Personal Finance

Shrek · Guest

Hi,

I have several Bank of America accounts. I was able to get the accounts to
update online but for the past month or so online update fails and no
inclination as to what went wrong is given. All accounts (checking, saving,
etc) fail to update. I called Bank of America customer support to learn that
they don't support Money.

Can someone tell me how I can troubleshoot this?

Art McClinton · Guest

If you look at the commnets made in other threads you will find that the
Bank of America automatic download from Money 2005 is at best very
problematic.

Money 2005 has introduced a second method for downloads from a bank.
Under 2004 and still remaining in 2005 is the direct download where
Microsoft and the Bank were able to agree on the interaction. Bank of
America, since they support Quicken ends up with a different definition
that made it so they could not come to agreement with Money on certain
key definitions. Money then went to a company called Yodlee that logs
in to your Bank of America account and picks up information from the web
site where it is passed to the Microsoft Money web site, and finally to
your Money 2005 account on your PC. Since you are using this, all of
your Money files are now stored on MoneyCentral so that you can see them
from other sites, and Yodlee can see them while performing the updates.

That said, how can you diagnosis your problem:
1) verify that you are currently running .1105 version (do an help/about
to see the version number.)
2) You should open an Incident Report with Microsoft Money.
3) They will have you start a new money file with a new passport account
that you can separately connect to Bank of America. It will work
better but not perfect as Yodlee is still having problems with Bank of
America. See my other posts concerning BoA ingests into Money 05 missing
check numbers, missing data until it has been at the BoA site for 2-3
days past when an OFX download will find it, and getting the wrong
balance so that can not autobalance within Money 05.
4) You can see what Yodlee is doing by going to www.yodlee.com and set
up an onyodlee account where you can look at your BoA accounts. It will
show things that Money 05 still does not have. But still shows the same
basic problems that are above. OnYodlee will show your mortgage
accounts if any, and the BoA Bill pay information.
5) If you are a gluton for punishment, you can from within Money 05
where the BoA account does not work, create a new account for BoA. When
given a choice say that it is a new username password and set up a
second connection to BoA. Then you merge the accounts to get rid of the
first account if the second one works.

FOR ME, I HAVE A TEST ACCOUNT MONITORING BoA, BUT MY PRODUCTION ACCOUNT
IS NOT SET UP FOR ON-LINE ACCESS. I AM USING OFX DOWNLOADS ON MY
PRODUCTION ACCOUNTS JUST AS I DID IN MONEY 04. IT APPEARS TO BE A
YODLEE PROBLEM BUT I AM NOT CONVINCED THAT THEY WILL FIX IT.

Art

Shrek wrote:

Teo Lachev [MVP] · Guest

Art,

Thanks for the eleborate feedback. What's OFX download and how should I go
about setting it up?

--
Hope this helps.

---------------------------------------------
Teo Lachev, MVP [SQL Server], MCSD, MCT
Author: "Microsoft Reporting Services in Action"
Publisher website: http://www.manning.com/lachev
Buy it from Amazon.com: http://shrinkster.com/eq
Home page and blog: http://www.prologika.com/
---------------------------------------------

"Art McClinton" <art@nova.org> wrote in message
news:FF4vd.4550$7p.4358@lakeread02...

SJCOHEN730 · Guest

I use Money 2005 to manage my Bank of America (BOA) checking account WITH
ABOSLUTELY NO PROBLEMS. How do I do it? Simple. Every morning I call up BOA or
log to their web site. I get my account balance and the days transactions. If I
wrote a check, I record it in Money. If a deposit is made, usually
automatically posted to Money. I do a simple daily reconciliation. It takes a
couple of minutes a day. I'm done. No problems. No data flowing from Money to
Yodlee to BOA, etc. Now why don't the rest of you Money users do the same thing
and avoid all that wasted time trying to fix technology that isn't quite there
yet? Steve

Shrek · Guest

So, why don't we just ditch Money altogether and go back to pencil pushing?
Is that what you are asking?

Well, my answer is because you buy a piece of software to automate some
manual work so I don't have to maintain two logs. Going in your direction,
what's the purpose of using Money instead of say Excel? This actually may be
a solution considering all the Money limitations with transaction
reconciliation, online updates, and so on.

