Yes, my problem was compounded by the 'first' download of the OFX. I was
just looking for results from the first time, not finding, then starting over
with a pasted back up file and the process started over again.
In addition, the OFX was new to me. And the rest posted above.
I download a lot more than once a month & forget to input some cc info on
occassion.
I will probably go back to my old bank as the entry on my current bank plus
entry into Money for the BillPay service is akin to snailmail.
Hats off to both Jim & Cal for the replies with what I consider a boat load
of info. In addition to some patience with the 'web' side news groups, I'm
finding a lot more useful information in other postings.
Thanks, again.
jeff

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Jim wrote:

- quote -

I seldom enter a credit card transaction before downloading, and
that's not because I forgot. It's optional. So Saabaa, don't feel
that is needed. The bolding that Jim points out is good so that the
new transactions stand out. If you download fairly often, the
transactions will be fresher in your mind than those who reconcile
to a statement monthly. For them, hand entry as they go is more
important.

In microsoft.public.money, Jim wrote:

- quote -

I enter very few transactions manually. And I don't feel guilty a
bit.

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:31:01 -0700, saabaa
<saabaa[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

- quote -

I guess I'm a little confused by your Scenarios. If I read you post
correctly you want transaction that you forgot to enter yourself or
ones that you think might be fraudulent etc. to stand out. With the
setting you have chosen that's not going to happen (Auto except all
downloaded transactions - and mark all excepted transaction as
reconciled - I have this one checked myself - but not the auto except
one)). With the QIF files I can see where not have these set could be
time consuming, but if your new banks provides the OFX file, this
shouldn't be a problem - except for the first download. After that it
should only download the transaction that haven't already been
downloaded. When you download (without the setting you have checked)
Money will bold the transactions downloaded and if they match a
transaction in your register you will see a message along the lines of
Money has matched a transaction entered in your register - you'll see
the banks entry and your entry - then you can accept or change if the
match is incorrect. As was stated you can use the view menu options of
Unaccepted transaction to see only the downloaded ones. If you don't
see the Money has matched message on a transaction - then it's
possible one that you forgot to enter yourself or maybe a fraudulent
ones. Maybe this is what your looking for. How often do you download -
unless there are extremely long intervals between downloads, with the
OFX file I don't see where this can be a big problem. If I've somehow
misunderstood you reasoning - then forgive this long post.

Jim

In microsoft.public.money, saabaa wrote:

- quote -

A shorter period would usually be preferred by most people who
change that number.

- quote -

I would not do that, since I want to look thru them and match them
to other transactions or to select the proper Payee and Category
before accepting.

- quote -

I would not do that either. Instead, the Reconciling should be done
when you think things are in balance.

Don't get the idea that I am good at the balancing process.

In microsoft.public.money, saabaa wrote:

- quote -

The normal way that things get Reconciled is to do the balancing
process. If you have a method that works fine for you already, you
don't have to use the normal balancing process, as you have found. I
usually use my own method myself. Here is some discussion that
includes a shortcut to make all, or a sequence, be R=Reconciled:

The balancing paradigm is that you receive a statement that covers
a period of time, or at least it covers a set of transactions not
covered by other statements. The transactions covered by previous
statements should have been marked as balanced before starting.
The net sum of the reconciled transactions should match the
starting balance.

You may have already marked transactions that have been recognized
by the statement issuer during the period of the statement as
cleared. Those transactions covered by the statement that have not
been marked as cleared should be will be marked as such during the
balancing process.

Electronically cleared transactions are marked with E during
downloads or imports. For Money, this has no distinction from a
blank C column for purposes of the balancing process.

An E item that is marked as Reconciled or Cleared and later marked
as unreconciled will return to its E status.

For Money, E (Electronically cleared) is not considered Cleared by
the Balancing process. During the balancing, you must still
left-click the Es to change them to Cs. As you do, the Difference
moves toward $0.00. For M02, Es in the statement period are
automatically changed to Cs.

There appears to be no built-in effect of the C column for
investment accounts. There is no balancing. The column can serve
as a memo for whether downloaded etc.

If you wish to start fresh and declare an account balanced, you can
mark all entries balanced. Select to show only unreconciled
transactions. Sort by date, and go to the oldest transaction.
Hold down Cntl+Shift+M and let auto-repeat work thru the
transactions until none are left showing. Do not change the
starting date or starting balance. The starting balance is the sum
of the transactions that have already been marked as reconciled.
Then balance making the ending balance match the known balance.
Choose the balance date to be the day after your last transaction.
This is not the normal procedure. It starts you with an amnesty
for former balancing.

Thereafter, follow the normal procedure. Look at the balancing
movie clip from your Money disk.

During the normal procedure, you are presented with the list of
transactions that are not reconciled. In the left column will be
the starting, and ending balances you entered as you started
balancing. There will also be a difference amount. As you click
on the C column for a transaction reflected on the statement, that
space in the C column will change to a C. If you mark an
transaction cleared that has not actually been reflected on the
statement, you can click the C column again to toggle the cleared
status. The difference should move toward zero. As you continue,
you should eventually get the difference to zero. If you can not,
you can click next. Money will offer some choices.

The opening balance is a calculation of the opening account balance
plus or minus any reconciled transactions.

In microsoft.public.money, saabaa wrote:

- quote -

The 'E' is "Electronically cleared"-- the transaction was
electronically downloaded from the FI. If you manually enter a
transaction, that column starts as blank.

