I’m still in Iceland and very much enjoying my stay in Reykjavik, although I have not once managed to spell it correctly without the help of spell-check.  Thus far my travel buddy Jon, another Moneydance support person, and I have walked along the harbor, seen what seems like thousands of beautiful wool sweaters, visited Iceland’s only flea market, and visited two different baths.

I’ve really been appreciating Moneydance during my trip, especially when it comes to using different currencies.  Having the cash account in Krona has been invaluable, in large part because the setup of my cash accounts with a parent account in US dollars and child accounts in the various foreign currencies.  This means I can see at a glance both how many Krona I have and what it’s value is in a currency I am more familiar with.

This is also the first long-haul trip I’ve done with only a netbook and my iPod touch, and no full-sized computer (hence the smaller screenshots on these blog entries).  While I’ve been using the iPod touch app some, I’m equally likely to whip out my netbook to track the afternoon’s transactions directly through the desktop program.   I imagine this will change later in the trip when I’m doing more shopping or taking a day trip with a smaller pack.

I’ve also been experimenting with the use of a liability account for the first time on this trip, as I don’t have a mortgage or car loan.  When we arrived in Iceland Jon paid for the hotel room on his debit card and we agreed I would pay him back by paying his portion of our shared expenses (such as meals out, groceries, bus fare, etc).  To this end I created a liability account.  I entered the initial balance as zero and entered the “debt” transaction with the category of “Lodging” so I could accurately track my expenses.  When I spend cash on our shared expenses I use the split transaction function and enter my portion as the appropriate category- lodging, food, entertainment, etc, and Jon’s portion as a transfer to the liability account.

It’s been a breeze tracking the expenses in this way, and also helps us to avoid the “No, it’s your turn to pay for coffee, I’m sure I’ve paid you back by now” quarrels that can happen to friends who travel together but do not share expenses.  For those of you who don’t already know, you can view the splits of a transaction by holding down the Alt key and hovering over the transaction with the mouse.

Next week I’ll be posting from England with a new currency and a new cash account.

The information in this blog posts is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

I’m having a lazy day in Iceland today.  My travel buddy, Jon, is off hiking up a mountain and I decided to spend the day relaxing at the guesthouse and doing some serious window shopping.  I’ve read in several guidebooks  that Icelanders are very into fashion and design.  After spending a few hours walking along Laugavegur, the main shopping street in Reykjavik, I am totally convinced.  Even the used items for sale at the Red Cross second-hand shop are stylish and well-made!  I’m glad that I came here at the beginning of my travels, as the knowledge that I’ll have to carry anything I buy for the next six months has restrained my shopper’s instincts a great deal.  If I was heading directly home after Iceland I think I would bust my budget in the shops!

My travel budget is a great example of customizing Moneydance’s tools to meet my specific (albeit somewhat unusual) needs.  When I began planning this trip I realized that I would need a detailed budget.  I’m going splurge on a number of things, including a weekend in Brussels and a spa day in Budapest, so I need to be diligent about tracking my spending to make sure I don’t end up eating ramen noodles for the rest of the trip.  What this means is that I need a budget which is both flexible and permits a high degree of granularity.
The other complicated piece of expense tracking for this trip is that I’m prepaying about 2/3 of my hotels and train tickets.  For example, in August I purchased 3 train tickets for my travels through England in October.  I wanted my budget reports to reflect that these were October’s travel expenses, not August’s.  To do this I created sub-categories for each month’s lodging and travel costs so I can have a clearer idea of how much I’ve already spent for each month’s expenses.  I have a category named Lodging:October for which I have budgeted $1200 as a non-recurring expense.  This line item begins on August 1 and ends on October 31.  I have similar sub-categories for lodging and travel November, December, etc, allowing me to track how much I’ve spent for each month of the trip.
I really appreciate the budgeting feature which allow budgeting intervals from daily to yearly, as for me different intervals work for different categories.  Larger, less frequent transactions such as train tickets and lodging are tracked by month, but  I’ve divided my eating out, grocery, entertainment, personal care, and miscellaneous categories into weekly intervals.  This makes it less likely I’ll blow all of my money in the first half of each month and end up busting my budget or eating a lot of ramen at the end (or so I hope).

On a budget related-note, my new favorite graph is the “Income and Expenses” pie chart. It’s an incredibly clear (and occasionally brutal) visualization of how my income compares to my expenditures. If you are trying to stick to your budget, especially if you are using the zero-sum calculation method, this is a great tracking tool.

In my next post I’ll describe how I’m using liability accounts in Moneydance to help keep the finances between my travel companion Jon and I organized.

The information in this blog posts is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

This post is a part of the Moneydance on the Road blog series.  Check out the first post here.

