The Infinite Kind

2024 is Finally Here!

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Hello Moneydance fans!

Today marks the release of Moneydance 2024, our most ambitious update yet, filled with enhancements that will transform your personal finance management experience. As always, our updates are inspired by your feedback and our unwavering commitment to making Moneydance not just useful, but a joy to use.

Below are just a few of the improvements in this update!

Batch Change Amounts

Managing financial data often requires adjustments and corrections. With Moneydance 2024, you can now make these changes in bulk through a simple yet powerful feature: Batch Change Amounts. Want to reverse a bunch of transaction amounts? Just select them, choose Batch Change -> Amount from the register menu, and use the expression “{value} * -1”. Need to convert a selection of transactions from Euros to your local currency? Enter “{value} EUR”. This feature is designed to save you time and can be undone with just a click.

Searchable Accounts and Categories

Finding the exact account or category you need in the Accounts or Categories windows is now a breeze. Filter by name, type, currency, or security. Looking for all bank accounts? Type “Bank”. Need to find Apple shares across your investments? Just search “AAPL”. Plus, we’ve enhanced the usability of account hierarchies and added the option to hide inactive accounts, keeping your financial overview clutter-free.

Super-Powered Date Ranges

Your financial analysis just got sharper with more customizable date ranges. Alongside expanded predefined ranges like “Last 180 days”, you can now adjust the offset and size of most ranges. Shift them earlier or later, or extend them to capture multiple periods—perfect for when you need to compare your financial growth over time. And yes, your custom settings are remembered across graph and report sessions.

Enhanced Auto Backup Settings

Your data is precious, so we’ve upgraded our backup functionality. Moneydance 2024 allows you to keep multiple automatic backups per day, ensuring you never lose a single financial move due to a mishap or misplaced update.

Expanded Context Menus

Right-clicking (or control-clicking on Mac) in Moneydance now reveals more options than ever. Quickly add or remove accounts from the sidebar, edit details, reconcile transactions, adjust balances, or even open an account in a new window—all from the convenience of a context menu.

We believe that these new features will make managing your finances easier and more flexible than ever before. So why wait? Download the latest version of Moneydance today and experience the joy of finance management!

As always, we thank you for your support and enthusiasm. Your suggestions and feedback make all of this possible. Happy financial managing, and here’s to a prosperous year ahead with Moneydance 2024!

Warm regards,

Sean Reilly

Founder & Developer at Moneydance

Here’s the full list of changes in this update:

