Autocomplete does not work across accounts.
Hi,
I think there is a problem with autocomplete of category linked with description. When I create a new transaction on account “A”, the autocomplete does not work on account ”B” when I use same description used on account “A”.
Let me show an example:
Firstly, I create this one on account Visa Credit Card
Description: Esso
Category: Automobile: Fuel
Amount: 100.00
Now, I go to Mastercard Credit Card
When I enter “Esso” on Description, nothing happens.
I don’t know if I was clear, but we can save a lot of time with that.
I have 4 cards, and I use the same description on all accounts (because I am using descriptions as payers).
Thank you,
Eduardo
PS: I am testing desktop version with iPhone version, and this is the first time that iPhone version do something better than desktop version. On iPhone version I can use any description on any account, it is perfect. :-)
Support Staff 2 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 20 Aug, 2011 02:19 AM
Eduardo,
This is actually intentional behavior, as many people have different categories/items shunted through different accounts. That said, I can certainly see why it would be helpful to have Autocomplete work across accounts. I have created a ticket for this issue. The ticket is attached to this discussion. By posting in this discussion your interest in the ticket has been registered. This is equivalent to voting for it, and you'll automatically be notified when we have updates.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by Eduardo on 20 Aug, 2011 05:07 AM
Thank you Angie,
I've really appreciated that.
I think to get both groups of customers happy a simple option called "Allow auto complete categories across accounts" would be nice. :-)
Best regards,
Eduardo.
4 Posted by lloyd.jones on 20 Aug, 2011 05:19 AM
Please do not change the current behaviour.
If you do, let it be a configurable option.
5 Posted by -Kevin N. on 20 Aug, 2011 12:02 PM
-1 vote.
I also would not be in favor of changing the current 'per account' behavior of auto-complete.
The current behavior acts as something of a fail-safe. If the user were to manually enter a txn into the wrong account, the description would not auto-complete thus alerting the user that something is amok.
The OP needs to enter the desired desription once into each of his 4 credit card accounts so as to establish a means for 'per account' auto-complete to perform.
If, on the other hand, there is enough support to implement this ticket, please do so only as a user-selectable option.
Thanks.
-Kevin N.
6 Posted by jimmplsmn on 20 Aug, 2011 02:39 PM
I'm with Kevin and Lloyd - if the change is made, please only as a user-configurable option.
- Jim
7 Posted by bogor on 20 Aug, 2011 08:43 PM
I also favor leaving the situation as it is. I have made the mistake a few times and when the auto-complete does not work, it alerts me to the fact I am in the wrong account.
Anthony
8 Posted by Eduardo on 20 Aug, 2011 11:23 PM
Hi, I really can't understand that!
Which situation could we have the same description with different categories because of different accounts?
Since i am using description as a payee, i know i can have different categories to same payee, it is normal.
Example:
Payee: Cinemark
Category: Leisure: Movies if a buy the tickets
or
Payee: Cinemark
Category: Food: Snack if a buy popcorn.
But, i can pay using Visa, Amex, Mastercard, or Cash.
It doesn't matter which account i am using, it matters who the payee is.
98% of payees that i use have just one category.
Because of this, i can't really understand why is so important the description doesn't cross over the accounts. If someone gives me a clue, i can try.
Just to explain:
In this situation, of Cinemark, i can resolve using different payees.
Example:
Payee: Cinemark Office
Category: Leisure: Movies if a buy the tickets
or
Payee: Cinemark Bar
Category: Food: Snack if a buy popcorn.
When i do that, 100% is OK. For each description i have a unique category.
That is why i think very important this feature.
BTW, i'm using Moneydance for iPhone and descriptions cross over accounts with no problems, and i can sure you, this feature give a great velocity when adding transaction.
I hope i've been clear enough!
Have a nice weekend for all!
Eduardo.
9 Posted by paleolith on 25 Aug, 2011 05:33 PM
Eduardo: I understand why you would find cross-account auto-complete useful. This is closely tied to the fact that you will use any of three credit cards or cash for any given transaction. The reason many of us find it dangerous rather than useful is that we almost always use the same payment method (account) for any given transaction. For example, when I'm going through a stack of receipts and entering them, I'll have a few on a credit card and most on a debit card (bank account). If I'm entering txns on my bank account and one doesn't auto-complete, I'll stop and ask why -- and usually the reason is that I should be entering it on a credit card instead. If I complete the entry in the wrong account, then when I reconcile the credit card I'll think I neglected to enter it, I'll enter it, and then when I reconcile the bank account I'll have an extra txn that "didn't come through". Not to mention that in larger amounts this could lead to overdrafts or exceeding a credit limit.