"SJCOHEN730" <sjcohen730@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041213095753.23255.00001784@mb-m03.aol.com...

Dick Watson · Guest

<soapbox>

IF all you use Money for is to keep a register, THEN it seems true that
downloading data will save a lot of labor--assuming it goes trouble free and
the downloading never fails and your payees always match and so on. But if
all you use Money for is to keep a register that matches, by definition, the
data you download from your bank--or your bank's website if Yodlee is
involved, what's the point? Why not just log into your bank's web site, look
at the data, and press on? What value did Money really add?

IF, on the other hand, you use Money to manage a budget, forecast cash flow,
track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track
property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc costs, estimate taxes and so forth, THEN
a) the quality and consistency of transaction data matters and dependence on
downloaded data may not be entirely compatible with this objective, and b)
the amount of time and effort spent doing manual transaction entry is a
small fraction of total time spent using Money at worst and is no more and
maybe less than the time spent keeping the download thing working and making
up for all of the things it can't do at best or screws up at worst. An
example of things the downloaded data can't do at best are split a paycheck
deposit into its constituent parts, classify transactions for vehicle or
property or similar, and do splits for things like an expense at the grocery
being part Food:Groceries, part Miscellaneous:Supplies, and part
Transfer:Pocket Change. As for the "at worst" side of transaction download,
just read the newsgroup for a week. I'd bet this past week fully 2/3 of the
posts have had something to do with problems with downloaded transaction
data. Imagine if 2/3 of the posts in the Word newsgroup had to do with
typing text into the thing.

You say you bought Money "to automate some manual work so I don't have to
maintain two logs." What's the second log? You say "what's the purpose of
using Money instead of say Excel? This actually may be a solution
considering all the Money limitations with transaction reconciliation,
online updates, and so on." I'm really curious about this. It suggests in
some circular way that downloaded transaction data is the singular way to
make Money work and the limitations with downloaded transaction data reduce
Money to the level of Excel in terms of solving the problems at hand. It's
like saying if the heated seat in the car isn't working well, just walk
instead.

The problems with downloaded transaction data are just that. There is NO
function in Money (e.g., manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset
value, manage investments, track asset values, track
property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc costs, estimate taxes) that is one iota
easier, or better, or more capable, or enabled uniquely by downloaded
transaction data except for downloaded transaction data itself. In fact, all
of those other functions are TRANSPARENT to how the transaction data
actually gets there. Worse, many of them are only as good as the data they
process. If you enter the data, you get it right; if you let your bank
manage the data, you get what you get.

</soapbox>

What we really need is two Money product lines: Money View--put it on the
web only. Make it just M05 Essential *. The user of this product just wants
a passive approach that provides value by aggregating data ala Yodlee and
delivering relevant info--aka targeted ads. The second, Money Management, is
the traditional Money product where the users is actually expecting to put
effort in and perform analysis and planning and so forth.

"Shrek" <shrek1966@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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Art McClinton · Guest

While you have the account register open, select "Connect to Bank" / "Go
to Bank Website" and log in to view the BoA webpage. Go to the Checking
account (or credit card account) and click on "Download". Verify that
the account is selected in step 1 and the correct range is selected in
step 2. I always use the complete statement period except around the
range where data extends over current and previous period. In Step 3
select "Active statment for Money" (this happens to be OFX) and Money
will coordinate with the bank to only download the transactions not
previously downloaded. Next press download statment and "open". You
will now see download complete message. Click ok, and if new data exists
you will end up on the "You have statements to Read page". Once you have
"accepted/edited the data, you can click the back arrow to get back to
the Bank of America web page if you have other items to do. BoA will
time out in about 5-10 minutes if you do not go back and sign out.

For SJCOHEN, this is easier than the pencil and paper method. It works
with all versions of Money.

Art

Teo Lachev [MVP] wrote:

Teo Lachev [MVP] · Guest

Art, thank you so much for the workaround.

"Art McClinton" <art@nova.org> wrote in message
news:%jsvd.6652$7p.1223@lakeread02...

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