Batch Change Amounts: You can now change the amount for all selected transactions at once, using any mathematical expression, by choosing Batch Change -> Amount in the register menu. For example, to reverse the value of the selected transactions, use "{value} * -1". Or, to convert the selected transactions from Euro into the currency of the register, enter "{value} EUR". Try it - it's undo-able!
Searchable Accounts and Categories: You can now filter the accounts and categories windows by name, type (bank, credit card, etc), currency, or security. Type "Bank" to show all bank accounts, or "AAPL" to show any shares of Apple across all investment accounts. We also made it easy to expand or collapse account hierarchies, and added an option to hide inactive accounts.
Date ranges are now super-powered, with more predefined ranges available ("Last 180 days", etc), but you can also customise the offset and size of most date ranges by shifting them to earlier or later periods. For example, the range "Last Year" can be offset by -1 to get the previous year, or multiplied by 4 to get the last 4 years. These customisations are remembered when switching or memorising graphs and reports.
Enhance auto backup settings with the ability to save and keep multiple backups per day, rather than just the last saved per day.
More context menus! The right click menu (control-click on Mac) on accounts or transactions now shows more options, including removing/adding accounts to the sidebar, as well as editing, reconciling, adjusting a balance, or opening an account in a new window.
Improved restoration of window locations and sizes, especially when using multiple displays.
Improved Python scripting window and the included sample code.
Mousing over account pickers and most buttons now highlights them to show they are clickable
You can now record transaction reminders by pressing command-return (or control-return)
Recording a transaction reminder is now undo-able
Fixed batch changing of check numbers
Properly handle alt and control-clicks correctly on windows, and modifier clicks more consistently throughout the app
Fixed truncated Summary Page views
Make buy/sell markers on security detail graph better align with price history points
Reset security detail graph and summary information when no security is selected in an investment account
When batch-changing transaction dates, also change the tax date if it was originally the same as the primary date
On Windows and Linux, mouse clicks with modifier keys (control, alt, etc) are now more consistent with platform standards
Allow adding categories to the sidebar, but only from the Categories window
In the Advanced Find window, searching for cleared/reconciling/uncleared transactions no longer returns transactions for which only the other side of transfers matched the search
For type-able account and category fields, the picker popup isn't displayed as aggressively (ie simply by the cursor being in the field)
Faster syncing with iCloud Drive due to a new implementation
Include option to edit securities in the account context menu
Fix bug (windows only) in which the selected account in MDPlusAccountsPanel showed a big white rectangle instead of the account name
Added tooltips for various buttons, notably the split/combined register icon
Added the ability to show raw account details from the standard account popup menu
No longer try to generate a currency graph if there are no currencies
Whether accounts and reports are present in the sidebar is now synced across devices
Remove internal print service preloading and caching, which should no longer be needed
Fix issue on Windows that sometimes prevented the File->Open menu from working
Improvements to Console Window to reveal the locations of special folders such as sync folders, backups, settings, etc. Loading speed is improved when showing large log files.
Inactive accounts in the sidebar are now shown greyed out
Console log: messages now have timestamps
Fixed a bug in which Foresight homepage graph settings are invalid after switching files
Clicking the balance label at the bottom right corner of a register now shows additional details about selected transactions
In register and summary screen quick-search, you can now search and filter for investment actions (e.g. Buy, SellXfr, etc)
Third party extensions can now add items to popup menus for accounts and transactions
Third party extensions can now use Moneydance's internal logging mechanism
You can now set investment action filters on various investment-related graphs and reports
When reconciling investment accounts, the default target amount is taken from the cash balance of the investment account, not including security values
Improved online banking download error messages with actual details of the account and other key information
Fixed investment account lot chooser/editor matching when splits are involved
When opening a graph or report in a new window (with right-click on its sidebar entry), show a full moneydance window and not just the single graph or report
When a register is split, performing a select-all action (command-A or control-A) now only selects transactions in the focused part of the register. If all transactions are already selected, deselect them.
Improved mouse click handling in popup windows
Fixed Portfolio report to show ROI of zero when all inputs were zero
Fixed multiple issues with cost basis and capital gains calculations, with both average cost and lot-based methods. All reports and screens now use the improved and consistent calculations.
Capital gains and cost basis reports now highlight negative values in red
Cost Basis reports now show a grand total row, with negative values in red
Account Balance and Portfolio reports now have options to exclude investment account cash from balance and cost basis calculations
Copying report contents to the clipboard now provides the option to copy as html, comma- or tab delimited text, as well as to encode the data for Excel.
The Security Performance graph now includes all price changes instead of stopping with the last transaction for the security
Improved Summary screen layout so that accounts, reminders, and other long names no longer make the screen too wide to fit the window
Fixed transaction search to properly match memo fields
Fix bug in which searches for description/payee fields might not catch mismatched splits
Pressing return in date fields moves to next field but only if no modifiers are pressed
Fixed a bug in Transaction Filter report when no account field was selected in OR mode
Fixed a bug in the Capital Gains report for unrealised gains with average cost tracking, which previously returned zero or an incorrect number
Fixed occasional text drawing glitch in the quick-search field
Include split transaction amounts when searching from the quick-search field
Minor improvements to the memorised graphs and reports window
Allow transaction sync to continue if a non-decrypt-able file is encountered

Moneydance 2023.2

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce the release of Moneydance 2023.2, the latest update to our comprehensive personal finance software. This update includes a large number of small enhancements and various bug fixes to provide a smoother experience.

Available for immediate download for Mac, Windows, and Linux from our site.

Here are the release notes for Moneydance 2023.2:

