doppelstern's dashboard

Shucks, now I have to actually post to this thread rather than just following it. :)

Okay, after we switched to MacBookPros, we tried tons of ways to track our financial data, and Moneydance was far superior to any alternative. Like Howard, we explored clinging to MS Money. We also researched and tried a number of the options listed on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparis...).

The bottom-line for us was, Moneydance plays well with every single financial institution that we use (Bank of America, ING, PayPal, AmEx, Chase, Discover, HSBC, Vanguard...etc. etc.). We are able to either download transactions directly from within Moneydance, or download Quicken files from the web that automatically open within Moneydance (from those institutions that either reject direct connections from third party software for security reasons, or charge ridiculous fees for the "privilege").

Yes, this forum is funky and nonstandard. Yes, responsiveness is not the greatest strength of the tiny (one-man) development team. Like many other users, I had to wade through a ton of threads while trying to figure out how to set up one account or another. About half the time, I found the information I was looking for, and the other half of the time I had to figure things out myself. But for me, what counts is that (1) the forums do actually contain useful answers (often provided by other users), (2) everything that I needed to set up was actually completely 100% possible, and (3) everything that's set up is painless (actually, enjoyable!) to update and maintain.

Yes, we could have made use of clear, illustrated documentation for the most common types of accounts. (Maybe hire a contractor just to write that stuff up with screenshots.) Yes, we could still use more reporting features. Yes, we would absolutely benefit from the sudden availability of either/both iPhone and Android companion software. (Hubby uses the iPhone and I use the G1, so I have to selfishly hope what Sean's coding for the iPhone gets ported over eventually.) Fortunately Rolf's work from the extensions angle has been alleviating the reporting gaps, and Sean's working hard on the iPhone app, apparently in addition to holding down the fort in every other way (uh, including server migration? ...actually, hiring one single reliable person to take care of non-innovative, non-developmental, but-nevertheless-critical stuff like that would go a long, long way).

Anyhow, Moneydance will continue to be a pleasure to use each day until the next major version or companion piece comes out. Maybe Mike got his money back - whatever makes him happy - but we're keepin' Moneydance, so keep at it, Sean. Our money's on you!

Actually, I've been wondering how to set up our Vanguard 401(k) data inside Moneydance. The help files were not particularly helpful to me... Is there an instruction set somewhere that I've overlooked, or anyone out there who has an idea how to do this?

btw, "Detailed Budget" breaks for budget items that are "XXX (not prorated)" [e.g., a salary that is "Biweekly (not prorated)," or a bonus that is "Annual (not prorated)"]. Those budgeted totals show up as $0.00.

It is otherwise very much desirable to use the "(not prorated)" settings, because otherwise Moneydance will incorrectly scale the budgeted amounts (by a factor of 31days/28days) in the Budget Status bar.

If you changed your Java preferences per the instructions on this other thread (http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinit...), change them back and it might bring your Preferences back. Worked for me.

If you changed your Java preferences per the instructions on this other thread (http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinit...), change them back and it might bring your Preferences back. Worked for me.

Mac users of 2008r3 622 should Restore Defaults in their Java Preferences. I think J2SE 1.4.2 killed my Moneydance Preferences panel. After restoring, I can open my Preferences panel again.

Hey Doug, you might want to try Rolf's Detailed Budget extension (http://getsatisfaction.com/theinfinit...). With it, you can generate a chart that shows income and expense categories down the left, and months across the top (if you select subtotal by month). The chart also includes three additional columns on the right side, for Total Budgeted, Total Actual, and Total Difference. I'm really not a fan of the last three columns, but it's better than nothing.

Well, build 621 was definitely debugged. I downloaded it, used it, and it worked swimmingly. But I've been using build 622 for a few days now, and this problem cropped up for me again. I'd settled on consistent names for almost all of my repeat payees, but I had to tweak a couple today. I ended up having to do a batch change on both sides (the account and the category).

I can't get Preferences to load anymore either!

Using Moneydance for Mac 2008r3 (622).

These extensions are fabulous! However, my Pre-Tax Deductions are not showing up. They are included in my Budget, but they were set up as Income categories rather than Expense categories (even though they are negative transactions). Could this be the cause? They appear correctly in reports that I generate with Moneydance itself's Income & Expenses feature. Is there a way that you can tweak the Detailed Budget extension to make non-positive Income transactions show up in the summary?