We’ve been getting lots of email from customers of Wesabe, the online financial management web site that has sadly fallen on hard times and is closing up shop. Even though they were technically a competitor, I’ve always been impressed by their policy of openness, data portability and unselfish concern for their customers. Our concern for customer freedom is the reason our customers can export every last bit of their Moneydance information to a portable XML file.

Wesabe’s openness now enables their former users to migrate to other financial management systems, such as Moneydance, without losing any of their information. We’ve created a Moneydance extension that will import all accounts, categories, tags and transactions either directly from wesabe.com or from an XML file that was previously downloaded from Wesabe. The latter method will be necessary after July 31st which is when Wesabe has promised that they will destroy any user data remaining in their system.

To get your data from Wesabe into Moneydance, there are few simple steps:

1. Download and install Moneydance
2. Use the Extensions->Add menu to add the “Wesabe Migration Assistant” extension
3. Select the Extensions->Import from Wesabe.com menu and follow the instructions

You will be presented with two methods for importing your data, either by entering your email address and Wesabe password to let Moneydance do the work (note: will not work after July 31st 2010), or you can feed Moneydance the XML file that you previously downloaded from Wesabe’s XML download link (again, you must perform that download on or before July 31st).

We’d like to note that you can migrate your data without having to purchase a Moneydance license or commit in any way. You can even migrate your data into Moneydance and then immediately export it into another format not exportable by Wesabe such as QIF.

Finally, we’d like to wish the people behind Wesabe luck in their next endeavors. They put a lot of hard work into a great product, and thanks to the efforts they put into data portability their customers are not stranded without options.

We at The Infinite Kind, LLC are pleased to announce the third significant update to Moneydance 2010. This release includes oodles of new features and bug fixes that are detailed after the break. If you already use Moneydance then you simply need to click the Check for new updates/extensions link on the home page and then follow the instructions to upgrade. If you are on a Mac we recommend downloading the whole app in order to benefit from improvements to the application wrapper/launcher.

We’re not resting on our laurels after this update, either. We’ve already begun working on more updates such as a significantly improved interface for categorizing/merging/confirming downloaded transactions, increasing the number of supported online banks and mind-blowing budgeting improvements.

(more…)

I can’t tell you how happy I was to find the following words from Apple in my inbox today:

Your application has been approved for sale on the App Store. Pending any application availability issues, your app will be Ready for Sale and live on the App Store within 24 hours.

We at The Infinite Kind, LLC are pleased to announce that Moneydance for iPhone OS is now available for immediate download.

The Moneydance mobile app is a free companion to the desktop version of Moneydance, and is meant to allow entry and modification of transactions while on the go. Accounts, categories and recent transactions are synced to your iPhone or iPod Touch and transactions entered or modified on your mobile device are synced to your desktop once you’re back on the same wifi network as your desktop.

The device syncs via your local network and protects your information using industrial-strength encryption (192-bit DESede; one of the reasons it took so long to release).

Please check it out and send us feedback!

The final version of help documentation for Moneydance 2010 is ready for release.  You can find a PDF of this document (here). This document includes instructions for the new transaction importing and matching capabilities of our Moneydance 2010.

I’m also thrilled to let you all know that our iPhone app has received government approval and has been submitted to Apple for review!  We’ll post on the blog when we hear back from them.

As always, if you need additional assistance you can contact our support staff through our forum (here), or by emailing us at support@moneydance.com.

Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to announce the release of the “Almost Final Draft” of the Moneydance 2010.

As many of you know, we ran into some production issues with the Moneydance 2010 help documentation.  The continuing updates to the Transaction importing and matching work flow have been holding up the composition and release of this documentation.  We have decided to release the Almost Final Draft without these pieces, with the caveat that this is not the final version of this document.  We do feel it is a major improvement compared to the 2008 help documentation.

The PDF of the Almost Final Draft is located here.  If you have suggestions for improvements, or corrections to the current draft, please post them on in that location.

On January 20th we are taking part in Indie Relief, a promotion in which all of our sales proceeds for that day will be sent to a relief organization helping people recover from the devastating earthquake in Haiti. We have chosen to donate to Doctors Without Borders.

We also urge everyone who can to donate directly to the relief effort. If you donate, please be careful where you are sending your money. There are plenty of fraudulent web sites and spammers attempting to scam people who are intending to send money to relief organizations. Here are direct links to a few relief organizations:

• Doctors Without Borders
• The Red Cross
• Oxfam International
• Partners In Health

If you are like most people your wallet is quite a bit lighter after the holidays, so what better time to get your finances in order than right now – the first month of a brand new decade? Since it is such a great time to get started tracking your finances, we’re offering a 20% discount to anyone who likes Moneydance enough to recommend it to others.