The macOS version of Moneydance is now a universal binary and runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs
You can now use emojis anywhere you can enter text, including account and category names and transactions!
Improved syncing performance for files with a large number of attachments
Improved initial syncing performance by performing many small download operations in parallel
A new Undo/Redo system which includes batch changes, file imports, as well as confirming and merging downloaded transactions
Implemented atomic balance recalculation, which fixes occasional summary screen issues following updates from background syncing
Moneydance now auto-commits scheduled reminders (if enabled) 5 seconds after loading a file, then every 3 hours thereafter
Allow selection and deletion of multiple reminders simultaneously
When opening an account in a new window, the window is now offset slightly, and its location is reset to the top or left if it would otherwise move off-screen
Fixed a bug that caused downloaded transactions not to be added to the register when a currency rate or security price was a non-positive number
Fixed a bug that prevented saving changes to check printing settings
Made a search field tweak to prevent text selection issues in certain circumstances
Moneydance now preserves Moneydance+ status across restarts, eliminating the need to refresh from the net immediately after opening a file
Made reminder deletion undoable
Fixed a bug where the previous version of Moneydance showed a loan's starting principal in the balance adjustment field
When syncing, files uploaded from the same device are no longer downloaded, saving a small amount of bandwidth
When syncing to/from mobile devices, Moneydance now re-creates folders that may have been erroneously deleted, rather than failing
OFX and Moneydance+ downloads now use a smarter algorithm to determine the 'last download' date, preventing issues when an account is reconnected or configured to download from multiple sources
If there are too many items in the Moneydance+ Accounts popup, they now overflow to a sub-menu to avoid running off the screen
Added Polish złoty to exchange rates
Pressing enter/return in a date field now moves the focus to the next field
Fixed trial period transaction counting
Improved performance and reduced memory usage when switching between files
Reduced logging when listing files/folders in Dropbox Connection and iCloud Drive sync methods
Recorded more complete investment transaction data downloaded via Moneydance+
Fixed a bug that prevented maintaining 'infinite' backups
Fixed a bug where some Moneydance+ functions could produce an error if there was a delay when loading a file
Fixed a bug where "last N days" date range presets incorrectly included the current date
Added -nobackup flag to skip performing automatic backups when running from the command-line
Fixed the contrast of Foresight graph annotations in dark mode
Made the Security Price History report treat date ranges consistently with other reports and graphs
On Windows and Linux, Moneydance now allocates a maximum amount of RAM based on the amount available on the computer
Reduced unnecessary Moneydance+ console messages
Line graphs now (mostly) include zero on the Y-axis for reference. You can always zoom in for more detail by dragging a rectangle on any graph
Fixed an issue that caused a dataset with no name to appear in the security performance graph
On Windows and Linux, added an option for a user-specific launch options file, overwriting any existing Moneydance.vmoptions

Moneydance 2023!

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

We are thrilled to announce the release of the newest version of Moneydance, packed with convenient new features that will revolutionise the way you manage your finances!

With our new balance adjustment feature, you can easily get your accounts in sync with a bank statement or downloaded transactions. Automatically adjust your balance to match your statement or your most recent download with just a few clicks.

We’ve also improved our undo support, allowing you to effortlessly revert any unwanted changes. Whether it was an accidental deletion or a batch-change gone awry, you can get back to managing your finances without missing a beat.

And that’s not all! We’ve completely redesigned our register filter to make it even easier to find the transactions you need. It’s now more obvious which transactions are being shown. Filter by a specific date or age that you specify, or choose from preset ranges, or even by downloaded or cleared status.

We’re confident that these new features will make Moneydance your go-to finance management tool. So why wait? Download the latest version of Moneydance today and experience the future of finance management!

Upgrading from a previous version of Moneydance? If you’ve purchased Moneydance 2022 then this is a free upgrade, and if you’ve purchased any other previous version then you get it for half price!

Moneydance 2022.6

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce the release of Moneydance 2022.6, the latest version of our powerful financial management software. Moneydance empowers individuals and families to keep track of their finances, make informed decisions, and stay on top of their goals! This new version of Moneydance makes it easier than ever for people to manage their money and take advantage of new capabilities to help them save and grow their finances. Read on to discover how the latest version of Moneydance can help you reach your financial targets!

Available for immediate download for Mac, Windows, and Linux from our site and the Mac App Store.

Please see below for the full list of changes:

Fix category filtering in advanced search window
Moneydance+ setup window refresh button now fully reloads connections, accounts, and then connection metadata
Process synced mobile transaction updates in the same order they were made
Reduce volume of cash register sound by 50%
If a window's remembered location is outside the virtual screen bounds, reset it to the default (centered) location
Update to file selection on macOS Monterey and Ventura to again show bundles as single files instead of folders, and to allow selection of all Moneydance files, including much older versions
Fixed bug that sometimes prevented full disconnection of a Moneydance+ account
Enabled the close-window button on the window shown when printing checks
Fixed the Help->Register Moneydance menu not appearing even if Moneydance wasn't registered/activated
Prevent inefficient processing in Moneydance+ status updates when a connection isn't available
Periodically checks for reminders to auto-commit instead of checking only when opening a file
Now shows the number of decimal places for a currency or security in their info window
Disconnected banks are now no longer shown in the Moneydance+ accounts window
Improved checking of local vs remote timestamps of mobile synced data, resolving an issue on which mobile devices sometimes didn't show updates performed on the desktop
Show a button instead of a clickable label to choose accounts in the Moneydance+ setup window
Hide inactive accounts from the Moneydance+ Setup account picker popup menu
The Download buttons on account registers no longer show entries for disabled/removed connections
Fix a bug that prevented the account selector from appearing in the Moneydance+ Setup window when no local accounts were found with an appropriate type match to the online account
When showing price history for a security that is relative to a security other than the base, display all dates, from both the security and relative currency.
Fix a bug resulting in a blank window being displayed in certain circumstances
Correct an issue with transaction editing on some non-English-language Macs that could sometimes freeze the app
Fix an issue with syncing to mobile devices in which updates from desktop to mobile could be delayed
Added an option to the security account settings window to indicate that the account is inactive
Hide inactive securities from the investment account security detail view, unless there are shares owned or were otherwise active recently

