Replies: 2 comments 11 replies
-
|
@nmsleal If so, it seems that what you are doing is mirroring what you used to have to do to reconcile your accounts in the days when your bank only sent you a paper statement just once a month. Nowadays bank transaction data is easy to download, so why not simply import it into MMEX on a more regular basis, for example weekly or even every couple of days, and use this as the primary input of transactions into MMEX? It saves a huge amount of time and effort. MMEX's transaction data import capability has been significantly improved for version 1.6.4 (to be released soon), with the ability to automatically pattern match bank payee data to your Payees in MMEX and to automatically catego 8000 rise transactions to/from that Payee. It's now much more efficient to use the bank data as source of your transactions data. This will become even more the case if/when MMEX has the ability to connect to your bank (for example via Open Banking in the UK) and download data automatically. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Ok, @tactilis, I'll give it a try to design my own workflow using coloring on imported transactions and having some discipline to handle statements. Reconciliation will always be hard on MMEX when compared with the old Microsoft Money, but with time and the new import developments it may fit my purpose at some time... It would really help to have some matching mechanism that could mark the duplicates resulting from the import, you know?
Can you please elaborate a bit on your workflow? I know you don't use the statement and imagine you regularly import your transactions, but what do you do with the collected on the way receipts? And how do you match recurred or other manually entered transactions with the imported ones? Visually, ordering them by some date/payee (when the new conversion feature stabilizes)? This all seems a bit messy, with lots of visual matching, last minute changes and many deletes. One last comment: Don't we all reconcile against some retrospective state of the data? You probably do it weekly, or with some other periodicity. The statement is the same, but monthly, and on the workflow I've shown you it has some reviews in-between. It surely isn't as different as you think. Thanks! |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
To be clear, I'm not against such a capability existing in MMEX. However it will be hard getting the reconciliation rules and the UI right so that the capability:
The considerable effort that someone would need to put into implementing a Reconciliation Assistant, or whatever it might be called, needs to be balanced against the difficulty (or otherwise) of doing reconciliation in MMEX now - or rather doing it, after the Payee & Category matching feature is released and has had some significant use. For me, a big part of reconciliation is not so much checking whether "the bank has got it right" because I've never encountered a 'bank error'; rather reconciliation is involves the assignment of a consistent set of payee names and categories to imported transactions so that I can produce meaningful payee and category reports. With Payee & Category matching during import, this will be even easier. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Reconciliation is much more than controlling the bank (yes, they sometimes do error or uncommunicated changes), or controlling myself. Here's a good definition, that refers to small businesses, but the concept can be applied to our own personal finance records, particularly when you have several accounts, cards, assets, investments, and so on...: https://www.business.org/finance/accounting/what-is-bank-reconciliation/ Don't ditch the link I sent because it refers to SMBs. The borderline between personal and small business is thin ice. Just think of somebody that has too much to control on his stack, between cards, accounts, investments and, to give you an example, does remote freelance work, thus has suppliers and customers. This is an use case very common nowadays... My personal finances are quite complex, and we're not talking of a SMB. And neither are we doing it about bookkeeping software or need. Best MMEX competitors, for me and both having advanced transaction matching on import, would be Quicken, a paid one, and an open source beast, GnuCash. The latter has just too much functionalities, starting with the double-entry system, but both are strong contenders.
I'd like this capability, but understand it's a complex thing, that requires some design, research and development effort. As I told you before, if I ever get the required time, I'd think and implement it myself, as this would set MMEX apart, making if a very solid solution. For now I'd settle on an advanced matching capability at import time...
I don't see it as not simple and not intuitive. Imported transactions that match existing ones get a status 'Cleared' or 'Matched'. Unmatched get none and are inserted. Changing status to 'Entered' is manual during a validation phase, and to 'Reconciled' can be manual, as of today, or aided with that Reconciliation Assistant. Without the assistant, this would be a nice extension of the new matching mechanism.
Surely anyone having to do paperwork, and/or having many transactions to process or busy accounts, will be expecting this matching functionality
Is there any doubt it would? I don't disagree of your last paragraph, though. Those functionalities will definitively help a lot! They won't avoid the manual reconciliation, and won't help the matching, but they are a good start into that path, for sure! This new version will be put to test soon. We may talk later ;-) Keep up the good work! You're developing an excellent product! |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
You put forward a convincing argument. And, as I said, I'm not against having the capability. It just needs to work well.
It's others who will need to decide if they want to write the code. I just try to help the process by:
|
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
You're perfectly right! My bad. I'm rephrasing my sentence: I also try to help by:
As my time is scarce, this is a work in progress, but I'll get there! Thanks to all contributors for keeping this project alive! |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Another thing related with the current evolution on Open Banking, is that the banks are slowly moving into MMEX (and other similar apps) grounds: I use several banks, and each one of them allows me to integrate the information from the others, and all of them implemented an automatic categorization of all transactions, allowing me to setup budgets too. We're seeing a clear move into functionalities that used to be exclusive of apps like MMEX. This means we have to empower MMEX as much as we can to make it strive on this troubled expectancies. It should evolve fast into Open Banking and, at the same time, provide more functionalities than what banks are preparing, or it will start to lose momentum. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
I can remember the times when I used a very useful personal finance manager, Microsoft Money, that unfortunately was discontinued. It was extremely friendly and MMEX is what most closely resembles it, but I miss a tremendous feature it had, related with the reconciliation process. It was basically a guided helper functionality, allowing an easy match of imported extract transactions, making it extremely easy to fix dates or other details and reconcile the entire period quite fast and easily.
The workflow was (correct me if I miss something, as this is really old stuff):
Would anybody find it interesting to add this feature to MMEx? I certainly would! ;-)
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions