REPORTS, CATEGORIES, PAYEES & MEMORIZED TRANSACTIONS
I am in the process of getting my Quicken 2009 file ready to
migrate to Moneydance, by cleaning out old accounts and all
transactions in my checking, cash and credit card accounts older
than 2009.
Will my reports, categories, payees and memorized transactions also port over, with the understanding that...here too...I will need to clean out a lot of old data?
Also, having read you guide for exporting all of my accounts to single file in .qif format, then importing it into Moneydance. Do you have any other cleanup recommendations before doing so? (NOTE: I have hard copy register reports for all of the accounts I will be moving).
Finally, does Moneydance either read a Quicken Home Inventory file or offer an inventory add-in.
I'll look forward to your answers.
Thanks.
Support Staff 2 Posted by Ben Spencer on 17 Mar, 2010 06:38 PM
Hi
Sadly the QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) file format does not support reports, payees or memorized transactions. So these will be lost. The QIF file format does support categories so they will be transferred.
With regards to cleaning things up: It may be necessary after you import your data to set the initial balances on your accounts. Some version of Quicken set the initial balance with a transaction and in Moneydance it is a property of the account. To set the initial opening balance of an account in Moneydance select the account to bring up the transaction register and then select Edit Account from the Account menu.
Moneydance does not have a feature for managing you home inventory.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
3 Posted by tadcrawfordmv on 17 Mar, 2010 09:31 PM
Ben -
Thank you for this information. At least I will be going in with my eyes wide open. It will also make my data cleanup a lot easier. I just won't worry about the stuff that doesn't carry over.
There are 3 kinds of reports I really need, however, and am counting on finding them in Moneydance:
1) Tax-related transactions sorted by category
2) Expenses vs. Budget
3) Account Summaries or Net Worth
What can you tell me about them?
Tad
4 Posted by tadcrawfordmv on 20 Mar, 2010 11:43 PM
Ben -
I have taken the plunge and succeeded in transferring 2 QIF files from Quicken 2009 into Moneydance on my new iMac. It went almost flawlessly. The current draft of the Users Guide was very helpful!
I have also succeeded in creating the 3 different kinds of reports I listed above, but have encountered a few problems. As a result, I have several questions/suggestions:
ESSENTIAL
1) Is there a way for the budget bars on the Home Page to show in alphabetical order as they do in the Budget I created and in MD's Reports? In their current form, they are very confusing.
2) Is there a way for standard reports to be selected by non-calendar year Fiscal Years, when needed?
DESIRABLE
1) While not the end of the world, is there a way for standard reports to retain changes made to them? Instead I have had to create Memorized Reports.
2) Why can't the order in which reports appear on the side-bar be chosen by the user. I got part way there by numbering my memorized reports, but that is not a great answer, I couldn't get rid of the original memorized reports I renamed.
That said, so far things are working a lot better than I expected.
I am so relieved to have an alternative to creating a Virtual Machine with Windows and Quicken. That's what I was trying to get away from.
Thanks!
2
5 Posted by Darrell on 06 Jun, 2011 05:27 PM
I read above that Moneydance support Categories. I just downloaded my Quicken transactions from Quicken 2008 and although it did add all of my Quicken categories to the Moneydance Category database, none of the transactions contain the correct category. Every single one of the thousands of transactions I brought over all have "ATM Transfer" on them for a category. In Quicken, I don't even use ATM Transfer as a category. So it does not appear to be working at the moment. I could not find any checkbox to check off, or anything special.
Can anyone tell me what the trick is? Or perhaps whether they know if Quicken 2008 is not compatible with Moneydance? Quicken 2008 is now forcing me to upgrade to Quicken 2011. I'd rather not deal with Intuit anymore with this sort of a business practice, so if I can join Moneydance this will rid me of this type of money-grab practice. I don't even mind the fact that Moneydance doesn't have the "Savings Goals" feature. The categories are more of an urgent matter for me.
Thanks.
6 Posted by -Kevin N. on 06 Jun, 2011 07:24 PM
Hi Darrell,
During the QIF import process when you reach the 'Import QIF file' form, you must choose the option 'From another program' as the 'File Source' Otherwise Moneydance will designate the default Category to all txns.
Start a new data file, (File > New) and redo the import.
HTH -Kevin N.
7 Posted by VoIP.ms Billing on 06 Jun, 2011 09:54 PM
Thanks for the quick response. I'll give that a try.
8 Posted by Darrell Spears on 06 Jun, 2011 10:18 PM
That worked!! Thank you Kevin. I think now that categories are in place I can finally cut the cord on Quicken. I was using Quicken since 1991, so having that many transactions I was hesitant to switch if the categories were not being set properly. I'm constantly running reports that rely on these categories.
Thanks for your help.
Darrell.
9 Posted by -Kevin N. on 06 Jun, 2011 10:44 PM
Hi Darrell,
Congratulations! I'm glad to hear that it worked out for you.
Due to some of the limitations of the QIF file format, you may need to do a little clean up. Inititial balances may or may not need to be set and stock splits will most likely need to be re-applied.
I was a long time MS Money user. One day, they [Microsoft] decided to just quit supporting thier Money program. That's when I discovered Moneydance. I've been using Moneydance for about 2 years now. I'm actually glad that MS gave up on thier Money program. Moneydance does everything that MS Money did and does some things better and easier.
Good luck with the program.
-Kevin N.
10 Posted by Darrell Spears on 07 Jun, 2011 12:03 AM
Thanks again Kevin.
I am having another strange issue. I'm not certain what the cause is. My guess is that it's a cyclical problem. One account feeds transactions into another account via transfers. When I initially load checking it looks fine. Then I load savings and checking grows by $32,000. Maybe it's the order in which I'm loading them. I'll delete this and start over loading the oldest account first. If that doesn't work I'll load the newest account first. Hopefully one way or another it will properly balance in the end.
11 Posted by -Kevin N. on 07 Jun, 2011 12:40 AM
Hi Darrell,
It sounds like you are importing each account individually. Correct?
If I'm not mistaken, some versions of Quicken allow the user to export all of thier accounts as one QIF file. This is actually the preferred method per the instructions in the Moneydance User Guide. You can access the MD User Guide from the Help menu. More specifically:
Chapter 2: Getting Started with Moneydance
Sub Chapter: Preparing Moneydance for Import
Sub-sub Chapter: Importing Data from Quicken™
My guess would be that the account 'growth' is due to transfers between accounts.
Transfers in Moneydance can seem a little peculiar in that to perform a transfer from say your Savings account to your Checking account, the Checking account would be listed as the 'Category' of the transaction in the Savings account.
It may save you a ton of reconcilliation if you try the one file QIF export / import method.
HTH -Kevin N.
12 Posted by Darrell Spears on 07 Jun, 2011 12:56 AM
I shall give that a try. Thanks again Kevin. I've spent a couple of hours and this method is not working well. I am using individual QIF files.
13 Posted by Darrell Spears on 07 Jun, 2011 02:10 AM
Well that seemed to do the trick! There were a few items I had to adjust, but nothing too major. All in all it went smoothly.
Thanks again for all of our help Kevin.
14 Posted by -Kevin N. on 07 Jun, 2011 11:17 AM
Hi Darrell,
You're welcome.
I'm glad to hear that it worked out better.
-Kevin N.