unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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Q) I imported a statement to the wrong account. Now Money wants to keep repeating this mistake. How do I undo this?
A) The basic approach is to delete the financial institution associated with the account and then specify the financial institution for the account a second time. For more details, there are several MSKB items that may help. The links are courtesy of Mark and Cal Learner--MVP.
References:
MSKB: 327241 Statement imported to wrong account
MSKB: 822390 OFX statements downloaded to wrong account
Q) If downloaded data is so much trouble, why even use Money? Or, why use Money if you have type in all of the transaction data?
A) Many recent posters in the newsgroup seem to view downloading transaction data as the only value-add Money provides or as fundamental to any use of the product. This is unfortunate. Perhaps they don't understand that transaction data actually can be entered by hand?
IF all you use Money for is to keep a register, THEN it seems true that downloading data will save a lot of labor--assuming it goes trouble free and the downloading never fails and your payees always match and so on. But if all you use Money for is to keep a register that matches, by definition, the data you download from your bank--or your bank's website if Yodlee is involved, what's the point? Why not just log into your bank's web site, look at the data, and press on? What value did Money really add?
IF, on the other hand, you use Money to manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc. costs, estimate taxes and so forth, THEN a) the quality and consistency of transaction data matters and dependence on downloaded data may not be entirely compatible with this objective, and b) the amount of time and effort spent doing manual transaction entry is a small fraction of total time spent using Money at worst and is no more and maybe less than the time spent keeping the download thing working and making up for all of the things it can't do at best or screws up at worst. Examples of things the best downloaded data just can't do are split a paycheck deposit into its constituent parts, classify transactions for vehicle or property or similar, or enter the splits for things like an expense at the grocery being part Food:Groceries, part Miscellaneous:Supplies, and part Transfer:Pocket Change. As for the "at worst" side of transaction download, just read the newsgroup for a week. Many weeks more than half the posts or more have something to do with problems with downloaded transaction data. Imagine if half of the posts in the Word newsgroup had to do with typing text into the thing.
Some posters even say thing like "[if you don't download data,] what's the purpose of using Money instead of, say, Excel? [Excel] actually may be a [better] solution considering all the Money limitations with transaction reconciliation, online updates, and so on." This suggests in some circular way that downloaded transaction data is the singular way to make Money work and the limitations with downloaded transaction data reduce Money to the level of Excel in terms of solving the problems at hand. It's like saying if the heated seat in the car isn't working well, just walk instead.
The problems with downloaded transaction data are just that. There is NO function in Money (e.g., manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc costs, estimate taxes) that is one iota easier, or better, or more capable, or enabled uniquely by downloaded transaction data except for downloading transaction data itself. In fact, all of those other functions are TRANSPARENT to how the transaction data actually gets there. Worse, many of them are only as good as the data they process. If you enter the data, you get it right; if you let your bank and Yodlee manage this data, you get what you get.
Maybe what we really need is two Money product lines: Money View, an AOL-like web-only service. Make it just M05 Essential *. The user of this product just wants a passive approach that provides value by aggregating data ala Yodlee, delivering relevant info--aka targeted ads, and sparing effort and typing. The second, Money Management, is the traditional Money product where the users are actually expecting to put some effort into the whole thing and wants to use the data to perform analysis and planning and so forth. Sadly, the first user seems to be the Money "target market."
Q) Money says my PIN for getting my account activity must be six digits. It’s four and works fine on their web site. What gives?
A) The Money online statement PIN/password for a given bank is frequently different than the ATM PIN/web site password for the exact same bank. Money is likely just quoting/enforcing the restrictions that the bank has told it to in the online protocols. Contact the bank's customer service to find out for sure.
Q) My bank offers several formats of file for download and import. Which should I pick?
A) First, your two choices are QIF and OFX. Everything else requires some amount of conversion to one of these before Money will import it. See "How do I import from Excel (or .CSV or etc.)?" for more information on importing other formats.
If both QIF and OFX are offered, OFX is preferable. This is because OFX includes unique identifiers assigned by the bank to the account and the transactions. Money uses the unique identifiers in two ways that make OFX import better than QIF. First, once Money has associated the account identifier with a specific Account in Money, it will always import future files to the correct account. QIF asks every time and is very problematic if you accidentally give it the wrong answer. Second, Money stores the transaction identifiers with the imported transactions. Because it does this, future imports of a file that has the same transactions won't duplicate the transactions. Importing QIF files that overlap requires Money and the user to attempt to identify any transactions that appear to be duplicates. This isn't always as easy as it seems and is prone to error and requires extra user effort. QIF is the last choice of import format for these reasons.