Moneydance 2022.4, Moneydance+ Gets Investing

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Everyone’s favourite personal finance software has been improving in leaps and bounds! Moneydance 2022 has significant new features, most notably the Moneydance+ service, which can seamlessly download transactions from over eleven thousand North American financial institutions. Thousands more are coming soon in the UK and Europe. We’re really excited about this, as the number of supported banks, the quality of downloaded data, connection security, and reliability are beyond what was possible with direct connections. Don’t worry if your bank still provides direct OFX connections; we will fully support them as long as your bank does.

The most recent update, version 2022.4, brings investment download support to Moneydance+ connections. Since a few major brokerages discontinued their support for direct OFX connections last year, this support restores many people’s ability to download their investments into Moneydance. So now you can have your investment accounts fully connected again for a complete and up-to-date view of your finances.

We know you’ll love the new features, especially the ease with which you can download and sync all of your transactions using Moneydance+. As we mentioned in our blog post on privacy in online banking, Moneydance+ is an add-on which requires a very low-priced subscription. There is a free trial, and it is cancelable at any time. Because running the service incurs a fee for us, and since we don’t sell ads or customer data, it’s necessary for us to cover our costs. You can still always purchase Moneydance with a one-off payment, and it’s yours to keep, forever, with no sunsetting of features or additional charges.

Available for immediate download from our site, the Mac App Store, and very soon from the Microsoft Store.

Please see below for the full list of changes:

