Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

Pulling a different card out of your wallet is simple, and requires no
different effort than what they're doing now. The benefits are significant.

The volume of data entry required to maintain accurate records is far more
than I or others are willing to do. Not only would I have to enter the data,
I'd also have to keep every receipt I ever touched. The volume of paper
piling on my desk at home is already overwhelming, even without having to do
that.

The effort of changing banks (if there is effort involved) is a one-time
event, whereas the labor gains of avoiding data entry is permanent. I didn't
suggest that, in this case, anyway. If I did, my recommendation is premised
on the user having no particular allegiance to the bank they're using.

I really have little problem with all this. I did try out the MSN Money
Plus-MSN Billpay stuff, but it didn't work to my liking and wasn't worth any
effort. Everything else works fine, with the banks I use. I don't use
Passport/Yodlee, at all.

Don't take this as a dig, since it's not intended that way, but is there any
amount of trouble you **won't** recommend people go to in order to make this
downloaded transaction data thing work **acceptably better** so they can
avoid entering a transaction by hand and getting it right the first time?

I mean how much is enough? There are recommendations routinely posted here
for people to change banks, change investment companies, change cards,
change the way they use their cards and which cards to use, change versions,
tap dance, chant secret chants, howl at the moon, etc., to get this stuff to
work tolerably well. All to avoid some typing. Money CAN be used without
downloading transaction data.

What can I say? I just don't get it. Call me dense...

"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:uaOF6EVwFHA.2072[at]TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Rather than abandon online banking, abandon use of your debit card. I use a
credit card in essentially the same way (paying off every month) and have no
problem with transaction descriptions. They're always the vendor name.

Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

If the banking system were setup like OFX output was a requirement as
opposed to some graft-on afterthought, the 32 character field would allow
something meaningful and the banks would normalize this field in their
systems. But OFX is a complete afterthought. You get what you get. Those of
us who Just Say No to downloaded transaction data never have problems like
these.

If you are waiting to be comforted knowing somebody is fixing this, stand by
to be uncomfortable for a LONG time. This problem runs all the way through
the banking system right up to the point-of-sale. Fixing the OFX spec is the
least of the problems. The banking system just was not designed with things
like Money and end users like us in mind. Of course most of that design
occurred before Money existed...

"Jay Waltmunson" <Jay Waltmunson[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:669AA330-0529-4877-B64C-11F4585513C1[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

- quote -

This should be a VERY BIG CONCERN on someone's list. I'm having the same
problems... my wife and I would like to use Money for budgeting, but the 32
field limit forces us to have our online transactions open just to understand
what's going on in money... here's an example:

"POS #036023*POS* REDMOND WA"

When we look at this we have NO idea what it means. How can the budget
feature in money help when a family has 50-100 of these in a given month? It
would be comforting to know that someone is working to fix this.

Jay

Chris Cowles wrote:
- quote -

The OFX spec says the payee name field is limited to 32
characters.

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
Please reply to newsgroup

Shaun H wrote:
- quote -

I'm guessing it's a field length limit, in which case the answer would be
no. If your provider is not compliant with the OFX standard (whatever it is)
the onus would be on them to comply, should they want to.

I'm using Money 2006 and Bank or America. All transaction descriptions are in
a format of:
PURCHASE [transaction ID] ON [date] AT [payee]

But money seems to dump anything after the slash in the date.

Example:
PURCHASE XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ON 08/

Which makes it impossible to categorize transactions, or even see what the
transaction is. Is there any known solution to fix this?