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Midahed replied on April 30, 2009 20:45 to the discussion "Quicken data import worked fine for me" in The Infinite Kind:
I am indeed! ...and I've never felt better!
However, although I liked Moneydance and I was particularly impressed with the way it handled the import of all my Quicken data, I didn't stay with Moneydance for long. You'll find the reasons behind my decision in this post:-
http://www.getsatisfaction.com/theinf...
I'm using a Linux package called KMyMoney now and I'm very happy with it. I still pop in here occasionally to see how Moneydance is doing though :-)
I rely heavily on KMyMoney's handling of investments. One of the things I didn't like about Moneydance was it's reliance on a single source for stock prices - the Yahoo US site. This meant that I wasn't able to download prices for UK mutual finds. This was very irritating, especially as the Yahoo UK site does provide that pricing information. KMyMoney allows a lot more flexibility in the configuring of pricing sources, so I'm able to use the Yahoo UK site and get prices for my UK mutual funds.
Mike-
Midahed replied on December 07, 2008 18:59 to the question "imported from ms money - lost an entire year!" in The Infinite Kind:
I have no experience of using Money but there's a couple of things I'd check.
First, check that you haven't restricted the range of dates covered in your export. Quicken allows you to specify a date range - maybe Money has something similar.
Second, I'd check what date format you have set-up in your OS (Windows?), Money and Moneydance - make sure they're all the same.
Finally, you could open your export file with a text editor and look at the dates. If you're using the QIF format, you'll see a lot of transactions beginning with a date like D11/14/07 (to use your example). Use Money to find a transaction that's later than 11/14/07 and then use the text editor's search/find function to see if that date exists in the export file. This will enable you to see if it's a problem with the exported data or with Moneydance. -
A comment on the problem "Goodbye Moneydance....." in The Infinite Kind:
Most of the established personal finance applications use the QIF format in some form or other as a means of transferring data. Unfortunately, the format is badly designed and poorly specified. In short, it's use is always going to be problematic. If you Google for QIF import export you'll find plenty of explanations as to why this is the case. There's not much that any application designer can do to put this right. I found that Moneydance made a very good job of importing my Quicken data - I've written about this elsewhere - but, to a certain extent, it's a matter of luck. Whenever a QIF import is involved, you'll need to be prepared to read-up on what can go wrong and try to see how this affects your data. Normally, once you've spotted the pattern of the errors in the imported data, it's not too difficult to sort it out. It's a pain, I know, but it's the price we all have to pay for buying Quicken or MS Money in the first place when they offered such a restricted means for exporting data. Of course, this might have been a deliberate ploy to tie the hapless user into their product because to move elsewhere would be too difficult. ;-) – Midahed, on December 07, 2008 17:14 -
Midahed replied on December 01, 2008 19:29 to the problem "Goodbye Moneydance....." in The Infinite Kind:
Hi Steve,
I run Ubuntu as well, although I also have all the KDE libraries installed because I prefer most of the KDE apps to their Gnome equivalents. I really might as well go the whole hog and switch to Kubuntu at the next major update.
KMM 0.9.2 from the repositories is reasonably up to date, but if you want to benefit from the recent changes to the import process, you'll need to run CVS and build it yourself. There is someone (whom you could probably easily find by searching the list archives) who builds a .deb from CVS every two or three weeks. That way you don't have to build it yourself but, as a total CVS newbie myself, I'd go for CVS every time. It's really easy - just four commands to run once you have the basics set up. I now update mine almost on a weekly basis - sometimes more often if there are changes that I need to test. It takes ten minutes from file update to completion of the install.
Hope this helps.
It's probably best if you contact me using email via the developer's list if you want to take this conversation further. I use the same username there.
Mike -
Midahed replied on December 01, 2008 18:19 to the problem "Goodbye Moneydance....." in The Infinite Kind:
Hi Steve,
Yes, I still visit occasionally - sometimes, as on this occasion, prompted by email notification of a reply to a subscribed thread. Like you, I own a Moneydance licence (which I bought very recently), I like the product, and I'm still interested in what happens to it.
The basics of installing from CVS are here:-
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/inde...
I'd also recommend subscribing to the developer's list. It's more active than the users list and you can get a real feel for what's going on with the product.
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/inde...
If you don't like using mailing lists, you can always read (and post) via Nabble...
http://www.nabble.com/KMyMoney-f4152....
...but you still need to be subscribed to the list if you want to post, even if you choose to do so via Nabble.
They also have a forum, but it's very new, it's still effectively 'on probation' and I get the impression that the action is (and always will be) found on the lists rather than in something as non-geeky as a forum ;-)
http://forum.kde.org/forumdisplay.php...
Hope this helps.
Mike
(Apologies to all for the non-Moneydance discussion) -
Midahed replied on December 01, 2008 15:32 to the problem "Goodbye Moneydance....." in The Infinite Kind:
Steve,
Another Linux and KMyMoney user! Welcome to the dark side :-)
Like you, I wanted to make a go if it with Moneydance. There are so many aspects of the application that are really elegant - such a welcome change from Quicken and it's plethora of 'features' that just bloat the product.