Removed embedded browser. If you used and like the embedded browser, please let us know! It seemed that very few people knew about it and even fewer used it, so we've removed it, possibly temporarily.
Moneydance+ now supports investment accounts! (in North America, with EU and UK coming soon)
Fix a bug when first creating a custom color theme
No longer show a value in the price column of an Investment Transactions report or Securities Detail screen if the transaction doesn't have a price applied
Include more information in Moneydance+ error notification windows
Fix extensions window updating after adding or removing an extension
When restoring a window's saved state, use the default size if the stored size is smaller than a certain threshold. This helps avoid the tiny-window-in-corner-of-screen problem that a few people had been experiencing.
Fixed Turkish Lira currency ID in default data set
Moneydance now always shows the download options menu if alt is pressed when clicking the download button
You can now merge transactions which were downloaded from different financial institutions using the same service. This means you can have an account download transactions from PayPal as well as from your bank, using Moneydance+
The create-account window is now cancelable with the escape key (except on Mac, sorry. It's a long story)
Updated 32-bit Windows installers
Updated bundled Quotes & Rates extension to work with Yahoo Quotes connection
Fixed new-transaction button when switching between investment accounts
Creating a new transaction from the Security Detail screen now creates a transaction pre-set to the selected security
Don't immediately merge correction transactions if the auto-merge-downloaded transactions option is not enabled
Increased debug logging of Moneydance+ downloaded transactions when the console window is open
Fix bug that prevented overwriting the selected file when saving console window contents
Fix investment transactions report bug which showed incorrect column headers
Fix debit/credit amount reversal in the Transaction Filter report
Fix alignment issue in Memorized Graphs and Reports summary screen title
Improved handling of rare encryption errors in older parts of some data files
Fixed a bug when importing some CSV files which contain multi-level category names, such as "Entertainment:Coding"
Added loan account type to the income/expenses graph config panel
Fixed a memory leak when syncing using iCloud Drive
Fix crash in certain iCloud syncing situations
Fix bug in which inactive accounts do not appear dimmed in the Accounts or Categories windows
Fixed handling of downloaded correction transactions that could result in multiple duplicates
Fix high contrast theme in which secondary text had the same color as the default
Fix bug preventing clicking on the create-category action when a non-existent category has been typed during transaction entry
Improved logging when invalid data is encountered when loading or syncing
Case-insensitive sorting for account and category names
When restoring from a backup/archive file, the new data file is set as a primary sync node
Add transaction metadata to memo field when downloading from Moneydance+
Fix field focus issue when shift-tabbing backwards from the description field during transaction entry
Improve popup behaviour for transaction entry fields, including appearance and keyboardability
Fixed "other side" issues with transaction filter report filtering and display
Double-clicking a transaction in the Advanced Find window now shows the transaction in the account in which it was entered
New securities now default to 5 decimal places (was 4)
Securites window now show more information for each security: current price, last update, and price in relative currency if applicable
When downloading transactions, we now ensure the requested start date/time is the first second of the day
Ensure that the last-download-date for transaction downloads is never in the future
Improvements when changing color schemes
Improvements and bug fixes to Investment Transactions report
Improvements to Transaction Filter report, including a new category filter field
Added the ability to copy/save Moneydance+ debugging info to console window
Fix register sorting by category when clicking on column header
Added certificate authorities for some OFX services
Improved Moneydance+ relinking notifications and process to be less annoying
Constrain dates to prevent graphs from not updating if there are invalid dates in price histories
Improvements to native-ness of buttons, views, and colors on the mac
Show extension list download errors in the extensions window instead of a more annoying separate window
Included more debugging information when logging sync errors
Improve performance with large numbers of transaction reminders are present
Improve performance with Foresight graph recalculation
Use monospaced/code font in console window
Fix slowdown when loading certain files with large account structures
Color scheme improvements and fixes
Improvement to security-matching window
Improved status updates when downloading and de-duplicating transactions
Memorized Graphs and Reports are now listed alphabetically in the separate Graphs and Reports window
Minor increase to extension restrictions
Inactive accounts are now available to select in transaction search report and Advanced Find window
No longer show meaningless security price in register for investment transactions that don't have a price but do have an associated security
Improved currency and security list window, including more useful display and remembering their size and position
Improvements to Moneydance+ transaction downloads, including not saving a last-download date if there were no transactions in the most recent download
Made font loading more resilient to errors seen on 32 bit Windows
More fully remove sync state and encryption passwords upon resetting sync settings
Updated Dropbox SDK
Fixed crash when setting/changing certain color schemes on the mac
Fix error on mac when choosing a future foresight time period
Fix account/category sorting in popups, reports, mobile sync data, etc. so that it is sorted by type and then name, while continuing to have case insensitive sort in popups
The escape key now hides various dialog and prompt windows by default
Allow console parameter in windows 32 bit launcher
Indicate that it's necessary to click on rows in the Moneydance+ setup window to select an account
Improved feedback (window shake and select password) when an incorrect password has been entered when loading a file
Added window when restoring a .moneydancearchive file, providing the ability to rename the restored file as well as an option to keep or reset sync settings
Improved speed when saving daily backups
Download button is now always enabled and shows a popup menu if there are multiple download options available. It also can start the process to set up a connection
Improve currency/security history window calculation that determines whether an edited price was changed
Show all decimal places for prices in net worth report
Show all decimal places for prices in the Portfolio Report
Fixed sign of rate/price in downloaded inter-currency transactions
Improved window management when showing prompt windows
Minor tweaks to account matching dialog when downloading or importing OFX data
Include number of downloaded transactions in post-download status text
Automatic date axis labels in graphs, including in the security detail view
The Show Splits checkbox in Transaction Filter report now works again, but more correctly. It now always expands split transactions if they are inter-currency or the report is grouping by category.
Allow saving reports to CSV with a Byte Order Mark ("CSV, Encoded for Excel")
Ensure that various windows and popups appear on-screen, as they weren't before on some multi-display windows systems.
Allow downloading of Moneydance+ transactions from multiple different source accounts, for example PayPal and a bank account
Case insensitive sorting in window prompting the matching of local securities to online counterparts

Moneydance 2022, Kind of a Big Deal

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Welcome to the single most significant update to Moneydance in our twenty-three-year history! Rather than dump a giant list of changes in your lap, let’s start with our three tentpole features for Moneydance 2022:

