[moneydance] 2007 Beta 3 Review

[Gordon Alley]

I don't download transactions, so I can't comment on those items in
your message, but I agree with your other statements.

Good review.

-Gordon

On 1/17/07, Steve Lessard <MoneydanceUser at pigdawg.com> wrote:
> After using Moneydance 2007 beta for about a month now I have to say
> that I still love it.  It is so much better than Quicken on the Mac.
> Thanks for the great work Sean and company!
>
> It is obvious that the primary new feature in Moneydance is the
> budgeting support.  I am excited about this feature but have not used
> it yet.  My review below focuses on the existing checking, savings,
> credit card and investment accounts.  I hope you find this useful and
> insightful.
>
>
> General Notes:
>
> The credit card splits window should set focus to the first cell when
> creating a new split.  Currently no cell gets the focus.  I suggest
> when a new split line gets created, the first column should get the
> focus.
>
> There are at least 2, probably three different UIs for entering
> splits.  Certainly there is one for checking and savings accounts as
> well as one for reminders.  This does add some confusion.  Why are
> they different?  I suggest using one UI to eliminate confusion.
>
> In the splits UI it would be nice if the individual line items could
> be rearranged.  Buttons for Move Up and Move Down would be great!
>
>
>
> Investment Accounts:
>
> My investment accounts is where the "fun" part of my monthly finances
> happen.  In Moneydance it is happens to be the most frustrating part
> of my monthly finances.  There are many bugs that exist a year after
> the UI was revamped (for the better I might add.)
>
> I downloaded transactions in my brokerage account.  I noticed that
> all transactions in the list of downloaded transactions showed
> today's date but when I selected any one of them the correct date
> would show in the details section above the list.  I suggest showing
> the correct date as shown in the details section above.
>
> Balancing an investment portfolio still makes no sense.  In this
> traditional IRA account's balancing UI I see all the transactions
> with the correct date, a blank entry for the description, and 0.00 as
> the dollar amount.  This goes for debits and credits.  A little more
> detail about the transactions in this account are that they were
> reinvestment transaction, either dividends, short-term capital gains,
> or long-term capital gains.  I can't balance against a list of
> transactions with no description, no dollar amount and no number of
> shares.  There is nothing uniqule identifying in this window yet I
> still need to reconcile it.  My suggestion is to show the dollar
> amount reinvested as well as the number of shares reinvested.
>
> After downloading the transactions from the brokerage all the
> reinvested transactions show up as DivReinv in the Action field.
> This applies to reinvested capital gains as well.  It is confusing.
> I suggest adding an option for LTCReinv and STCReinv.
>
> When accepting the downloaded transaction the UI for the transaction
> details is different than the two-line transaction UI used in the
> register.  This confuses me every month when I go to accept the
> transactions.  Not only does it not look the same, but there is not a
> 1:1 relationship between all the fields in the register UI and the
> downloaded transactions acceptance UI.  I suggest at a minimum making
> sure all fields are in the latter UI.  A better solution would be to
> implement the modeless transaction acceptance UI that checking and
> savings accounts use.
>
> The transactions, reinvested dividends and reinvested capital gains,
> as downloaded from the brokerage firm, have dollar amounts slightly
> higher than what appears on my statement.  I suspect that is the
> result of a fee that the brokerage firm isn't showing me.  It would
> be nice if the difference could be entered in the Fee category.  This
> will hinge on whether or not this info is included in the data from
> the brokerage firm.
>
> Brokerage accounts still do not allow me to enter or edit split
> transactions.  This leaves me with incorrect financial data.  Splits
> were allowed in versions of Moneydance prior to the 2006 release.  I
> suggest restoring this lost functionality.
>
> For some reason the portfolio register never remembers its last
> position like checking accounts registers do.  Every time I go to my
> portfolio register I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to look
> at the recent transactions.  I suggest that Moneydance remember the
> last position or simply start at the bottom where the more
> interesting, recent data is located.
>
>
> Checking and Savings Accounts:
>
> The method for creating a split transaction in a checking or savings
> account is awkward.  I have to select the category list and scroll to
> the top to get to the "splits..." option in the list.  For me this
> category list is very long.  I suggest a better solution where a very
> small splits button would appear in the same column as the category.
> Sort of like having an edit field and button in that one cell.
>
> In one savings account of mine I have a sub-account.  I love this
> feature of Moneydance.  Today I found a bug with this feature.  I
> downloaded transactions from my bank.  I went to accept the
> transactions for the parent account, but a few transactions actually
> belonged to the sub-account.  There was no way for me to accept the
> transaction in to the sub account.  The same bug exists when
> downloading transactions into the sub-account.  If there is a
> transaction that belongs to the parent account there is no way to
> accept it into the parent account.
>
> There is still something wring with the auto-complete feature.  For
> payees if I type something and then go back to the start of the field
> and correct or add two letters Moneydance will try to match it to
> something.  As an example lets say I have an existing payee with the
> name John Allen Doe.  If I start typing "Jo" Moneydance will auto-
> complete it to John Allen Doe.  Now if I want to change the payee to
> Joan Doe, a name that has not yet been used in Moneydance.  I move
> the cursor to the beginning of Doe and start backspacing to delete
> John Allen.  Finally, with Doe remaining in the payee field I start
> typing "Jo" so that the edit field now contains "JoDoe" Moneydance
> will auto-complete it back to "John Allen Doe"  I suggest that if
> there are characters remaining after the current cursor position
> Moneydance should not attempt to auto-complete the payee.
>
> For the Category field auto-complete there is another bug that forces
> me to accept the wrong category.  I have these three categories:
> Home Depot, Home, and Home:Appliances.  Note that Appliances is a sub-
> category of Home.  I can not use the Home category.  the auto-
> complete feature forces me to use either Home Depot or
> Home:Appliances.  I suggest that if all the characters in the
> Category field already result in a complete match Moneydance should
> not try to auto-complete less more characters are typed in.
>
>
>
> I have not yet had a chance to check to see of each of these problems
> has been entered in the Trac database.  Hopefully I can get to this
> soon.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need further
> clarification on any of the problems I have reported.


-- 
Gordon B. Alley
http://galley.home.texas.net