On 2005-05-13, mpmorin <mpmorin[at]verizon.net> wrote:
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As far as I know, there is nothing different between any of
the versions of money that support OFX and transaction matching.
However, it's certainly possible that money's transaction matching
has gotten worse and you see it if you're using QIF. Long story
short: OFX handles this properly because it can. QIF can not and
Money must guess. Money's guessing might fluctuate over time.
With OFX, Money doesn't have to gues.

If you're stuck with QIF, you're going to be stuck with this problem.

It just really sucks that I have to pay attention because if I inadvertently
accept a transaction that was already accepted my register will be off.
Money does not differentiate now. It used to. Maybe its because I changed
banks. Maybe its because I was downloading from different browser.

Michael


"Mark Horn" <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote in message
news:slrnd7ve8c.9g0.mark[at]home.hornclan.com...
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On 2005-05-09, Jim <kaplanjim[at]attbi.com> wrote:
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OFX does not include payee for handwritten checks. When I see a
handwritten check I either have to check my handwritten register
or I go online and look at the check image.

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Ok. Maybe you can encourage them to support the format. It's an
open format: http://www.ofx.org

Good luck.

I do have a wide time window (60 days) set for matching, after one was
entered as duplicated. The only one I can recall, caught (manually)
during a failed balancing. In this case...a check I wrote and
manually entered in Money was not cashed for over 45 days.

I suppose another advantage of OFX is that includes payee, since all
actual checks I download are automatically assigned the payee of the
one most recently in the register before the download.

But in my case, I have a strong loyalty to my Credit Union and would
not switch just because an institution offered OFX.

Jim

On Mon, 09 May 2005 19:25:00 GMT, Mark Horn <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote:

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On 2005-05-09, Jim <kaplanjim[at]attbi.com> wrote:
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Maybe. What I can tell you (with certainty) is that QIF does not
provide unique transaction identification, while OFX does. This
allows Money to know with certainty whether or not a transaction is
new when using OFX. But when using QIF, Money can't possibly know.
The best it can do is guess. What I've seen is that Money's ability
to guess at matching transactions is pretty bad. But you can avoid
a LOT of the badness by using OFX.

Or by doing what you appear to be doing, and manually selecting
only new transactions to download. The OP seemed to be doing what
most do: download the last 30 days worth. Which, if you did this
same thing yesterday, would give you 29 days worth of overlap.
That's 29 days worth of transactions that have to be matched.
When you do this with QIF, Money has to guess at how to match those
transactions. When you do this with OFX Money doesn't have to guess. It
knows what's a new transaction.

But, as always, I could be totally wrong about why it's working
for you. You're still way better off with OFX than QIF. In fact,
if you were using OFX instead of QIF, you wouldn't have to hand
select only the new transactions. You could simply download the
last X days worth (for as many days as you like) and avoid hand
selecting transactions. Of course, the first time you do this,
you'll have to go through many many days worth of transaction
matching. Because Money doesn't have the OFX transaction IDs for
your existing transactions. But after that, you'd be done with it,
and you could avoid the hand selection of new transactions.

Or, of course, you can just keep doing what you're doing if that
is working for you.

I don't have this problem using M2004 standard and my bank does use
QIF files. I have to select the transactions to download and more
often than not download some that already have. I've never had a
problem that I can recall with this or any older version of money. Is
it just luck?

Jim

On Mon, 09 May 2005 15:02:32 GMT, Mark Horn <mark[at]hornclan.com> wrote:

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On 2005-05-09, mpmorin <mpmorin[at]verizon.net> wrote:
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Are you referring to the little 'E' that shows up in the cleared
column? For some reason, I thought that meant electronic (i.e. this
transaction was electronically downloaded.)

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No. It has to do with the fact that you're downloading QIF
files instead of OFX files. OFX transactions include unique
transaction IDs. Something that is grossly missing from QIF.
Money recognizes those transaction IDs and when it sees a repeat
transaction in a download ignores it. Unfortunately, with QIF,
Money can't do this, so it has no choice but to continue to ask
you to try and match the transaction.

If your bank offers OFX, use it instead. If your bank doesn't
offer OFX, you're stuck. You either have to live with it or switch
to a bank that offers OFX. If you're bank offers QFX, you could
try that too. QFX is OFX with one additional field that only
Quicken uses. I've never tried it, but it might work in Money.
It's highly unlikely that your bank will offer QFX without also
offering OFX as the format is almost completely identical.

Good luck.

When I download from my bank, it goes into the register as entered. When I
download the next time, it re-downloads the same thing sometimes
Unfortunately, the program(Mny '04 deluxe) doesn't recognize this as a
duplicate download. Does this have something to do with entered vs.
reconciled? Usually I'd be able to match it to the proper one but
unfortunately its grayed out and cannot select it.

Not sure how to undo it or correct it.
Michael