One of the things I particularly liked about Moneydance was the excellent job it made of importing all my Quicken data (20 years worth). I'd intended to switch from Quicken to KMyMoney months ago, but at that time Moneydance beat it hands down when it came to importing my data. But my increasing disappointment with Moneydance led me to try KMyMoney again. It took me ages to get all the data correctly loaded, but it was worth the effort.
Recently I've been helping the developers test a new version that does a much better job of the import. It's come on leaps and bounds over just the last couple of weeks (for those who are prepared to build from the cutting-edge development source).
I hope KMM lives up to your expectations.
Mike -
Midahed replied on November 28, 2008 17:53 to the question "Is an internet connection mandatory for daily use?" in The Infinite Kind:
I used Moneydance on many occasions without an active internet connection. No problems at all.
I didn't have any online banking services set-up - I preferred to reconcile the accounts manually, so I can't comment on what might happen if you normally download statements from your bank. I would expect that it should work fine - the lack of an internet service should never cause an application like Moneydance to fail ungracefully, but you could test it yourself easily enough to make sure it behaves as expected. -
A comment on the problem "Goodbye Moneydance....." in The Infinite Kind:
I've just noticed that Ash is no longer listed as an employee of The Infinite Kind. The line under the company name at the top of this page used to say "3 The Infinite Kind employees are ready to listen and respond". Now there are only two. – Midahed, on November 20, 2008 11:14 -
A comment on the question "Basic questions from potential Quicken for Mac switcher" in The Infinite Kind:
Yeah, Quicken was a good product once upon a time, but then the marketing men at Intuit got too much power over the designers and the company as a whole forgot that it's their customers who pay their salaries. I started looking for an alternative when Quicken unceremoniously dumped their UK user-base out in the cold. Unfortunately, for a long time, there was nothing to compare with Quicken, but now there are plenty of people catching up fast. Intuit must be the all-time object lesson in how not to treat your customers. In the long run I think it will cost them heavily. – Midahed, on November 19, 2008 21:53 -
Midahed replied on November 19, 2008 18:15 to the question "Basic questions from potential Quicken for Mac switcher" in The Infinite Kind:
I imported nearly 20 years worth of Quicken 2002 data into Moneydance, including a load of investment transactions and historic stock prices. It made a damn good job of it - quite the best attempt at a QIF import that I've ever seen. I only had to correct about 30 transactions and all of those were DivX actions.
There is a post on here (I think it's a couple of months old) where I outlined the steps I took to get my data to load cleanly. Search for QIF import - that should find it.
You have to install and run the Stock Quote Synchroniser extension to pick up prices - and you have to run it manually from the extensions menu.
Mike -
Midahed reported a problem in The Infinite Kind on November 19, 2008 18:01:
Goodbye Moneydance.....After a few weeks of using Moneydance I'm dumping it in favour of another application.
OK, so this isn't really a problem, but it's not praise, nor is it an idea or a question. But this site forces me to choose one of those categories for my post, so 'problem' seems most appropriate.
So why this decision?
Since I moved to Linux a while ago I've been looking for an alternative to Quicken. I'd tried a number of Linux applications, but none of them really met my needs. The closest at the time was KMyMoney, but it made a complete mess of importing my Quicken data. Because having my old financial records to hand was important to me, I gave up with KMyMoney and continued to use Quicken.
Then I discovered Moneydance, and decided to give it a try.
Moneydance has a heck of a lot going for it:- Being Java-based, it's cross-platform; it has a beautifully simple, intuitive, clean, uncluttered user interface; the data file is xml, so there's no problem with the user's data being locked away in some secret proprietary binary format; data can be exported as xml or tab-delimited; reporting is enough to meet most people's basic needs; reports run nice and quickly, etc, etc.
It also made a near-perfect job of importing close to 20 years worth of Quicken data. That was a very big win for Moneydance. It was the ONLY product to make such a good job of the import.
There are many things that I really like about Moneydance and, initially, I thought I'd found a permanent home for my financial data. But I've become progressively more disappointed with Moneydance and The Infinite Kind as time has gone on.
It mostly boils down to support issues. Moneydance itself has some shortcomings, but nothing that I'd consider a show-stopper, at least in the short term. What concerns me most of all is the reliance of the entire project on a single developer. This has repercussions in terms of the speed of product development and bug-fixing. Both take longer than they should.
Investment handling, for me, is one of the key features of a finance application. Moneydance is reliant on the Yahoo stock quote service. In itself that's OK - it's an approach taken by numerous products. Some products give the user control over which site is used as a source of pricing information and the form of the url. This allows the user to set-up an alternative pricing source without having to rely on the application developers. However, in Moneydance's case, if Yahoo breaks or changes the way their site works, the user can do nothing. Also, because Moneydance is hard-coded to use the Yahoo US site, I still have to manually enter prices for UK funds; if Moneydance allowed me to choose to use the UK Yahoo site, I'd be able to download my UK fund prices.
