Blair,
Thank you very much for this explanation. It is quite helpful.
I recreated my accounts according to your suggestions and have found a few
"traits" of MoneyWell that I didn't know existed before. Frankly, for my
scenario, I find them annoying. However, I presume the behavior is to
prevent something else that could be damaging, though I don't know what that
would be (Kevin, can you shed any light on this?). Here is what I found:
It seems that if I create a starting balance on any date prior to the
current month, that number does not stay in the salary bucket. In other
words, I can either have a starting date deposit which starts on Jan.1, 2009
and that money will not be available in my salary bucket OR I can have a
starting date deposit which starts no earlier than the beginning of the
current month and that money will be in the salary bucket.
Similarly, when I imported transactions, I found that if the transaction was
from this month, it showed up as a deficit in the appropriate bucket.
However, if the date was prior to this month, it did not show up in any
bucket. I needed this deficit to display so that I could allocate money
from the salary bucket to the appropriate bucket. When I changed the
transaction date to this month, it worked, leaving the correct amount in my
salary bucket (which is the total of my accounts).
To compensate for this behavior I changed the transaction date to the
current month and added the actual transaction date in the memo in brackets
([m/d/yy]). The status date also has the day it was Reconciled.
It may be worth noting that I only really needed to import a few records, so
this was not too laborious. Moreover, I still have my original MoneyWell
document in which the transactions are correct.
Also, Blair, in your four rules, I would change a couple of words for
clarity's sake (marked in brackets):
1 Whenever you spend money or deposit money from/into an account above the
line, you assign the transfer [transaction] to a bucket (again, this is just
like spending money from your envelopes).
2 Whenever you spend money or deposit money directly from/into an account
below the line, you do not assign the transfer [transaction] to a bucket.
4a A transfer has two sides--the withdrawal side and the transfer [
deposit] side.
I found this statement in #4 to be unclear, "assign the transfer on
the account on the side of the dashed line to a bucket." Your examples are
helpful (4a and 4b). If I understand it correctly, can it not be said that
whenever creating a transfer across the lines, always assign the bucket to
the cash account (in the example of this thread, that means to the account
above the line)?
Finally, I created a very simple matrix of what I understand Blair's rule
sot express:
+/- Above +/- Below Transfer no cross
Transfer cross
+-------------------+--------------------+----------------------------+----------------------+
Bucket | Yes | No | No
| Yes |
| | |
| |
+-------------------+--------------------+----------------------------+----------------------+
Thanks,
- daniel
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:58 PM, The Watkinson Family <thewatkins...@mac.com
> wrote:
> Kevin and Daniel,
> One thing that I didn't like about the export and import is that the export
> and import functions aren't fully reversible (at least not when I did this a
> few months ago since Jan 1).
>
> It may be pretty obscure, but I had been using Alt + Enter in order to use
> multiple lines in my memos. If I remember right, any data that wasn't on
> the first line was lost. I think that I also had problems with splits, but
> I could be remembering incorrectly.
>
> Anyway, Daniel, when starting a new, I would leave the Initial Cash Flow at
> 0. Then, I would assign each of my accounts' Starting Balances to an Income
> bucket. This will ensure that you don't have any more money in your buckets
> than you actually have in your account. I'll expand on your illustration on
> how I might setup your accounts.
>
> Personal Checking $500
> Credit Card $0
> Business Checking $500
> Cash $0
> ---------------------------
> Personal Savings $500
>
> The "---------------------" above is actually an account name. I named it
> that way in my document to serve as a divider between two different types of
> accounts. The accounts above the line are my "cash accounts." They are
> accounts from which I would put money into envelopes and spend money from
> envelopes if I were using an envelope system. The accounts below the line
> include savings, investments, loans, etc. These are both assets and
> liabilities that I'd like to track, but that I do not use for cash flow.
> The money in Personal Savings, or a Mortgage, or a car loan or Retirement
> Account would not be used to fund my groceries bucket. These types of
> accounts I put below the dashed line.
>
> Now, when assigning the starting balance for any account above the line, I
> assign it to an income bucket. If you do that in this case, you'll have
> $1000 in the Income bucket. On the other hand, for any account below the
> line, you do not assign the Starting Balance to an Income bucket.