Question nominated to the FAQ by Mark Horn; answer derived from postings by Mark Horn and Chris Cowles.
Q) When I download account data, my scheduled transfer from Checking to [Visa] gets duplicated in the respective accounts. Why?
A) The secret is to make sure the first one you download is set as a Transfer:[name of second acct] and the second one you download is flagged as a match for the other half of the transfer created out of the first one downloaded.
Now that you've got them, you probably have to do something like void the second one downloaded and not turned into a transfer.
I say "probably" because I really don't know--I skip all of this downloaded transaction data stuff and all of these headaches that come as part of the set.
Cal Learner--MVP, who does download transactions, offered up this:
There is more than one good way to download your credit card data and have also the payment downloaded from a checking account. Here are three ways I like:
1. When you process the first transaction of the credit card payment, set the category as a Transfer to the other (credit card or bank account), or use the equivalent SPECIAL "Credit Card Payment" category. When you process the second transaction, Money should match it. Be careful to not just Accept if Money did not find the match on its own for some reason. Click Change and match it to the transfer you already made if Money did not match it for you. I would consider this the classic of the ways I like. Note that for this you would not use the Money 2005 EXPENSE category "Credit Card Payments/Transfer". Instead you should consider deleting that EXPENSE "Credit Card Payments/Transfer" to avoid confusion. See also "We had Transfer and Credit Card Payment in M04. What's with Credit Card Payments/Transfer added in M05?"
2. In method 2, don't handle credit card payments as transfers or the pre-defined "Credit Card Payment". Instead create one category of "CC payment" or some such. If you define the category as an expense category, expect a warning when you use it to represent the payment within the credit card account -- if you have the warning enabled. Just click Yes in response to the warning. The category should net at zero in reports across accounts, and you can still customize to ignore the category if you like. (This is Bonnie Synhorst's favorite method.) For this method you could use the M05 "Credit Card Payments/Transfer".
3. Create a suspense account. I have one I call In Transit, and I called it a "cash or other" account. Change each of the downloaded transactions into transfer to/from that account. That account will normally have a zero balance except while funds are in transit. Make your credit card payments as transfers to and from that account.
Q) When I download data from my bank, Money grabs the file. How do I make it stop?
A) As many applications do, Money tells Windows to associate certain file types with Money and assign certain things to do when files of that type are downloaded or opened. If you have Quicken installed, it tries to do the exact same thing. Barring your intervention, the last application installed will win this battle. You can use this fact to all Quicken to get the files by simply reinstalling it.
But you can also take matters into your own hands. If you want to see or change file associations yourself, you can
Start|Settings|Control Panel|Folder Options|File Types
Select OFX-- Open Financial Exchange File or QIF or whatever.
Click Advanced. Check Confirm Open After Download unless you would not like the pop-up box. That pop-up box may be of use in that it lets you save the file to the disk and open it with either or both programs later.
See that the "Actions" box contains "Open" in bold. If it is not bold, you can select Open as the default action by clicking the Set Default button.
Click Edit.
When you click edit, the application used to perform action for Money would be similar to the following line:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Money\System\mnyimprt.exe" %1
with both the quotes and the %1 after the quote. The path will differ based on your installation. Modify it for your setup. There would be a similar string if Quicken is handling that file type.
Answer courtesy of Cal Learner--MVP
Q) Why are my credit card charges showing as credits not debits?
A) There is more than one possibility here.
If downloaded transaction data is involved, there could be a problem in the download file.
Another thing that sometimes happens is that a user entered an account beginning balance as a negative number. So Money thinks the account has a credit balance (the bank owes you) rather than a debit balance (you owe the bank). Entering purchases makes this negative "you owe" balance decline since the bank now "owes you" less money. Unless the bank owed you when you setup the account, the account beginning balance should be a positive number.
Finally, some people just get confused by how liability accounts, of which Credit Card is one example, are depicted in Money. In the account register for a Credit Card account, the amount you owe is positive. At the bottom of the register it normally says something like "You owe: $123.45". If it said "You owe: ($123.45)", you would be running a credit balance.
Note that in the numbers on the Account List and Favorite Account balances on the home page and so on, the amount you owe is shown as negative, and a credit balance would be shown as positive. In the account register, things are the other way around.
Answer derived from one provided by Cal Learner--MVP.
Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.
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Last update: 10 December 2006 |
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