Advice on import from Quicken 2001 with multiple currencies
I have finally taken the plunge and purchased MoneyDance based
on encouraging changes to the software Multi-currency support. Now
I have the formidable task of importing my Quicken 2001 data into
MoneyDance. I have read the instructions and find that there
are
way too many hand edits required in order to use just the automated
import feature. Major issues are: 1) I have numerous categories
that need to be reassigned to non-base currency, 2) Stock info
imported assuming base currency and needs to be switch to non-base
currency, 3) transfers between accounts, both with same non-base
currency, result in duplicate entries.
My latest approach is to import just the accounts and then load the .md file into Excel and edit the account & category currencies as well as change the stock ticker and currency. Can you suggest a better way of doing this? Is there a tool you use for editting .md files? I can understand the risk of totally screwing up the data, but at this point I am willing to take that risk. If I can get the base *.md file set up correctly, then I expect I will have far fewer hand edits when I continue on to import all of the transaction data.
I originally put this request up as private, but didn't get a response, so here goes in public.
Best Regards,
Tom Polgreen
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Support Staff 2 Posted by Ben Spencer on 13 May, 2012 04:51 PM
Hi Tom
It may not be what you want to hear and I think that if you intend to move to a program other than quicken than in your situation you would be better off starting from an empty file and do not attempt to move your data from quicken. The QIF file format doe snot include any currency information on accoutn or exchange rate information on transactions. This means that the data it contains is inherently ambiguous. There really is not simple way of moving multi currency Quicken data into any other program without doing a lot of manual edits post import.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by tom polgreen on 13 May, 2012 05:33 PM
Hi Ben,
I am just trying to figure out the least painful way of completing this task. I gave up on the idea of edtting the .md file outside of MoneyDance. This seemed just too risky.
I have also previously given up on the approach proposed in the MoneyDance instructions for importing from Quicken. While I understand that the main thing gained by importing a single huge qif with all of the accounts included is a certain amount of account-account transfer matching, there were too many things that didn't work correctly on import. The biggest problem with this approach is that all transfers between accounts in the same non-base currency result in unmatched transactions involving conversions to the base currency. Since about half my data involves CAD accounts (the rest USD, the base currency) there were way too many duplicate transactions to deal with manually.
My present approach is to hand create the .md file with new account and category names and assign the correct currency to each as it is created. Then import individual account qif files one at a time and change the category for each transaction using the very useful Batch Change. I am keeping notes on all the gotchas and will try to publish them here once I have successfully completed this task.
Cheers,
Tom
4 Posted by thiers on 05 Nov, 2012 01:52 AM
I look forward to hearing more as I'm struggling with how to 'fix' the incorrect inter-currency transactions that I've encountered after switching from Quicken a few days ago. There doesn't seem to be any way of manually editing them.
Thiers
Support Staff 5 Posted by Ben Spencer on 17 Nov, 2012 03:43 PM
Can you give me an example of what you mean when you say "There doesn't seem to be any way of manually editing them." To edit a transaction double click it to put it in edit mode. If that isn't working can you be more specific about what is not working.
I do want to reiterate that if you have a large data set coming from another personal finance program with multiple currencies typically the amount of manual work needed to correct the currency problems post import is not worth the effort. In such situation We usually recommend that people do not import their data.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
6 Posted by thiers on 17 Nov, 2012 08:31 PM
Thanks for your reply, but I subsequently solved the problem and have
already explained it to Jon Hoover.
Briefly, when I imported the individual qifs (after first importing the
file info) I changed the currencies as per the instructions but found
that the currency conversions hadn't worked correctly - they remained in
NZD. I then discovered that it was also necessary to edit the individual
account details following the first import of file info, because they
were still in NZD. Things worked fine after I did that and reimported
the qifs.
Regards
Thiers
Jon Hoover closed this discussion on 18 Nov, 2012 04:25 PM.