Okay, after some uninterrupted work, I figured some errors I was producing
myself.

**First, I was not marking the individual transactions as either
‘Reconciled’, ‘Cleared’ or ‘Unreconciled’ (referred to as ‘E’ in the right
click context menu?) everytime I would open up a previously saved data file,
during this time of figuring this problem out. I guess I was not doing this
as it was *very* time consuming since you can *only* do this one transaction
at a time, rather than having a very nice option of hitting ‘Shift’ or Ctrl’
buttons to select numerous entries. This is probably where the problem had
increased velocity. Any known shortcuts keys would be very helpful. Holding
the ‘Shift’ key & clicking a transaction in the ‘C’ column changes the
transactions’ state (Cleared, Reconciled), but nothing known on multiple
transaction marking. Again, if anyone knows of some keystrokes on that.

**Second, compounding this was discovering that indeed I had only recently
started using the OFX extension (self explanatory).

**Third, the ‘C’, ‘R’, or ‘E’ column is not sort-able as easily as the rest
by simply clicking on the heading. You must click on ‘View’ & then drill
down thru to find what you want to _view_ by, not sort. Unsure why this is
not a sort-able column like most of the other columns, but this too was part
of my errors I’ve created for myself.

As you have pointed out in so many words, changing to another bank has
really created some changes and I believe this is what started this problem.
Also, showing Unaccepted Transactions as you have pointed out will help.

Thanks, jeff

"saabaa" wrote:

- quote -

Thank you for the rapid response. Though I’m not 100% this answers the
question. As I was trying to be detailed, I have some things out of time or
sequence, but for the most part the data in my description is about correct
as you have pointed out. I’m wondering now if I am just having difficulty by
looking at the data too quickly, or perhaps b/c I am looking at backups & not
enough fresh data from the bank, this is skewing my results.... I’ll explain.

Under the ‘Online Settings’, it seems simple enough to
**Select say, 60 days as the ‘Match Transactions Period’.
**Automatically accept all downloaded transactions from banking statements.
**Automatically mark accepted transactions as reconciled.
Well then viola, any transaction I have not manually entered, would or
should come to stand out after I import the downloaded OFX file, right?
Well, this does not appear to be the case as I have purposely left out a few
transactions I know are actually good and they do not stand out, they are
accepted (or marked) and thus blend in and are not distinguishable. Does
this make sense, or am I being difficult on this?
Thanks, jeff


"Art McClinton" wrote:

- quote -

If I understand correctly, you are manually entering all of your
transactions and then checking them against those downloaded from your bank
or credit card. In the past you had a bank where you could download
directly from within Money. Now you have a bank where you have to manually
download the OFX file and enter it into money.

At this point you are matching and accepting these transactions to see which
ones you had not previously entered into Money. You check this small subset
to determine if you had simply forgotten to enter the transaction or if it
is a bogus transaction.

This sounds like a basic method of completing what you want to do. Yes you
will need to perform some work in the matching. In the case of OFX
downloads, the protocol will result in only having to match what had not
previously been downloaded. In the case of QIF files you will end up
repeating the download and matching of the same records.

With your new bank, hopefully you have OFX files as it will limit the
downloads. You also are correct that with Bill Pay within Money vs Bill Pay
on the website of the new bank, you will need to enter the information
twice.

Your unapproved transactions, as you call them, will be the ones that you
can not match against the manual entry. If I do not have time to track down
a transaction, I just do not accept it until I figure out what it is. This
them leaves it in a state which is easy to view in the register as you can
at the top of the register select "show unaccepted transactions".

"saabaa" <saabaa[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
newsA496CD5-AC11-464B-8375-EC86FC741298[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Hello,
Unapproved transactions do not stand out –this is my problem.

I've sifted thru numerous postings and could not quite find the answer I'm
looking for. Perhaps this is most obvious, basic or stupidity on my part,
but I'm too deep to realize or see the solution. This is with MSMoney Plus
Deluxe 2006, using advanced register; I do not use the MSN or any online
system synchronizing, just basically as a check register & download/import
OFX files to it from my bank.
Scenario Transaction 1: I forgot to enter a transaction in MSMoney.
Scenario Transaction 2: I don't trust my bank, or I just want a system of
double checking what the bank (by default) will automatically accept when
presented to my account(s) from another institution/vendor.
Scenario Transaction 3: Someone uses a check or one of my credit cards
without my approval.

Perhaps you may see what I am getting at above. In all three scenario
transactions, I cannot see anyone of these in MSMoney standout when I
download/import the OFX file (also tried the QIF files). I have
options/settings in the > Tools > Settings > Online Service Settings:
**Match Transactions within a xx-day range. Makes no difference at either 1
or 100 days.
**Automatically accept all downloaded transactions from banking statements
–If I don’t check this, every transaction must be painstakingly (phwew, every
transaction, this is very time consuming) right-clicked & accepted.
**Automatically mark accepted transactions as reconciled –As a domino affect
to the previous setting, this only further buries the Scenario transaction
that I need to have ‘stand-out’.

I recently changed banks, and the only difference I can see is that at my
previous bank, I was able to do online transactions from within MSMoney. My
new bank unfortunately does not support this, and yes it is very frustrating
having to go thru their web portal to pay my bills online (subject to their
time constraints of which I fully understand, but just a pain having to enter
items twice). Other than that, I’m lost for this problem.
If anyone understand this, or needs more info, I’d be happy to provide more.
Thanks in advance for any support or commentary, jeff