To get your 20% off discount code, all you have to do is one of the following:

• follow @moneydance on twitter and post a tweet that mentions @moneydance or our web site: http://moneydance.com. If your updates are public then we’ll send you a 20% off discount code via direct message within 24 hours of your update.
• if Facebook is more your thing, just become a fan of the Moneydance facebook page. Once you’ve become a fan you will see our comment on the “wall” with the discount code.

This offer applies during January 2010 but we may keep it going longer depending upon the result. We also welcome feedback on this idea. Do you have a better way to encourage those who enjoy using Moneydance to spread the word?

You cannot imagine how happy I am to announce the first public release of Moneydance 2010. We started the public beta testing a little more than a month and have been furiously adding last minute features and fixing bugs right up until this weekend. I would personally have preferred to continue coding until reaching a state of personal finance nirvana (if such a thing exists), however we now consider the beta stable and we can no longer justify holding back all of the new features from reaching the general public.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new software is the sidebar/source-list that can be used to navigate to any of your accounts, budgets, graphs and reports with a single click. The sidebar shows your account balances in addition to “unread” indicators which mean that marked accounts have pending downloaded transactions.

The unread indicators hint at another big new feature: automatic downloading of transactions in the background. If you set the preference to download transactions in the background Moneydance will, upon startup and every few hours, automatically download transactions from all of your online accounts and put them into your account registers to be accepted. The newly downloaded transactions will be marked as “unread” with a blue dot and can be left as they are, categorized individually (with helpful defaults provided based on previous transactions), or marked as “read” in one fell swoop. This new workflow lets you do as little or as much work as you like on your downloaded transaction information.

Other great features include the nifty new Budget Bars which give you a more detailed graphical view of your budget compliance, a few new reports and graphs as well as more flexible filtering of existing graphs and reports (including by tags).

Customers who purchased Moneydance 2008 will receive a completely free upgrade to MD 2010. If you purchased a license earlier than the Moneydance 2008 release date (March 28th 2008) then you are entitled to a half-price upgrade. Moneydance 2010 will retain the same low price of $39.99 USD. What a bargain!

To download the new version just head on over to our download page!

At Moneydance we understand that different people have different needs from their personal finance software. That’s why we offer a liberal trial so you can decide if our program is right for you.

Our demo version is fully-functional and allows you to manually enter 100 transactions. Imported transactions are not limited. If you decide to purchase Moneydance you can keep all your data, the license key simply unlocks the ability to manually enter more transactions.

Here’s how to get the most out of your Moneydance trial.

1) Import your financial information from other personal finance software

We have online guides to assist with transferring your information from Quicken or MS Money.

For help transitioning from Quicken.

For help transitioning from MS Money. This process is can be more challenging than the transition from Quicken, as there are limitations with the way MS Money exports qif files.

2) Use the Moneydance forums to get advice from Moneydance support and other users

Moneydance offers support to all of our users, even before you purchase our software. If you have questions or need help during your trial period, we invite you to contact our support personnel.

Moneydance support offers both public forums and private support. Browse our forum to see what other users are asking and saying about Moneydance. Forums posts are also answered by Moneydance Support staff. Private support requests are answered by Moneydance Support staff but cannot be viewed by the public, offering security and privacy for your more sensitive requests.

3) Set up online banking with your financial institutions

Check out our list of supported banks If we don’t yet support your bank, you can request we do so by posting to our forum, or contacting our support staff at support@moneydance.com. Please note that not all banks support direct OFX connections, which Moneydance (and other financial software) requires in order to talk directly to a bank.

Most financial institutions will require you to enable your accounts for application-based online banking. Keep in mind that application-based online banking often requires a different login/PIN than the ones that are used for ATM or web-based banking. When you enable your account for access from Moneydance or Quicken, your financial institution should let you know what customer ID/login and PIN to use. Some financial institutions charge a monthly fee for direct OFX connections, and we suggest you check with your bank to discover their policies.

Many banks also permit you to download QFX, OFX or OFC files (aka Quicken or MS Money files) from their website, any of which will import cleanly into Moneydance.

4) Get Specific

Everyone has different needs, so while the above tips are applicable to most users, most people have specific tools and functions which are most important to them. Look at the budgeting, investment, reporting, asset tracking, and graphing tools to make sure that Moneydance will meet your needs.

Thinking of buying Moneydance or know someone who is? If you buy on or before Friday November 13th you will get a 20% discount on Moneydance 2008 (which includes a free upgrade to MD 2010) by using the discount code “OneFingerDiscount” on our order form.

We are joining a host of other mac developers to offer this discount. The name “one finger discount” was chosen as 20% is one fifth of a “five finger discount” (aka free).