>
> Now, observe the following rules:
>
> - Whenever you spend money or deposit money from/into an account above
> the line, you assign the transfer to a bucket (again, this is just like
> spending money from your envelopes).
> - Whenever you spend money or deposit money directly from/into an
> account below the line, you do not assign the transfer to a bucket.
> - When you transfer money between accounts and you do not cross the
> dashed line, you do not assign the transfer to a bucket (this is just
> moving
> around).
> - When you cross the dashed line with a transfer, assign the transfer
> on the account on the side of the dashed line to a bucket. Two examples
> offered below:
> - Assume you are investing money in your Savings account from your
> Personal Checking account. This is treated as an "expense," even
> though the
> money remains yours. It's as if you took money from your Savings
> envelope
> and walked down to the bank and put it in a Savings account. You would
> need
> to deduct the money from the envelope. A transfer has two sides--the
> withdrawal side and the transfer side. You can toggle between them in
> MoneyWell with the "Show Matching" button. In this scenario, you would
> assign the transfer that's in the account above the line to a bucket--in
> other words, assign the withdrawal from Personal Checking to the expense
> bucket "Savings." This will decrease the bucket amount as we decrease
> the
> amount we have in Personal Checking.
> - Now, assume you are moving money from Savings to your Personal
> Checking account so that you can pay for Emergency Car Repairs. This
> is as
> if you went to the bank and withdrew money from Savings to put into your
> Emergency envelope. Again, following the general rule above, you'll
> assign
> the transaction that's in the account above the line to a bucket. In
> this
> case, the transaction in Personal Checking is a deposit. We'll assign
> that
> deposit to your Emergency bucket, thus increasing the bucket as we
> increase
> the amount in Checking.
>
>
> If you setup MoneyWell the way I suggested above, and your account balances
> are in fact accurate, and you assign the Start Date correctly, and follow
> the four rules above (which, hopefully, are fairly intuitive if you
> understand the types of accounts above and below the line), the total money
> you have in your cash accounts will always equal the total money in your
> buckets.
>
> Please let me know if something doesn't make sense.
>
> Grace to you,
> Blair Watkinson
>
> On Mar 26, 2009, at 4:20 PM, Kevin Hoctor wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 26, 2009, at 1:07 PM, Daniel wrote:
>
> Thanks to Lance,Blair, Trish, and Kevin for your responses. I tried
>
> Trish's approach with the transfers. It helped, but then created a
>
> new negative balance in my credit card account (which really is 0). I
>
> appreciate Lance's comments but they really don't apply as I never use
>
> the download feature (I did once, but found that I wanted to go
>
> through each item anyway and check for duplicates and/or change the
>
> name to a more friendly payee title; also, the downloads came in all
>
> caps, which I didn't like, but that's just a stylistic thing and I'm
>
> pretty sure MW has no control over that.)
>
>
> I tried editing the money flows, as Kevin suggested. However, when I
>
> deleted an item in one bucket it simply added that amount to my salary
>
> bucket, from which it originally came.
>
>
> To be honest, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm really unclear how it is
>
> even possible to have more money in buckets than in accounts. That
>
> seems to be antithetical to the very core of MoneyWell. However, it
>
> may just underscore the fact that understanding the intricacies of
>
> finances has never been easy for me. That is why I love MoneyWell.
>
> The simplicity and the power of the application makes for a great tool
>
> for me.
>
>
> So now I am just wondering about starting over. If I did that I would
>
> like to start at Jan. 1 as I have 26 transactions in a bucket I use
>
> for my business (a sole proprietary business), so I'd like to have
>
> that for 2009 tax information. Is there a way that I can archive my
>
> current data and start anew?
>
>
>
> Daniel,
>
> If you want to start over with money flows, just change your start
> date to April 1, 2009 and work from there forward.
>
> If that's not enough of a "do over" then use File > Export to export
> all your transactions (uncheck the filter option when it appears),
> create a new document (cancel the buckets and accounts panels) and
> import that back in. You'll have all your buckets and transactions
> without any money flows.
>
> Peace,
>
> Kevin Hoctor
> ke...@nothirst.com
> No Thirst Software LLC
> http://nothirst.com
> http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >
>
--
Daniel Shanahan
Oakland, CA 94610
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