Reconciling Transactions - Bring Back MD2008 style or Improve the MD2010 style?
If you look at ticket 2274 in bug track, you will see a growing movement to bring back the old style of reconciling transactions. I thought that there may be some users that look at this forum more than at bug tracker, so I thought it made some sense to start a discussion over here.
Clearly, the current state of downloading and reconciling transactions needs more work. Clearly, it is different from MD2008. It is actually more like Microsoft Money (though not as efficient), so as a former Money user, I guess it wasn't as different to me as to some.
There have also been some growing pains with this approach. I have seen where people thought they couldn't change the category, or other parts of the record before hitting the Accept button. My experience has been that if you double click on the record you want to change, you can edit any part of it just like a regular record, then hit enter when you are though editing, then the accept button at the bottom to accept the edited transaction (and make the blue circle go away). I also don't think the unreconciled transactions are reflected in any of the balances until they are accepted, but I wish the development staff would weigh in on this.
Below is a copy of the post I made for that bug which states where I am with it, along with my "guess" of why it was so radically changed. I think it would help us all if the developer (or staff) would state the reasons for such a change. I think the statements made by the development staff in previous posts that MD2010 would be "released in few days" has led people to panic a little.
The only thing I would add to the "list of improvements" I gave in the post below is based on ticket 2270 which would add a button to the top of the register where you could display only "unreconciled transactions". There is already one for "uncleared" transactions, but I have some accounts that I don't use the cleared flag on, so "uncleared" records alone doesn't always get it for me.
Rather than start all over, I hope we can try and make some suggestions to the developer to improve what he already has.
What does everyone else think?
____________________________ my post for ticket 2274 below ____________________________________
The transaction downloading and acceptance process is certainly different, but I am not sure that I want to go all the way back to the 2008 method. I think that a lot of these changes were brought about by the desire to have a "download all" button. When you do that, and have multiple transactions for multiple accounts, some will have to go somewhere other than a dialogue box on the screen, if they are for an account not being shown on the screen at the time of the download. If you have transactions for say 3 accounts, you would have to have some kind of "loop" which forces the user to reconcile (or at least view) them all. I would rather view them when I want to, not when the program wants me to. It is different, but I am starting to get used to it.
That said, their is still work that needs to be done to make the transaction download and acceptance process smoother. The "accept all" button that will appear at the bottom of the register when you select multiple downloaded transactions still doesn't work in 715, that needs to be fixed. The "download progress" for the accounts is the clearest when the Home page is showing (you can see the blue dots appear next to the accounts). When you download individual accounts the "complete" messages are just holdovers from MD 2008, and don't really have the same meaning in MD2010. And I really would like to see a third option in the "Accept" list of choices to match this transaction with another one (manual matching).
But I think with a few tweaks, this could work.
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182 Posted by jwc on 16 Apr, 2011 09:33 PM
Sad to say it, I was a convert to the new way, and am a little sad to have to go back to the old way in MD 2011.
This sort of comment must make the developers want to tear their hair out. Or mine. Much sympathy.
And to be fair, I did say that I had become a convert at the time. Once I realized how much it helped me actually stay on top of things, the advantages seemed to outweigh the disadvantages.
I'm sorry that the wave of negativity had to compel such a regression. Ah well, I'm sure I'll learn to live with it either way.
Support Staff 183 Posted by Ben Spencer on 18 Apr, 2011 04:58 PM
jwc
In what way does the MD2011 way differ from the MD2010 way that is not working for you?
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
184 Posted by jwc on 18 Apr, 2011 09:09 PM
I eventually came around to the advantages of having all the downloaded transactions right there in the main register.
After whining about it for a while, and working with it for a couple months, I realized that having those little blue dots in my face all the time made me much, much more likely to actually clear them up.
I noticed that I was caught up with my downloaded transactions more often and more easily. That's when I changed my mind (and posted about it too).
That's what made me come around.
Support Staff 185 Posted by Ben Spencer on 18 Apr, 2011 09:54 PM
You can still have the downloaded transactions right there in the main register. There is little toggle button in the top right of the register (to the right of the new transaction button) that allows you to put the transaction directly in the register or have them in a split at the bottom of the register.
186 Posted by jwc on 18 Apr, 2011 10:32 PM
Wow, right you are.
I was wondering why I didn't notice that when I first played with the button.
I figured it out: I usually sort my transactions to have the newest entries at the top, not the bottom. When you click that button, it automatically resets the window to the bottom. So when I clicked and re-clicked the button, I didn't see any difference in the main window--because it was all transactions from, like, 2007.
You're great at answering this stuff, Ben, thanks. One of the main reasons I switched to Moneydance from Quicken was the customer support--and it's just gotten better. Thanks again.
187 Posted by Randy on 29 Apr, 2011 07:56 PM
We were requested some time back to close this thread, and open another one due to the length.
One thing I learned with this thread is to not make the first post so long it takes up the whole page :)
I have started a new thread which is basically a continuation of this discussion as it applies to the upcoming release of MD2011.
Here is the link:
http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/md2010-beta/177-reconcilin...
I hope all of you will join me there.
Randy closed this discussion on 29 Apr, 2011 07:58 PM.