We’ve been getting lots of email from customers of Wesabe, the online financial management web site that has sadly fallen on hard times and is closing up shop. Even though they were technically a competitor, I’ve always been impressed by their policy of openness, data portability and unselfish concern for their customers. Our concern for customer freedom is the reason our customers can export every last bit of their Moneydance information to a portable XML file.
Wesabe’s openness now enables their former users to migrate to other financial management systems, such as Moneydance, without losing any of their information. We’ve created a Moneydance extension that will import all accounts, categories, tags and transactions either directly from wesabe.com or from an XML file that was previously downloaded from Wesabe. The latter method will be necessary after July 31st which is when Wesabe has promised that they will destroy any user data remaining in their system.
To get your data from Wesabe into Moneydance, there are few simple steps:
- Download and install Moneydance
- Use the Extensions->Add menu to add the “Wesabe Migration Assistant” extension
- Select the Extensions->Import from Wesabe.com menu and follow the instructions
You will be presented with two methods for importing your data, either by entering your email address and Wesabe password to let Moneydance do the work (note: will not work after July 31st 2010), or you can feed Moneydance the XML file that you previously downloaded from Wesabe’s XML download link (again, you must perform that download on or before July 31st).
We’d like to note that you can migrate your data without having to purchase a Moneydance license or commit in any way. You can even migrate your data into Moneydance and then immediately export it into another format not exportable by Wesabe such as QIF.
Finally, we’d like to wish the people behind Wesabe luck in their next endeavors. They put a lot of hard work into a great product, and thanks to the efforts they put into data portability their customers are not stranded without options.