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).

After a long wait, Moneydance 2010 is now within reach! Here are some of the improvements and new features you can look forward to with the new version.
The new sidebar allows single-click access to all account registers, graphs, reports and budgets.

Moneydance can optionally download all connected online accounts in the background. All downloaded or imported OFX/QFX/OFC transactions will go directly into the register and use a simpler new method of “cleaning up” downloaded transactions. If you trust the transactions that download from your bank then you don’t need to do anything.

The new version has improvements in many other areas including budget status reporting, capital gains reports as well as editing and reporting on tags.

Users who purchased Moneydance on or after March 28, 2008 will receive a free upgrade to MD 2010. Purchases prior to then entitle you to a half price upgrade. Moneydance 2010 does not yet have a final release date or price, but we will let you know when these decisions have been made.

Moneydance 2010 is now available for beta testing! (http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Moneydance2010Beta).

We invite you to download this beta release if you are willing to report bugs and help us track down issues that may have arisen in this new version.  Please do not use this version for your primary use yet, there are still a few bugs and kinks that need to be worked out.  We would like you to know that this is not a final beta version, as additional features are still being added to Moneydance 2010.

Update: [2009-07-14] We’ve received all of the beta requests we can handle right now. Any further requests to be part of the beta unfortunately cannot be accepted. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the final release!

We’re happy to announce that we’re finally ready to begin external beta testing of the Moneydance iPhone application. We have asked anyone who was interested in beta testing the app to respond to this thread on our old customer support forum, however that forum does not allow us to send private replies to all posters or to get the email addresses for anyone who has posted to the thread. For this reason, I have to ask anyone who is interested to contact us directly (again) so that they can be part of the beta program.

If you are interested in the program, please email the following information to beta-signup@moneydance.com:
– Your iPhone or iPod Touch device ID. Here’s how to find it
– Your full name and email address
– The type of iPhone or iPod Touch device (iPhone: 1st gen, 3G, 3GS, or iPod Touch 1st gen, 2nd gen)
– The login name you used to post to the getsatisfaction iphone app thread

Also, please note that we are limiting the beta process to the first 50 (or so) people who posted to the thread on our support forum. We may add a few others, especially in cases where the first 50 have different configurations (for example, those with 1st gen iPhones).

Yes, we do know that it is now 2009 and has been for nearly six full months. There were just a few minor updates to the 2008 line that we thought you might need to tide you over until MD2010 is released. It is embarrassing to admit, but what we were calling Moneydance 2009 will now be called Moneydance 2010, although it will still be released this year (planning for around October).

Another goodie that will be released (as a private beta) any day now is the Moneydance iPhone (and iPod Touch) application. This is an app that synchronizes with the desktop Moneydance and allows you to record transactions and check out your balances while you are out and about. When you get home it will seamlessly sync with your desktop over wi-fi. We’re very close to a beta release with only a few bugs to iron out. If you’d like to be a part of the private beta, post a message to this thread.

As for today’s update, here is the list of things that have changed since MD2008r3:

• Workaround for Java 1.6 launcher incompatibility on Mac OS X
• Fixed memorization of expenses graph
• Fixed bug in ‘dashboard’ net worth graph to properly account for stock splits
• Added most recent OFX CA certificate
• Fixed bug in online banking when there are multiple accounts per bank
• Fixed bug in online connection setup that caused the same account to be listed multiple times for some connections
• Fixed duplicate transaction prevention that caused investment transactions (and some others) to reappear after having been accepted in a previous download
• Fixed bug in which the APR field is not saved for CDs
• Fixed bug that caused editing a tag to delete it
• Added Verisign Class3 CA Certificate to enable ofx.americafirst.com to keep working
• Made OFX downloads for BANK accounts with type CREDITLINE map to credit card accounts instead of bank accounts
• Updated OFX account info selection and connection handling to better support account information retrieved from banks as well as connections in which the bill payment account information is different from the transaction download information
• Removed Command-D/Ctrl-D shortcut for deleting instead of downloading(!) a transaction
• No longer attempt to retrieve updates to already connected financial institutions from moneydance.com
• Popup date picker now hides after a date is clicked.
• Popup date picker no longer displays if there isn’t enough room in the window

You can get the update from the usual place.

If you’ve been reading the Moneydance support forums and mailing lists you know we’re working on a lot of projects at once here at the The Infinite Kind, LLC. So many things that we need a bit more people-power to make it all happen. If you or someone you know is interested in being part of our team, now is the time to join us. We are looking for one programmer (mostly Java/Swing, but a little Objective C would be nice) and someone to help support our customers. Please click “read more” to check out the ads and contact us if you are interested.

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