Cal (and Dick if he's lurking),

I let MDlx download my trans. There were 6 pending items; I manually created
entries in my register for them (AFTER converting to Advanced Register),
yesterday. Last night, the bank's download updated 4 of them, matched their
trans with mine and asked me which one I wanted to keep in my register.
Slick! No duplications (at least, not yet). The auto download did Jan 20, 08
to Jun 19, so, I went into my BofA online banking and created an ofx file for
the trans from 6/20/2007 to 1/20/2008, imported those. I spun through them,
assigning accounts and, now, I'm working montlhly bank recs.

Thanks for your advice and encouragement. Now that my feet are wet, this
isn't quite so daunting.

Cheers!

Ron

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Ron Mckenzie
Orlando, FL


"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

some comments inline...

"RonMcK3" wrote:

- quote -

Well, the data that comes from the FIs may not be the best example to copy
but you will see this and adapt as time goes along. One reason this can be an
issue is that they tend to include data you don't want or need in Payees
and/or Memos like merchant numbers or store numbers or 800 numbers. Many
users want all the variations of WalMArt, for instance, to be normalized to
WalMart. This is probably more of an issue with debit card and/or credit card
use than, say, with drafts and/or epays.

- quote -

I'm not sure where you are seeing this because I keep my epayment stuff
separate from Money. But you can look at the register and the bold line is
today. Stuff below may be pending or similar stuff above--and the running
balance immediately above--should be pretty close to real. Likewise, you may
find the Forecast Cash Flow (a link off of the Bills & Deposits page) a most
useful tool. You may have to customize it and/or hand select the accounts to
be displayed to get the data you really want.

In microsoft.public.money, RonMcK3 wrote:

- quote -

In general, I want to pick a way compatible with what I download
from the FI. In an investment account, sometimes the sweep money
market Buys and Sells are downloaded. Another broker will just let
the cash balance reflect the sweep funds. Both are fine. If I had
two brokers that provided a different paradigm, I would use the two
different paradigms. Now if I entered everything by hand, I could do
it all consistently. I would rather have the net advantage to me of
downloading.

Entering transactions before downloading is a nice concept. I do it
occasionally. But I am not rigorous enough to do it all of the time.

- quote -

There is more than one right way. And it is OK to change methods.

One advantage that downloading gives is it enters the transactions
for me while they are fresh in my mind. Twice in several years I
have had a credit card charge downloaded that I did not make. Since
I downloaded while any such transaction would be fresh in my mind, I
was able to pursue the possibly fraudulent transactions long before
statement time.

So yes, I guess I tend to take the FI's numbers. But I inspect and
at least sanity check. I also apply categories to be able to
analyze.

What works well for you is the, or at least "a", right way.

That makes sense. Since I want to catch pending transactions (deposits, debit
card items, handwritten cks, etc) as soon as I know about each one, I assume
I should copy the formatting that the bank uses for the description for other
transactions like this one?

I notice that Money picks up as pending all of the online payments scheduled
for the next 30 days. This throws my calculated balance off considerably. I
want them to count against my balance on the day each is to be paid (debited
against my acct); or, worst case, to be debited on the day the check is sent
(4 days or 1 day prior, or same day). I would like to have a true book
balance to compare with the bank balance.

Your guidance? Thanks in advance!

--
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Ron Mckenzie
Orlando, FL


"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, RonMcK3 wrote:

- quote -

You can turn off downloads for any FI. I would not do so myself; I
like downloading. I am better at finding the mistakes of others than
I am at finding my own mistakes.

Dick and/or Cal,

Or, can it turn off the downloads?

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Ron Mckenzie
Orlando, FL