forum.mthbuilt.com

Soon I will be wanting to import data from my Moneydance data file. Their best export option is Moneydance XML format, which isn't very useful. Their other options are QIF or Tab delimited. So far I have yet to try Tab delimited to see if it is more complete than QIF. I would prefer to avoid QIF as it omits a lot of data that is retained in OFX format. They do allow third party extensions, but so far none has been written to export data in OFX format.

I have found a website in the Netherlands <http://www.mt2ofx.tk/> that offers a freeware program that purports to convert files from some formats (including MT940) to OFX. I wonder if it could be modified to convert Moneydance XML to OFX. I don't really expect you to answer that question directly. If I have enough energy, I will create some test files and see if that is feasible.

With that introduction, can you offer any advice to aid transfer of data from Moneydance?

Thanks

We can't comment on a particular utility but it seems that MT940 converter may not do what you want to accomplish, MT940 is a different format used mostly by European banks, we actually have MT940 import in the feature pipeline at a low priority.

If you have a choice you should always go for OFX or Microsoft Active Statements, as these are technically superior formats.

Is MoneyDance open format? In other words are there specs, blue-prints, samples etc? If it is an open format and we get few samples we don't mind providing converter ourselves. If it is a proprietary format we can't really make commitments against someone else s technology.

Moneydance is semi-open architecture. They do invite third parties to develop extensions and they publish this API to use as an interface <http://moneydance.com/dev/apidoc/index.html> I am not a java programmer, but I personally think that the program has gotten out of control. One sign is that a lot of recent fixes or "improvements" have created new problems or broken older fixes. I think that API seems unnecessarily complex, although the underlying structure two or three years ago seemed quite sound. Your attorneys could start at this page <http://moneydance.com/developer> to check for intellectual property issues.

Their Moneydance XML is extremely verbose, but it seems to contain all the data that came in the original OFX or QFX import for each transaction. Following is a quote in XML for a simple transaction that was downloaded in QFX format:

<PTXN>
<TXNID>175062</TXNID>
<ACCTID>353</ACCTID>
<DESC>WITHDRAWAL - IL WAUKEGAN 1850 NORMAN WOODS</DESC>
<STATUS>x</STATUS>
<DATE>2009.04.24</DATE>
<DTENTERED>2009.05.18 23:26:19:484</DTENTERED>
<TAXDATE>2009.04.24</TAXDATE>
<CHECKNUM>ATM</CHECKNUM>
<MEMO>WITHDRAWAL - IL WAUKEGAN 1850 NORMAN WOODS US</MEMO>
<TAGS>
<TAG>
<KEY>ol.orig-payee</KEY>
<VAL>WITHDRAWAL - IL WAUKEGAN</VAL>
</TAG>
<TAG>
<KEY>ol.orig-memo</KEY>
<VAL>WITHDRAWAL - IL WAUKEGAN 1850 NORMAN WOODS US</VAL>
</TAG>
<TAG>
<KEY>ol_fitid_1</KEY>
<VAL>ZZZZZZZZZZ</VAL>
</TAG>
</TAGS>
<SPLITS>
<STXN>
<TXNID>175063</TXNID>
<ACCTID>393</ACCTID>
<DESC>WITHDRAWAL - IL WAUKEGAN 1850 NORMAN WOODS</DESC>
<PARENTAMT>-50.00</PARENTAMT>
<SPLITAMT>50.00</SPLITAMT>
<RAWRATE>1</RAWRATE>
<STATUS> </STATUS>
<TAGS>
</TAGS>
</STXN>
</SPLITS>
</PTXN>

The Fitid was the only item that needed to be removed for sanitization. The other numbers are references to data tables that are not included here. Hopefully, their API may be a key to write SQL to extract the relevant data.

I am willing to discuss this further if you decide that you can pursue it. There is one third party that has already written what seems to be a very nicely structured extension to Moneydance. He is Kevin Menningen. His email is<kmenningen@tds.net> and his website is <http://www.mennesoft.com/findandreplace/index.html> I have not told him that I gave you his address, but it is easily found by searching for moneydance extensions.

David Carlson

We will take a look, thanks

We can't commit to a specific timeline on this, but we are adding investment related imports at the moment so may be after that if there are no intellectual properties issues.

As a workaround --if they do export into QIF you may want to follow that route and gradually clean and refactor the data in My Money

Thanks,