Greg's dashboard

The problem is worse than you think. It is possible to batch merge categories. For example, I have two categories labeled ABC. I use the edit category window to create a new category called ABCmerge. Then I double-click on the first ABC category. This pops up a window listing all transactions with that category. You can select them all and right-click to show a pop-up menu with a Batch Change choice. Select category and scroll down to ABCmerge. However, when you do this you get a warning about changing the "amount" of reconciled transactions. If you ignore the warning, YOUR ACCOUNTS GET SCREWED UP. Moneydance does not know how to change categories on both sides of every transaction. (I have double-entry bookkeeping!)

Bottom line: Category merging is theoretically possible, but fixing the screwed up transactions will take too much time. The only safe way is to manually change both sides of each transaction. I think the best way to work around the duplicate category problem is to make one the parent and the other the child. That will keep them together on most reports.

Many investment sites don't remember what transactions you previously downloaded. The default setting typically downloads the transactions of the past 30 days. You should use the date range fields on your investment company's web site. The start date will be one day after your last download. To avoid a partial-day overlap, choose yesterday as your end date. If you do this each time you download, there won't be any duplicates.

Many investment sites don't remember what transactions you previously downloaded. The default setting typically downloads the transactions of the past 30 days. You should use the date range fields on your investment company's web site. The start date will be one day after your last download. To avoid a partial-day overlap, choose yesterday as your end date. If you do this each time you download, there won't be any duplicates.