedule out correctly,

You guys beat me to it. I minimized my window then closed MD and got the problem which took a bit of playing around to fix. Even had the MD homepage desktop reduced in a full screen window (white borders around desktop inside window) at one point. I guess not too many people managed to close their program while it was minimized to the task bar.

Maybe even a way to sort what is on this site/list by the counts on each item's "x people have this problem too" and adding a "we are working on it, thinking about it, just keeping it on the list or we are not going to work on it" status for each.

You could do the interest+escrow payment as an initial balance or an ordinary manual split payment transaction. Either should work. However, if any part of the initial interest you paid was financed in the loan, you probably should enter that amount's percentage in the loan setup "points" field so that it gets automatically added to the loan amount and figured in the loan's payment.

The loan account setup also has fields for setting the escrow and payment (if you want something different than the calculated amount) amounts and MD's calculation is probably correct for normal mortgage interest rate/accumulation with whatever fixed monthly escrow payment you enter. If you do not know the escrow amount, it is probably the difference between the MD calculated payment and your real payment. If you specify a payment amount in setup that is more than calculated, it will post the excess to the loan principal to payoff sooner; I don't know what it would do if you specify less.

When you do a payment to the loan account, it automatically splits it to the escrow, interest and loan accounts. It remembers the splits and shows you how much is going to each account. You can also adjust them, which you need to do for changes in rate or escrow during the loan's lifetime, such as an excess payment to principal.

If you set up a loan and look at the loan register you should see a right hand sidebar that gives the loan's remaining payments etc after each payment.

Not familiar with old forum, but it sounds like the "traditional" kind. I think this layout is better than that (the traditional), but: I don't find the smiley's of much help either (though cute I guess), the delay in echoing input when typing in a subject post while the server tries to find matches to other posts (I guess) is really annoying; it it can not be too fast to notice the checking should quit after the first X (say 20) words input.

I also still think a well maintained, MD "to do" list that is easy to find and has user prioritizable/rated items with status, would be really worthwhile.

The MD manual is a bit lean, but setting up a loan type account should be straight forward, ie.do a new loan account and enter the fields.

You need an account, and a category, to select in the loan setup for escrow and interest, respectively. If you don't already have suitable ones setup when you build the loan, do them first or choose two you do have until you have the loan finished, make new ones and edit the loan to them.

Make a test payment to check that it splits the amounts it should to the separate registers and updates the loan stats correctly. Either leave the pyament to use for when you really pay or delete it until you do make a payment.

I have not had to do a loan payment in MD yet so I do not know for sure it works correctly. If it does not, you wiill need to post what you find for help.

My guess is that some (or all) CC payments from the bank accounts have been dropped. Probably, they are "transfer" type transactions and did not get read correctly. You may have to put them back in or just "balance adjust" the accounts using a "cash transactions" account.

It is also possible that your MSM export was set to leave out some transactions, such as from date later than first transaction or un-cleared transactions not being carried forward. I have no experience with MSM, but Qucken exports can easily be set to leave out certain transactions.

Not likely, I guess, but another thing to watch for is categories that have the exact same name as an account. If you have some, it will cause matching debit/credit transactions in one, or both, of the register views (account and category) with cancel each other; if you try to delete the bogus transaction, the matching one will also delete so that the balance is still wrong.

Odd. MD (XP and OS X) has always opened in the last window position and size it was set to and I started at MD build 617. My mac uses dual monitor expanded desktop and I am pretty sure I have used it with the window placed on both. My XPsp3 netbook is set for dual monitors but has nothing connected to the external port.

The Natonal Geographic desktop looks like more than just jpeg. Could that be causing a problem? Is it a VISTA thing, maybe reporting a bogus desktop size?

In my XP version (preview 628), those fields are all the same - "transaction list first line" color. I set mine to very light green. You should be able to set this color, and the second line, of the register to anything you want (within the color range of your machine) in "preferences">"colors", click on the color bar you want and adjust popup color wheel/chart. Text is not adjustable and set as black, and rhe reverse (white) for selected transactions. Hope it works this way in the Mac version.

I have never worked with MS Money, but in MoneyDance, you can not change an account's type. You have to make a new (empty) account of the type you want and move any transactions you want from other accounts into it. You do that by selecting the desired transactions (shift clicking) and doing a "batch change account" (right click on one of the selected transactions for the command).

I had to do quite a bit of this after importing Quicken finance data. Hope it works for you.