Moneydance+. Now with a single click, you can seamlessly download all of your transactions from tens of thousands of banks and credit card accounts. It even works with PayPal and Wise.com! Moneydance+ accesses an order of magnitude more banks than Moneydance has ever supported, and we're excited to roll it out initially for US and Canadian bank and credit card accounts, with EU, UK and investment support soon to follow.</p>
iCloud Drive Syncing. For years, we've heard that many Apple customers would prefer to drop Dropbox and sync using the iCloud Drive that was built-in to their Macs. With this update, Moneydance for Mac can finally do precisely that. We'll be releasing updates to the iPhone and iPad apps shortly. Dropbox syncing will still be available, but there will be an even more seamless sync setup experience for people immersed in the Apple ecosystem.</p>
Finally, we've noticed how many customers loved Kevin Stembridge's Money Foresight extension, which helps you budget and predict balances based on transaction reminders. It's a great way to plan because most people's expenses are regularly recurring, and scheduling income and expenses using reminders provide the best balance forecast possible. With Kevin's help, we've incorporated the feature into the Foresight tools within Moneydance. Check it out for a beautiful new way to plan your financial life!

We know you're going to love the new features, especially the ease with which you can download and sync all of your transactions using Moneydance+. We should mention up front that the use of the Moneydance+ features requires a reasonably priced subscription which includes a free trial and is cancelable at any time. Using Moneydance+ is purely optional and because running the service incurs a fee for us, and since we don't sell ads or customer data, the subscription was necessary. You can still always purchase Moneydance with a one-off payment, and it's yours to keep, forever, with no sunsetting of features. Oh, and there was also a metric ton of the usual minor improvements and bug fixes. We'd love to hear if you have any requests. Tweet at us! Available for immediate download from our site and very soon from the Mac App Store and Microsoft Store.

Moneydance+, Privacy, and Subscriptions

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0100

The upcoming Moneydance+ is easily the most significant update to Moneydance ever. It makes online banking accessible to far more people than ever before, but also raises privacy questions and the dreaded S word: subscriptions. This article is meant to describe our approach to privacy and security, answer these questions, and explain our new (entirely optional!) subscription pricing.

Subscriptions

First, let me say upfront that Moneydance is not going subscription only and never will. If you buy a license, you can use that version (and usually the next major update) for as long as you like. In addition, we have neither the desire nor even the ability to deactivate or “sunset” features. The Moneydance+ service does require a subscription, but it is an additional service that is purely optional. The subscription is necessary to cover our costs for connecting to the aggregator, Plaid. The previous online banking system in Moneydance will remain in place and free of charge for as long as there are banks with OFX servers to which Moneydance can connect.

The fee schedule for Moneydance+ depends upon whether you’ve already got a Moneydance license. If you have a license for Moneydance 2022, then we plan to charge $2/month for the service. If you don’t already have a Moneydance license and would prefer to go subscription-only, you can do so for $5/month. Disclaimer: These prices are subject to change, but we don’t expect them to. Update: as of 2023-03-29 our subscription prices have increased a bit.

The State of Online Banking

We spend a lot of time and effort on Moneydance’s online banking system. We talk to many banks about how to establish and maintain connections between Moneydance and your accounts. In the past, we used the open-standard OFX protocol, with Moneydance connecting directly to the financial institution’s servers.

Problem 1:

Many smaller (and some larger) banks have never supported the OFX protocol. So if their customers wanted to sync with their favourite personal finance app, they would need to download a file from the bank’s website and import it into Moneydance, as if it were 1995.

Problem 2:

Some of the banks that did provide OFX services could be flaky and unreliable, meaning that you still might not be able to download transactions if it happened to be a certain time of day or if the server was down for a couple of days for maintenance

Problem 3:

In the past few years, an increasing number of banks have started decommissioning their OFX servers. They have good reasons for doing so, primarily because 2-factor authentication is impossible to add to OFX without breaking all existing software. Also, a simple username and password are no longer secure enough to protect access to your accounts.

Multiple major banks have contacted us to indicate that they are moving away from OFX and will eventually stop running their servers. We have met with many of them about alternative methods of connecting and even joined as full members of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX). We were clear that our preference is for Moneydance, on your computer, to connect directly to their services, avoiding any “middle men” or aggregators.

I was shocked to hear from the banks that they wanted us to use the aggregators. If we wanted to connect directly to them, there would be an indeterminate delay in being allowed to do so. Many months later, we’re still waiting. That’s another thing about the newer protocols like FDX or the EU and UK’s Open Banking initiatives - they are more secure. Still, clients usually need to be registered and authorised to connect, so we would need explicit approval from each bank. It was clear that that approval was not forthcoming. I don’t blame the banks, as it is so much easier for them to deal with a few significant aggregators rather than hundreds or thousands of different software vendors.