I arrived safely in Iceland Thursday morning, and apparently only narrowly escaped major delays due to the storm on the East Coast of the U.S.  Reykjavik is beautiful and the weather is like none I’ve ever seen before- the sun is bright enough for me to need sunglasses but it’s also raining.  Although the weather is odd, the rainbows which result from it are amazing, so I think it’s a fair trade.

I’ve found that I do much better sticking to my budget when I spend cash, so I’ll be withdrawing a chunk of cash either when I arrive in the country (as with my stay in Iceland) or every few weeks (when I’ll be in the Euro zone for months at a time). This strategy will save me the fees most banks charge on international transactions, but it will require some extra setup of my data file to accurately track this money.

While the more correct accounting setup would be to hold cash in asset accounts, cash accounts can be created as either a bank or asset accounts in Moneydance. In my Moneydance file I create my cash accounts as bank accounts. My logic is that bank accounts track liquid capital and asset accounts track not currently liquid resources such as an invoice which has been issued but not yet paid, or money which is tied up in inter-account transfers. I’ve deleted all the foreign currencies except those I am likely to use in the next 6 months- it keeps the drop down list shorter and simplifies the exchange rate interface on my home page.

I might have several different currencies in my wallet at the same time, so I’ll first create a parent “Foreign Cash” account so I can see how much I have tied up in foreign cash. I’m also selecting the “Do Not Show on Homepage (if balance is zero)” option for all the foreign cash accounts to keep my homepage simple. Next, I’ll create cash accounts for the first few currencies I’ll be using, the Icelandic Krona, the British Pound, and the Euro.

When I arrived in Iceland I exchanged $145 USD for 15,909 ISK (cash exchanges always get a pretty terrible rate).  I transferred this amount from my USD based “Cash on Hand” account to my “Icelandic Krona” account.  I entered the exact exchange rate by entering a ratio in the exchange rate field.

In my next post I’ll describe the process of setting up a budget for such a complicated trip, as well as explore the various graphs and reports I use to make sure I’m sticking to it!

The information in this blog posts is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

This post is a part of the Moneydance on the Road blog series.  Check out the first post here.

I appreciate tools which I can tweak to my specifications, so Moneydance is a great program for me.  I’ve been using Moneydance to track my finances for over a year, but I knew a trip with this many currencies and locations meant I needed to step up my game.

My goal was to have all of the accounts, graphs, reports, currency information, and budgeting tools I use regularly visible on the screen of my net-book without needing to use the scroll bar.  I also wanted the interface to be attractive but not too bright to minimize eye fatigue and provide a soothing experience.

First, I took advantage of the homepage customization features to create a snapshot of the most important information to me- which was my account balances, my reminders, current exchange rates, and the expenses graph.

Next, I turned on the VAT/GST option, case-sensitive auto-completion, and the auto-insert decimal places option.  This simplifies my data entry process, and will permit me to track my VAT spending for possible reimbursement when I depart these countries.  I’ve decided not to change the date format in my Moneydance file yet, so I think it would be more confusing than helpful during my adjustment to European date formats, but I may change this in a few months.

Finally, I mercilessly deleted most of the reports and graphs in the side bar, along with the accounts which I don’t use on a daily basis (such as my emergency fund and investment accounts).  What is left behind are the bank and asset accounts which I use everyday, the reports and graphs which help me to track my budget, and links to the homepage and reminder interface.

Now I have everything I use regularly easily accessible in an uncluttered, attractive format.  In my next post I’ll describe setting up a budget for this complex trip.

The information in this blog posts is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

Welcome to our new blog series, “Moneydance in Action.”  I’m Angie, one of the Moneydance support staff.  One of my favorite things about working for Moneydance is that my job is largely location independent, which allows me a lot of flexibility in work and life.  In 8 days I’ll be leaving for a 6 month trip across Europe, and I’ll be using Moneydance to keep my finances in order and blogging about my experiences twice weekly.

I’m visiting at least 12 countries and will be using a minimum of 10 currencies, so we’ll all be getting a crash course in mega multi-currency use.  I’ll be using a zero sum budgeting for the pieces of my trip when I’m moving about frequently, and experimenting with envelope budgeting for the months I’m settled down in one place.  I’ll be detailing how I set up and track my budget, working with multi-currency cash accounts, using the iPhone app in foreign currencies, creating and tracking savings goals, and of course the odd little hacks and tweaks I use to get the program to conform to my (admittedly unusual) life!

In the next few posts I’ll still be in the U.S, and I’ll be detailing how I set up my data file and budget for a trip of this magnitude.  On September 30 I arrive in Iceland, October 7 in England, October 26 in the Netherlands, October 29 in Brussels, and October 31 in Paris.  October’s posts will be devoted to using the iPhone app abroad, using multiple currencies, and a few other surprise topics.

I hope you’ll join me as I take Moneydance on this spectacular test-drive!  Next post I’ll be detailing how I customized Moneydance to better meet my needs.

The information in this blog post is only meant to detail my experience and should not be considered financial advice.

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.