[moneydance] how to diagnose OFX problems?

[Sean Reilly]

On Sep 16, 2008, at 4:55 PM, Mark D. Anderson wrote:

> Does anyone from moneydance pay attention to this mailing list?
> Why are we stuck just making guesses about possible solutions?

Sorry about the lack of communication.  The answer is a bit  
complicated...

Any given OFX connection is defined within Moneydance based on the  
following properties:
  Organization ID
  Financial Institution ID
  OFX Connection Profile URL
  Application ID
  Application Version

As you've discovered you can set the first three of those properties  
using the "manual setup" button in the online banking setup window.

If Moneydance already knows about your financial institution (based on  
the Organization ID and FI ID), it will use the Application ID and  
Version that it has associated with that bank.  This applies even if  
you have done a manual setup.

If Moneydance doesn't know about your financial institution then it  
sends the default application ID (MDNC) and version (2005).  Yes, I  
just noticed that I should update the version to 2008.  You can  
override the default app ID and version for unrecognized banks by  
editing your ~/.moneydance/config.dct file in a text editor and adding  
the following lines to the main section (just before the last end- 
curly-brace is a good place):

   "ofx.app_id" = "MDNC"
   "ofx.app_version" = "2008"

> How about at least to say "No, you can't completely configure OFX,  
> and no,
> there is no way to create a text debug log, but we do plan to changing
> that in the release coming out in XYZ"

Hopefully the above will help.  If not (or even if so) please send me  
the name of your bank and I'll try to get the OFX connection  
information myself.  The most common mistake is to use a URL other  
than the FI Profile URL.  An OFX client like Quicken or Moneydance  
starts off by talking to the FI Profile URL to find out the  
capabilities of any OFX service.  It is common for OFX services to use  
different URLs for profile requests, transaction downloads, and bill  
payment messages.

Thanks,
Sean