Re: M06 Deluxe Budgeting Issues by R
R
Thu Nov 03 09:04:15 CST 2005
I am constantly revising my budget because our finances keep changing.
These phantom amounts drive me nuts and they usually result from deleting a
scheduled bill or deposit or changing the amount of a scheduled bill or
deposit. Deleting them is a bad idea because they don't go away but rather
come back to haunt you in strange ways. To get rid of scheduled bills or
deposits I use the This bill will end at some point option in the Edit
dialog. I put 12/31 of the prior year in the two date boxes and 0 in the no
of payments remaining box. Click ok and see what happens. Usually I have
to do it twice before the item actually goes away. Sometimes I have to
enter Other in the payment method box to make it work. You can usually get
to the Edit dialog by right clicking on the item in the budget summary. If
there is no item to edit when you right click, which happens to some people,
my idea will not work.
If your budget is hopelessly messed up and you have no backup copy of your
file to revert back to, you can try deleting your budgets completely and
recreate them manually. I tried this once but it did not work. Phantom
numbers were still there. Then I tried exporting all my data in qif files
and reimported them back into a new Money file. That worked but it is a lot
of work. I had about 60 accounts and you do have to export them one at a
time but you can import them in a big batch I think. Don't remember the
details of the process very well but Money tells you what to do so you only
have to follow the built in instructions. You have a lot of accounts (225)
and are looking at 2 days work but it would be worth it to me. You do not
loose any transaction data in this process, but you do get rid of old
budgets which must be recreated manually in the new file. You are right,
without a good budget, Money would be nearly worthless. I can balance my
checkbooks in my head usually or on a scrap of paper if they get extra
active. I need Money for the budget and other reports.
This budget problem is really annoying and I am following Moneydance hoping
to switch when it matures. You might want to watch MD's progress as well.
The developer is hoping to exceed Quicken/Money in functionality without the
downsides. I think he has a chance so I bought a copy and I test it every
few months to follow the progress. Many people are completely happy with it
as it now stands.
Regards,
Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ
"Colety" <Colety@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2119B178-9938-4137-BDA7-DA28DD0F6BC5@microsoft.com...
>I am still trying to fix the budgeting feature in Money 06. I cannot switch
> from Essential Budget to Advanced and Essential Budget does not appear to
> work correctly.
> Let's start with Essential Budget:
> I have tried repairing the file both Quick and Standard without affect.
> I have tried deleting all Income and Expense without affect.
> However I have noticed that with all these deleted the budget looks
> strange.
> When looking at the Expense page the summary says $0 Income and $0
> Expenses
> Net $0, but when looking at the Income page the summary indicates a $2960
> expense for a Net -$2960 budget.
> I saw something about starting a new file and importing QIF file which I
> though I would try but it looks like I can only export 1 account at a time
> and this file has over 225 accounts in it. I certainly can't do that.
> Are there any other solutions? I want to get to Advanced Budgeting mode
> preferably, but in lieu of that would be slightly satisfied to get the
> budget
> to net out correctly in the Essential mode. I suspect the two issues may
> share the same root cause and it may be this "phanton" $2960 in expenses
> that
> is keeping me from switching to Advanced mode. Without a budgeting
> feature,
> this program is really little more than a checkbook in terms of
> functionality
> for me anyway. I have transactions dating back to 1998 in this Money file,
> I
> would hate to lose all that information by creating a new file and am not
> even sure that would fix the budgeting problem. Please help or point me in
> a
> direction.