avp2's dashboard

avp2 replied on November 14, 2008 10:41 to the question "us bank doesn't give an option for MD; only money or quicken" in The Infinite Kind:

Use Quicken. MD will import Quicken and CSV (generic Spread Sheet) files fine, but I have not tried to import a Money file. With CSV files, youmay loose some account info.

avp2 replied on November 14, 2008 10:38 to the problem "import ofx" in The Infinite Kind:

You specify what date range of transactions you will get when you download. If any of them are already in your MD account, they will again show but should not be duplicated by MD (added to your registe) unless there is some significant difference between the register (say in date or amount). If there are actually duplicates in the downloaded file, something is wrong with your bank's download process.

avp2 replied on November 14, 2008 10:33 to the question "Does anyone have success in synching with an online checking account? THANKS for any advice!" in The Infinite Kind:

Don't know what the problem is. Can say MD download works in both Windows and OS X (I use both). You create an account/s for the bank you want to use, fill out the download boxes as you described and click on "download transactions". I have not had a download failure in the four months, or so, I have been using MD; I have three direct access accounts from two institutions and three more "import" accounts from other institutions.

avp2 replied on November 14, 2008 09:47 to the question "Add an new online banking" in The Infinite Kind:

The info is probably somewhere on the net (like OFX.org), but probably not too easy to find. A complete (as far as those MD uses anyway) OFX tag list, that is also kept up to date, would be a nice thing to have; say in the MD documentation/Help file/s. I believe there are plenty of MD users that could use it.

avp2 replied on October 26, 2008 20:11 to the question "categorizing cash transactions" in The Infinite Kind:

To be able to track what you pay cash for you have to have a cash account (not a cash expense category). So, you add a new account (and register) called cash, usually an asset or bank type. When you use cash, you enter the transactioin in the cash account register and assignment the amount/s of the transaction to whatever category you want. When you get the cash (to use) from one of your other accounts, you enter a "transfrer" type transaction to your cash account. If you get the cash from some other place, you just enter it as a deposit in your cash account.

The best you can do tracking a cash move (or any other transfer) transaction is to memo it (as a transfer to "make X purchase for instance); you can not assign categories to a transfer transaction.

avp2 replied on October 23, 2008 19:11 to the question "Question about income/expense reports" in The Infinite Kind:

In reference to Katahdin's note about how accounts and categories are not the same thing and my own notice of what happens when a transaction's category has the same name as the account the transaction is in (see my bug post), I think it may be a basic MD design flaw that will continue to cause problems as long as it exists.

avp2 replied on October 23, 2008 18:32 to the question "categorizing cash transactions" in The Infinite Kind:

The other way to do cash transactions is to make a category (expense or income, but expense seems more intuitive) called something like "cash purchases", Then you pick that category for the ATM.

Both methods have problems, however, so you will probably (after some experience) use both. With the cash account, the balance gets more and more out of whack with reality over time and shows up on the home page to make your networth look bad; occassionally I just do a balance adjust from/to cash category to make the balance look something like what I think I have on hand. A cash category balance does not show up on the home page, but also does not allow you to track the cash purchases like you probably want, say for groceries.

Quicken had a selector to allow you to hide some accounts on the equivalent of its Home page which is what I used to do with my cash account in that program. Maybe MD should do something similar in addition to its zero balance hider.

avp2 replied on October 20, 2008 18:46 to the question "Why can't I edit my recorded transaction?" in The Infinite Kind:

I forgot to mention that I have noticed a transaction won't open for edit until after you click the "Done" button after registering downloaded transactions.to close that area under a register.

avp2 shared an idea in The Infinite Kind on October 20, 2008 18:08:

Report/Graph Improvement Suggestion

I mentioned I would like to see an average function for reports, similar to a subtotal. It occurs to me a good place to do this would be to show the average amount for the periods graphed on a report in the pie chart segment title box above the graph. For instance, you setup an expense for last 12 months by month and show the average per month (for 12 months) for each expense picked up by the chart. Some might also like to see actual amount per period, or total for all periods, so a selector for which to show in the box would be nice too.

Obviously, if you show too many expenses you might not be able to read the title boxes too well, but that could be fixed by having the report function show all selected expenses in groups of N on separate pages; the N being chosen like it is now for N largest.

avp2 replied on October 20, 2008 17:18 to the question "Compare investment returns AND include dividends" in The Infinite Kind:

I have not tried to do the report part of this suggestion, but it occurs to me that, if you setup an income category for you investment, you might then be able to select that category for your dividend entries and then do a transaction report for the investment and its income category to get total return. Just make sure the income category name is not exactly the same as the investment account's or MD will get confused and put two counter-balancing entries in your investment for each transaction you enter (and this goes for any type account).

avp2 replied on October 20, 2008 17:04 to the question "Why can't I edit my recorded transaction?" in The Infinite Kind:

Double click on transaction in register to select and open it for edit.

avp2 shared an idea in The Infinite Kind on October 20, 2008 17:02:

Investment Reporting Improvement Suggestion.

A simple (it would seem to me) thing that could be added to help improve a user's picture of his investments would be to add the capability for custom entered security type/s at least breaking down the current "mutual fund" type to "mutual-money market, income, growth, equity, growth & income". This would (I hope) trigger the portfolio-view pie chart so you could graphically see your mutual fund positioning along with CD's, etc.

avp2 replied on October 18, 2008 18:35 to the question "What I really want" in The Infinite Kind:

I think an "average" function like for reports, like subtotal, would be handy for reports used for budget and planning; example average of housing expenses per month for last 2yrs.

avp2 replied on October 18, 2008 09:39 to the problem "Loan Accounts have a serious bug." in The Infinite Kind:

I have also found that a loan can not be given a parent of "liability" to put it where it should be on the home page. This is not a bug, I guess, but really irksome.

avp2 replied on October 18, 2008 09:35 to the question "What I really want" in The Infinite Kind:

AMEN. I agree. MD does a decent job and I like it better than Quicken (which I used for over 15 years), but reporting really could stand improvement in user customizing caapability; everyone has special needs.

avp2 replied on October 18, 2008 09:12 to the discussion "Import OFX File to Credit Card Account" in The Infinite Kind:

Now that I have a bit more MD experience, I have started putting the account numbers in my account names so that when MD brings up its "which account is this" dialog box I can pick the right one easily. I had not noticed that MD would only allow picking matching account types, but, if so, that should be changed to allow you to select any type account as the "right" one.

avp2 started following the idea "Reports I'd love to see: transaction drill-down" in The Infinite Kind.

avp2 replied on October 06, 2008 20:50 to the question "Show running balance (in shares) of single security in investment account?" in The Infinite Kind:

I like your idea for adding the info to the "security detail" register. After doing some importing, and the subsequent cleanup required, I second the usefulness of such info.

avp2 replied on October 06, 2008 20:43 to the idea "Asset distribution for multiple investment accounts" in The Infinite Kind:

This was part of what I was trying to achieve by requesting that an account be settable as having any other type account as a parent. You could then see various sub-totals the way you want to, right in the home page. For instance, retirement CD's and investments together under assets.

Of course, a report that gives the info good to, but I think being able to group acounts any way you like for sub-totaling on the home page might be even handier.

avp2 started following the idea "Asset distribution for multiple investment accounts" in The Infinite Kind.