[moneydance] I've had it with Quicken for Windows! Anysuggestions from Quicken converts?

[Dal Pal (NSM)]

Thanks for the info! I have been monitoring the Moneydance e-mails and
noticed that the tax category reporting seems to be an issue. Not sure if
you or someone else mentioned this earlier.

It's been a couple of months since I played with Moneydance (last time
Quicken trashed my files in January) but I didn't find the tax reporting to
be all that bad. HOWEVER... because Quicken did not identify tax categories
with any regularity, I have my categories set up probably a lot differently
than most folks so that I can understand them. Anything that is NOT tax
related begins with 'x-'. This is an example of my tax categories:

Income:
*IRS 1040
   1099-R Pension - BENCOR
   1099-R Pension - Payments
      Pension - NON-taxable (1099-R)
      Pension - taxable (1099-R)
      etc.

Expenses:
*IRS A - Deductions
   A01-04 Medical Over 7.5%
      Dental insurance
      Doctors & hosps
      Eyeglasses
      etc.
   A05-09 Taxes
      Personal Property Tax
      Real Estate Tax
      Sales Tax Paid
      State Income Tax Prior Yr
      etc.

I found it very easy to print a tax report in Moneydance by specifying the
categories I wanted. In fact, the report was better in Moneydance than in
Quicken because Quicken lumps tax items together where Moneydance (again if
I remember correctly) broke them down by the categories I specified. Would
something like that help with the long and short term capital gains?

As for moving shares... I don't know if this will work but if you are moving
all shares from one brokerage to another, why not just rename the account
and put a REMINDER (or whatever it is in Moneydance) that on this date
acount was moved from Broker A to Broker B. That's basically what I did when
Janus converted my 403b7 to an IRA. I showed all the buys and sells but it
really wasn't necessary except for the money I moved to a different fund.

For purchase sale/history... I started buying stocks back in 1984 and used
DRPs a lot back then. Since I'm basically a long-term investor, I don't do a
lot of trading now and am no longer in DRPs. But as for reporting... I've
seen (and my tax accountant last year did this also) when selling stocks,
rather than putting in individual purchases, just put in "various" and lumps
everything together. As long as long and short term are split out and
matches what the broker sends to the IRS, it may not be a problem.

DISCLAIMER:
I'm not a tax accountant or anything so verify any of this that you want to
try with you tax advisor!

	Leslee

-----Original Message-----
From: moneydance-info-bounces at moneydance.com
[mailto:moneydance-info-bounces at moneydance.com]On Behalf Of Mellow
Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 13:15
To: moneydance-info at moneydance.com
Subject: Re: [moneydance] I've had it with Quicken for Windows!
Anysuggestions from Quicken converts?


I'm doing the same thing you are.  I'm currently using Moneydance in
parallel with Quicken Mac '07, and will continue to do so throughout 2009
until tax time next year, to see how Moneydance works for a full tax cycle.
In that time, Moneydance 2009 (and maybe 2010) will be released, so I'll get
to see how it improves.  The goal, of course, is to dump Quicken entirely.
There are a lot of things I like about Moneydance that work better than
Quicken.  In other important areas, however, Quicken is still superior.

You asked about things to look out for.  For me, I see two deal-breakers
that will force me to drop Moneydance if they are not added by next year
when my lengthy evaluation is complete:

(1)  short and long term capital gains reporting:  When I first tried
Moneydance in 2006, it didn't report capital gains at all.  In the 2008
version, there is a capital gains report, but it only reports total gains.
It doesn't break out short and long term gains.  I need to have these
numbers broken out, as that is how it is reported to the IRS.  This seems
like a pretty big deal to me, and I wonder how everyone who relies solely on
Moneydance gets around it.

(2)  transferring shares between accounts:  As far as I can tell, Moneydance
provides no way to move shares from one investment account to another.
Having switched brokerages a couple of times, I consider this pretty
critical.  You need to be able to move shares between accounts and preserve
all your purchase/sale history (again, for those all-important capital gains
calculations).

I'd also like to see improvements to downloaded transaction matching.  Right
now, there is no way to manually match a downloaded transaction to one you
entered in the register.  So if Moneydance guesses wrong on the match, the
only way around it is to delete one or the other.  This is not a
deal-breaker for me, but it is annoying.

Despite these issues, there is a lot to love about Moneydance.  Best of luck
in your evaluation.

-----Original Message-----

This is the 2nd time since 1/1/09 that Quicken has trashed my data file. I'm
in the process of cleaning up all the garbage that was added to and deleted
from MY data by Quicken and will be converting it to try on Moneydance.
Until I'm comfortable with Moneydance (or Quicken trashes my data again,
whichever comes first!), I will be running Moneydance AND Quicken. I
wondered if anyone has any suggestions on what to watch out for in
Moneydance, what doesn't work as well (I know reports are not the greatest),
etc. Any help greatly appreciated!
   Leslee




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