[moneydance] Bank of America issues

[Sean Reilly]

On Jul 6, 2006, at 6:48 AM, Gordon Alley wrote:
> One problem is that, even though MD may use the same exchange file
> standard as Quicken, the software that implements the file interface
> is different. So there might be subtle differences in the way the
> files are created and interpreted.

Yes, that is a definite possibility.  The OFX spec is a bit confusing  
in places, but definitely good enough for people to write alternate  
implementations.

It would certainly be easier for me if bank customer support  
personnel would know what to do if a customer asked them to "turn on  
OFX" or some similar message that I and other PFM developers could  
include in our software.

> There might even be bugs or quirks in the Quicken implementation that
> the banks have written their software to handle. If MD doesn't
> duplicate these out-of-spec behaviors, it might not interface
> successfully to the banks.

This is true.  I've spent a *lot* of time trying to figure out the  
exact details that banks expect to get when handling OFX requests.   
It is usually not enough to meet the specification - there are lots  
of other little bits that banks seem to expect.  One complaint I have  
about most banks (or whoever provides their OFX service) is that  
their error messages are often incredibly unhelpful and often  
misleading.

One problem I still face is with National City - I believe I am  
sending the exact same request as MS Money or Quicken, but the server  
still just breaks the connection with no error messages.  This  
problem could be in the SSL/TLS, HTTP or OFX layer, but I just can't  
figure it out.  Of course Schwab still has an SSL/TLS incompatibility  
with Moneydance for which nothing can be done until they upgrade.