There's been discussion of whether MD should have "locked" txns as Q does. If this were implemented, I could see having an option for a locked txn to say it can be used for any account.
Edward
10 Posted by Ed Odjaghian on 08 Sep, 2011 03:30 AM
I agree with Eduardo. I am moving from Quicken and I know Quicken supports this feature. I think making this feature configurable is the best approach.
As an example I purchase food from different grocery stores and pay with different accounts, credit cards, cash, ATM, etc. In the current model I will not be able t enjoy entering once and reusing in other accounts. When a transaction has splits, it make re-entry more painful.
11 Posted by -Kevin N. on 08 Sep, 2011 01:13 PM
Hi Ed & Eduardo,
Correct me if I'm wrong, is it not the case that once the desired grocery store, for example, is introduced into each of the accounts involved that it (the grocery store) then becomes a 'member' so to speak of that account and herafter will employ auto-complete?
-Kevin N.
12 Posted by Eduardo on 08 Sep, 2011 01:49 PM
Yes, but to include this store in all accounts i will need to create a transaction to each one. The major problem is that when i add a new transaction in another account, i can make a error in the name of store and i will keep to names of same store.
Particulary, i am using iphone version to input 90% of my transactions, and on iphone version the description appears on all accounts. This is very good, and, sometimes, on desktop version, i use copy and paste to get some time and avoid mistakes on names.
Regards,
13 Posted by -Kevin N. on 08 Sep, 2011 02:51 PM
Hi Eduardo,
I suspect that this is an issue that can only be resolved by making it a user defined option, which unfortunately would require adding extraneous code.
My fear is that the developers of Moneydance, in an effort to please, are going to keep adding "The one great thing about Quicken" or "The thing that I miss about Microsoft Money the most" until Moneydance becomes the same slow, bloated, buggy mess that both Quicken and MS Money became.
I'm not averse to improvements to the software but on this issue, I remain in the camp of keeping the current behavior.
-Kevin N.
14 Posted by Ed Odjaghian on 08 Sep, 2011 03:27 PM
Hi kmnugent.
You are correct that once the grocery store is added to an account then auto-complete will pull it in. But, as Eduardo indicated in one of his posts you can easily spell the names incorrectly. This is what happened to me last night. I spelled Cashwise instead of Cash Wise. Not a big deal but the reports and graphs show them separately.
Between my wife and I we have some 10 credit cards and many banks accounts. I travel a lot so does she and we go to many different grocery stores and resultant. As you can see the combination of accounts and vendors is growing.
You also made a comment in a posting - "The one great thing about Quicken". This is how a product matures. I have been using Quicken since 1990 and I recall early years where their product was not mature. Their product is now feature rich because they looked at their competition to improve their product. I have been in software development business for 30 years and I know my competition and what features their products have and try to catch up and stay one step ahead of them.
I would have stayed on Quicken but I am on Mac and due to some technical issues Quicken will not work on Mac. I researched some 10 other personal financial products and Moneydance came on top. I like Moneydance,
I believe the purpose of automation is to make the repeatable processes easier for us. Yes, I can manually add new vendors to each account. But, why? I fail to see the rationale behind associating a vendor to one account. I see the need for this in high-end products but not when it comes to consumer products such as Moneydance where we price shop what we need which means vendors always change. Just imagine how many vendors you will have when shopping on eBay.
15 Posted by jimmplsmn on 08 Sep, 2011 03:30 PM
As a general note I completely agree with Kevin that we don't need another "slow, bloated, buggy mess". I think this has been a priority for the developers of MD and I am putting my vote in that they keep that as a high priority as they consider all requests.
- Jim
16 Posted by kit on 08 Sep, 2011 04:30 PM
Leave it as is!
17 Posted by -Kevin N. on 08 Sep, 2011 04:39 PM
HI Ed,
I had discussed the fail-safe amenity that per-account auto-complete provides in post # 5.
Again I'm not averse to the software improving but as anyone who has used a computer in the past 10 years can attest most software, in a effort to be all things to all people, tends to become overly bloated.
I just don't want to see the same thing happen to MD.
-Kevin N.
18 Posted by paleolith on 08 Sep, 2011 06:09 PM
Ed Odjaghian wrote
I explained the reason many of us prefer the current behavior in my post above, and Kevin has explained too. If you really don't understand, please reread those explanations. We both understand why some users prefer a different way.
Also note that it's not a vendor that's tied to an account, but a transaction. Suppose I have a personal credit card and a business cc. When I make a purchase with either one at (say) Office Depot, I want the auto-fill to pick up the category information related to personal or business use. This is another reason, which I don't think has been mentioned. I'm NOT saying that you should do it this way -- I'm asking that you understand that there are other valid ways to manage accounts.