Issues like these resulted in me, once again, looking for an alternative application. I decided to try KMyMoney (a native Linux application) again and, this time, was prepared to put the effort into getting my data imported. For me, the advantages of KMYMoney over Moneydance are overwhelming. The pace of development and the addition of new features is rapid; user's queries on the support mail lists and forum rarely go unanswered; bugs are sometimes fixed and updates published in hours (provided the user is prepared to compile the application from source). The application also optionally supports a relational-database backend. By using MySQL I can create whatever reports I want without having to wait for the developers to recognise the need for improved reporting.
In writing this post, I'm trying to offer constructive criticism. As I said earlier, there are many things that Moneydance does extremely well. Top of the list is the user interface. But unfortunately, things like support and documentation don't seem to be considered important enough to warrant the attention they deserve. For me, KMyMoney provides a far better alternative.
One of the guys I used to work for always maintained that customer criticism was more valuable than customer praise. I hope this post will be taken in the positive way that's intended.
Mike -
Midahed replied on November 17, 2008 21:44 to the praise "Can a Report Generate Entries, Instead of Graphs" in The Infinite Kind:
Just to be certain that we're not talking at cross-purposes, doing what I recommended in my last post will get you a report which lists all the transactions against a particular category for the timescale you specify - as in the screenshot below.
Rather than selecting a particular category within the report, you can also select 'all categories' to see all your transactions for the selected timescale, grouped and totalled by category.
In the interests of keeping the screenshot readable, I've only included a single category - 'food and house' - in my example, and kept the date range down to one month. I find the level of detail provided by the 'detailed income and expenses' report is adequate for 99.9% of my needs.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Midahed replied on November 17, 2008 18:19 to the praise "Can a Report Generate Entries, Instead of Graphs" in The Infinite Kind:
Yes, you can.
Click the 'reports' icon in the top-right corner of the screen. In the report window that opens, scroll down to 'detailed income and expenses' and select it. Then, in the categories box on the right, select the income or expense that you want to see, select your date range and click the 'generate' button.
Alternatively, you can use the expenses graph that can be displayed on the home page (if you set it up in file > preferences > homepage). Click on a category of expense to see the related transactions. -
Midahed replied on November 17, 2008 14:35 to the problem "QIF Export Appears Broken" in The Infinite Kind:
I eventually gave up trying to use Moneydance's QIF export. My problem was different to yours, but I came to the same conclusion - the QIF export is broken. I did post about it here some time ago (search for QIF export if you want to see the details) but got no response. -
Midahed replied on November 01, 2008 21:40 to the problem "A post has disappeared !!!" in The Infinite Kind:
Mmmm. Strange. The disappeared thread has come back.
Did this happen with the old forum. ;-) -
A comment on the question "CAn I Install a second copy on my portable" in The Infinite Kind:
I'm afraid I've never used a Mac, so I can't be specific about file sync software. In the worlds of Windows and Linux there are lots and lots of file utilities and applications that will allow you to keep the two Moneydance data files in the same state. To do this you'll have to connect your laptop to your desktop using network cabling, a wireless network, bluetooth, etc. As far as the software goes, there may be utilities built into the Mac operating system. I googled 'file synchronisation Mac' and got plenty of promising looking results - or maybe a Mac user will come along here and give some advice.
If you're going to use some form of file sync software, there's no need to involve a memory stick/flash drive. It's a convenient way of moving the file from one PC to the other, but most file sync software will do that for you anyway if you have the two PCs networked together. My suggestion for using a flash drive was in case you wanted to keep your data there and simply move it depending on which of the two machines you wanted to use. The downside is that a memory stick is easy to lose, so you'd need to be careful about making secure backups on a regular basis. – Midahed, on November 01, 2008 21:37 -
Midahed reported a problem in The Infinite Kind on November 01, 2008 17:11:
A post has disappeared !!!Is this site a bit flaky?
I've just responded to a post about the Moneydance licence terms. I even went back and updated my reply to include a link to the stuff about licencing on the main site.
Now the whole thread has gone! I even closed my browser and logged back in....
Spooky - but it's not even Halloween anymore. -
Midahed replied on November 01, 2008 16:57 to the question "CAn I Install a second copy on my portable" in The Infinite Kind:
I'm 99.9999999999999999999999999% sure that you are allowed to use it on two machines. I think there was even a question on this forum about it, so you may be able to confirm it for yourself.
You could install the application on both machines, but keep the Moneydance data file on a memory stick, or you could keep the data file on each machine and use one of the many file synchronisation options to keep them both in the same state.
Found it! Here you are:-
http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Licen... -
Midahed replied on November 01, 2008 16:43 to the question "No idea how to install Moneydance on Linux" in The Infinite Kind:
What Linux distribution and desktop are you running?
I'm using KDE and Ubuntu (one of the easier Linux distros for beginners). If I click the file called Moneydance that's in the Moneydance folder it just runs.
What do you see displayed when you look at it's properties? What are the ownership settings? -
Midahed replied on November 01, 2008 16:23 to the question "No idea how to install Moneydance on Linux" in The Infinite Kind:
You just need to execute the shell script. I can't remember the detail of what I had to do to get it working, but all you probably need to do is check the permissions of that file and ensure that it's executable.
If clicking the file results in it being displayed in a text editor (it sounds like that's what's happening), then it's almost certainly not currently executable.
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