So here we are; Moneydance will continue to support OFX services to connect to any bank that provides the service. We’ll continue to work and debug problems with connections to even the smallest bank’s OFX service. In addition, we’ve set up the Moneydance+ service, which is currently a small connector from Moneydance to Plaid, which has the best privacy policy of the aggregators we’ve investigated. They make their money by charging us a fee per customer-to-bank connection and not by selling your data or showing ads which track your behaviour online.

Privacy

Privacy is a big deal to us at The Infinite Kind. We’ve promised for a long time that we would never share any of your personal or financial information with any third party. Your finances should be private between yourself and your bank or brokerage. We still believe that, however, we also think that many people would like the option to download their finances seamlessly and reliably, even if the transactions go through a third party with a reasonable privacy policy. Moneydance+ is that option. If you don’t subscribe to it, that’s completely fine, and Moneydance will continue to work and improve.

If you do opt-in to using Moneydance+, then I recommend browsing Plaid’s privacy policy. It is refreshingly accessible and not too overloaded with legalese.

On the Moneydance+ side of the connections, we take a minimalist approach to data storage. We run a server that provides access from Moneydance to your Plaid connections, and there’s, unfortunately no way around that. However, our server stores the smallest amount of information possible to provide the service. Here is the information stored on our server:

Your email address: this is necessary to set up your account and link your data files (which stay on your computer) with your account.

An RSA public key for each data file that you have activated with Moneydance+
An encrypted access token for each bank login that you’ve added using Moneydance+
In other words, the only personal information stored on our server is your email address, and we are happy to remove that at any time upon request.

Security

As you can imagine, security is a big deal when handling connections to banks and financial data. As mentioned above, we designed the Moneydance+ service to be an ultra-minimal gateway to the data aggregator. The only credentials stored are an email address and RSA public key, which lets us encrypt and store access tokens so that only you can read them.

The access tokens that Moneydance uses to list accounts and download transactions are immediately one-way encrypted using your RSA public key directly after receipt. Only the private key which lives in the data file on your computer can decrypt those tokens. These tokens need to be stored encrypted on the server because the authentication process that generates them happens in a web browser. Your desktop web browser can handle the complicated authentication needed to log in to many banks and often has an integrated password manager to assist.

Moneydance, running on your device, will periodically retrieve these access tokens, decrypt them, and then use them to download transactions from any accounts and banks to which they grant access. These download requests currently need to go through our server to verify that the requests are linked to your data file and your account. We do not store or log any of the transactions or other data that passes through the server.

We are actively working with our aggregator to avoid the need for these requests to go through our server at all, or at least to be transmitted as end-to-end encrypted “black boxes” which our server cannot read.

Conclusion

Overall, we believe the security of an aggregated system is better than OFX due to the ability to use 2-factor authentication and tokens whose access expires after a reasonable time, requiring re-authentication. Neither Moneydance nor the Moneydance+ service ever has access to your bank login and password. In many cases (all cases in the UK and EU) even our aggregator doesn’t have access to them, and all authentication is delegated to your bank’s web site. Privacy with an aggregated system is honestly not as good as with using software that talks directly to the data source. However, we think using an aggregator is worth the compromise, but leave that choice to you.

Moneydance 2021.1

Fri, 21 May 2021 00:00:00 +0100

We’re so happy to announce the latest update to your favorite money manager. A plethora of big-deal improvements await you after a quick download. If you’re using a Mac you’ll notice a fresh native interface including automatic switching between dark and light modes. Tinkerers will be pleased with support for Python-based extensions. There are almost too many small improvements to list, but we think you’ll enjoy the numerous bits of polish and tweaking as well as plenty of bug fixes. With Moneydance 2021.1 maintaining your personal accounts and checking your cash flow will be the highlight of your day.

As always, with Moneydance you never need to give up any privacy or allow your banking data to flow through any faceless corporations. Your data is never accessible by anyone but you and your banks.

Available for immediate download from our site and very soon from the Mac App Store and Microsoft Store.

