[moneydance] Moneydance Trial/Thinking of purchasing

[Fuzzy Fox]

Mark Fergusson <mark at thefergussons.com> wrote:
>
> 1. How is support with moneydance? (I sent an email but haven't had a
>    response).

The few times I have contacted support, I have gotten a quick response.

E-mail is unfortunately not a reliable medium for contacting anyone,
unfortunately, due to everyone using spam filters and most of those
overzealous in their spam detection methods.  If you get no reply it is
likely because they did not receive your email for some reason.

> 2. After importing - regarding the Categories - not sure if it's a
>    trial version restriction but I can't select multiple transactions,
>    select the category, then "Record".  It seems I have to add then do
>    a bulk category change after (?). Not sure I'm missing something.

What file format are you importing?  QIF files have (the capability of)
having categories listed within them for each transaction, but of course
your bank is not likely to insert those for you.  Some people
pre-process their QIF imports with a program like QIF Master to apply
the desired categories, then import.

I almost never download data into Moneydance so this is a bit outside my
experience.

> 3. Is there anyway you can define pattern matching so transactions
>    are categorized automatically?  Transaction categorization is one
>    of my main objectives - I'm not convinced that the "Transaction
>    Match" is the fastest - seems like too much manual work.  It would
>    be nice to define a rule and from then on all transactions that
>    match that rule are categorized automatically.

I'm not aware of a built-in facility like this.  Moneydance generally
matches transactions based on things matching past data.  The first time
you enter data for a particular Payee, the transaction must be manually
set.  The next time the same Payee comes up in a transaction, it should
choose the category that was used last time.  For downloaded data, I'm
given to understand that often some random serial numbers or such are
inserted into Payee data which causes Moneydance to have a tougher time
matching.

> 4. Can someone please clarify exactly what the objective of
>    "Reconcile" is?  I looked at the Wiki explanation but still not
>    sure.  Same applies to credit cards.  Really don't understand what
>    the overall objective of this is.  A simple example would help me.

Reconciling is the process of comparing what you think happened at your
bank, with what the bank thinks is happening.  It is a process of
checking up on your bank to make sure they are not adding mysterious
transactions or dropping valid transactions or changing the numbers on
you.

If you download data from your bank and do not check it somehow, you are
implicitly trusting the bank, which you really shouldn't.  Different
people have different ways of checking up on the bank, though.  Some do
their checking at every import, where the manual process of importing
data and setting categories forces them to "reconcile" in their minds
whether there is any data missing somewhere.  Then, at the end of the
month when the statement comes, they supply an "as of" date on the
Reconcile function and Moneydance auto-marks the transactions with a
checkmark to show that both you and the bank agree that those
transactions are real, that they actually happened.

Others, like me, enter their data manually, and at the end of the month,
compare each line of the bank's statement with a transaction in the
Reconcile window, checking it off as we go, and when we're done, the
Difference shown at the bottom of the window should add up to 0.00,
indicating that the bank and we agree on the activity in the account for
that month.

Still others do a combination, where they download data but do not look
at it, and then at the end of the month, perform the manual reconcile
that I described above.

And, I suppose, still others don't do any Reconcile at all, so they will
be surprised someday when an extra transaction shows up or goes missing.

> 5. What account type does a mortgage go under?  Don't really see that
>    it has much capability around this, but then don't know the product.

I put mortgages under the Loan account type.  They track interest
payments and Escrow pretty well.

> 6. Also, what about mortgages that are in different countries?  Any
>    comments on ability to handle this?

Multi-currency support is a big feature of Moneydance, but like a lot of
people I have not used that feature myself.

-- 
 Fuzzy Fox <fox at foxtaur.com>
  "Why a man would want a wife is a big mystery to some people.
   Why a man would want two wives is a bigamystery."