I also suggested the possibility that perhaps MD will add the concept of locked transactions (as Quicken does), and that locked transactions could be marked (individually) as global for auto-fill. It seems to me that this would address the issues brought up by those with a significant matrix of accounts vs payees. It would also avoid having any preference to set up, we could all use it for specific transactions where it's valuable and omit it on others, and it would have no effect on those who don't care about it.
I for one am not concerned about MD performance. Quicken didn't get slow because of features that users needed, but because of extraneous junk that Intuit added in their greed. Many MD users liked Quicken but hated Intuit. So it's reasonable to consider which Q features need an MD feature to address the same issue -- not always the same feature, sometimes better. But properly coded, nothing done on the local computer will cause bloat and slowness -- those are the results of ill-considered programming and (sometimes) online access over inadequate networks.
I am far more concerned about complexity of the user interface. A user option to vary the way auto-fill picks up prior transactions would add complexity to the UI. My proposal would be invisible in the basic UI and would only come into play when explicitly activated.
Edward
19 Posted by Ed Odjaghian on 08 Sep, 2011 07:58 PM
Hi Eduardo,
I found a workaround to our problem. May be you have already figured this out anyway. It is not a clean workaround, but it is better than the alternative.
Let's say you make a cash purchase from Target but all your previous target purchases in MD are in CC-1 account. Go to CC-1 and enter your cash purchase as you would if you had used your CC-1. This way you can use auto-complete. When you are done with the entry, "move" the transaction to cash. That is it. Also, if your transaction has splits, it will move them to cash also.
20 Posted by Eduardo on 09 Sep, 2011 12:37 AM
Hi Ed, thank you, but as I said before, I add 90% of my transaction on iPhone and iPhone version use the same Description on all accounts. Because of this, all my accounts already have a lot of duplicates description, and this already help me.
As I said before, iPhone version is better than desktop version in this case. :-)
Btw, I completely agreed with your post #14 and I say a little more for Kevin.
Kevin, forget about Quicken, forget about MS Money…
As I said in another post, I only bought MD because I migrate to iPhone and there is no app for iPhone, no one, to sync with MS Money. If had one, I had bought that one instead MD.
I only bought this one because I really like to organize my money, and input information on desktop is very hard to me. I like to input all information on smartphone, to sync after to desktop.
I tried pocket money too, but the desktop version is not friendly and needs a lot of improvement, and maybe in 10 years will be great, but not now. The iPhone version is good, but as said, I wished an app to replace MS Money only because of iPhone version, and the better choice was MD.
Again Kevin, forget about MS Money, forget about Quicken…
The iPhone version needs a lot of improvement (I posted in another thread), the desktop version no, but desktop version needs some features, and I asked for one.
You need to forget some paradigms. MD was and will be your only option, because I have sure you don’t like MS Money or Quicken not because have a lot of performance problems, maybe because it is so complex to you.
If you have one credit card and one cashing you can live without this feature.
I used MS Money for years and I can tell you with no doubt. As Money app MS Money was great, I know there were a lot of problems with performance and other things, but it had a lot of great features. It was a mature app, because evolved on the years.
MD needs to evolve both desktop and iPhone version. It is the moment, because a lot of people is switching to iPhone, and changing MS Money for another app.
The developers need to get these ideas, and put on it, as options.
Say this feature will be decrease performance on MD is nonsense. I developed for years and bad codes, and great databases are responsible for 99% of cause of bad performance.
And I really don’t know why I lost my time writing here. It is a single feature… I think I lost more time writing here, that the developers doing this feature. :-(
Eduardo Farah
21 Posted by Ed Odjaghian on 09 Sep, 2011 12:46 AM
Hi Eduardo,
Well said. I agree with you. I think MD can be a major player in the market if they add competitive features, which I am sure they are working on. A consumer product needs to meet the needs of very large audience.
22 Posted by lgmaddry on 10 Sep, 2011 03:36 PM
I vote for autocomplete across accounts. Since so many users are tied to the single account autocomplete the change would have to be implemented as configurable. I think it is important for the iphone app and the desktop to work in the same way and it doesn't now. From observing previous comments favoring one option over the other seems to turning into a religious argument with no winners. So go for the option and make both sides happy.
23 Posted by motomixon on 26 Feb, 2012 07:29 PM
My vote for making this configurable in Preferences.
24 Posted by lgmaddry on 27 Feb, 2012 10:25 PM
I also vote for making this configurable in Preferences.