Overhaul to Python extension support. It is now possible to build and package extensions to Moneydance that are fully implemented in Python. Further, Python extensions can declare supported entry points, allowing extensibility for deeper integration
Native interface including automatic switching between dark and light mode on macOS, obeying the system setting for auto-hiding scroll bars
New preferences tab with appearance settings, including the ability to select any font you like and change the color theme without requiring a restart
Fixed crashes on macOS when using multiple monitors
Fixed conflict with the macOS 11 (Big Sur) open-documents-in-tabs setting
Fixed highlighting of future transactions in the register
Fixed issue with saving the relative base currency for securities
Improved settings for check number popup and auto-completion, including the ability to have account-specific settings
Fixed error when generating a budget report in certain circumstances
Handle invalid dates properly when reading OFX
Fixed bug when importing or un-archiving a file when the main moneydance window is not yet open
Fixed bug in automatic updating of online banking connection parameters
Skip shared folder metadata files with dot prefixes when scanning for sync updates
Resolve some summary screen drawing errors after importing or syncing
The account properties editor now shows the correct name for the summary/root account
Enable (end-to-end encrypted) tunneling for OFX exchanges with certain banks. This permits connections to financial institutions with special security requirements, such as Schwab and Fidelity
Restored custom TLS layer settings for connections requiring custom tweaks (including Fidelity)
Ensure that all currency snapshot information is included in JSON exports
New file encoding options in QIF import settings window
Ensure that the destination account is remembered when importing QIF files info new accounts
Fixed bug that often caused currency inconsistencies when the base currency was changed
Properly handle http proxy success responses
Tweaks to OFX support to allow connections using minimal http headers
Securities displayed under investment accounts on summary page now show the configured security suffix rather than "Shares"
Fixed window title when showing details of summary account
Sidebar tweaks, including fixing header row indentation
Update popup date picker to respond to color scheme changes and pick a date on mouse-up rather than mouse-down
Updated certain native libraries to enable code signing on the mac, avoiding scary warnings for Python-based extensions
Set moneydance_extension_loader variable in Python extensions that refers to the extension's class loader
Obey minbuild and maxbuild extension requirements at runtime (not just install time)
Fixed bug when sorting by the check number column
Miscellaneous internal graphics/UI improvements
Improve account/category selector when editing a transaction assigned to an inactive category or account
Don't add an escrow split to auto-commited loan transactions if the escrow amount is zero
Fixed bug in which the the sync base folder wasn't being created when setting up syncing on a new Dropbox Folder
Fixed horizontal alignment of printed report titles
Fixed font selection in printed reports
Obey text file encoding parameter header in OFX 2 XML headers
Fixed OFX header processing in OFX2 files
Summary page stock prices panel now shows full price rather than currency value
Fixed warning banner colors when an unverified extension is loaded
Fixed sorting and grouping issue in Investment Transactions and Transaction Filter reports
Fixed parent account name display in parent setting for credit card, liability, and loan account information

Bring on 2021!

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0100

Hello Moneydancers! We think you’re really going to love today’s update to your favourite privacy-preserving financial software. Today we have a beautiful fresh appearance with rounded rectangles, antialiasing, and a generally smoother experience, but the changes aren’t only skin deep. We have a massively improved syncing engine with end-to-end encryption, ensuring that no matter how you sync between devices you need not worry about anyone getting a peek at your precious financial data.

In addition, our embedded browser has had a major behind-the-scenes upgrade which will let it work with many more banks to access your transactions directly from within Moneydance, even if the bank has no online banking other than their web site. The best part is that you don’t need to give up any privacy or allow your banking data to flow through any faceless corporations. With Moneydance, your data is never accessible by anyone but you and your banks.

Available for immediate download from our site and very soon from the Mac App Store and Windows Store.

App-wide interface refresh
Massive improvements to embedded browser functionality
Automatic importing of transaction files from embedded browser
Syncing performance and reliability improvements (iCloud coming soon)
Smoother process for importing from all downloaded account types
We no longer register as an editor for the .md file extension. We used it first, but now it's Markdown's turn
Low-level syncing fixes including dealing with future-dated changes
Increased tolerance for invalid values in downloaded files (including DTSTART tags)
Welcome Window is now interactive if returning from a canceled password prompt or other failed file loading
Improved default printed check layout format
Improved scroll bar UI auto-hiding
No longer use a monospaced font for amount column table headers in the account/category windows
No longer include base-currency history when determining the date range for a currency/security history graph
Updated and added bundled python libraries

Moneydance 2020.1

Wed, 02 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0100

I hope you’re ready for another quick update to your favourite privacy-preserving budgeting software. As with the last update Moneydance 2020.1 is a FREE update to everyone who already has a valid license to Moneydance 2019.

Available for immediate download from our site the Mac App Store and the Windows Store.

Here’s the full list of changes in this update:

When importing QIF files from the file chooser, double-clicking a file, or using drag-and-drop, use the currently selected account as the default import destination if the account type is even remotely compatible with the file

Add check number list options to account settings window

Improve UI for account-specific or global check number list options

Added check number list options to all check number popup fields (including other-side transactions, investment transactions, and liability account transactions)

Fix default destination account selection for QIF files with "liability" accounts