Forecaster for Moneydance 2015
Issue #15
resolved
I have started testing Moneydance 2015 preview and find Forecaster will not work. Any chance that an update for Forecaster will be available soon for Moneydance 2015?
Comments (82)
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repo owner
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Hi Kevin,
I'm the original poster. Thanks for the response!
To answer your questions:
Would you still use Moneydance without cashflow forecasting?
Yes, I would still use it. There is also an extension called Balance Predictor that, while nowhere nearly as complete as Forecaster, would work in a pinch. However, I would miss Forecaster a lot.
Would you still use the Forecaster if it wasn't free?
Yes - I would gladly pay an additional amount to use Forecaster. I have it docked to my Home Page in MD 2014 and depend on it heavily.
How much do you think it is worth?
That's a tough one - MD costs around $50. So, 10% - 20% would be in the $5 - $10 range. That range seems fair to me (of course, from my end, the $5 would be better :) ).
What extra features would you like to see in the Forecaster or in Moneydance in general?
As I said above, the ability to add Forecaster to the Home page is something I'd hate to part with. Having the table view is also very nice - maybe with enhanced ability to export the data to a spreadsheet! I've been using MD for a long time (originally on Windows, then Linux, now Mac). Prior to that I used MS Money. I have tried a few others (which do have a Forecaster module built into their reports) but really like MD. I also use their iOS app (although I'd like to see a bit more functionality there).
I'm glad to see the extension seems to be very much in active development! I'm looking forward to continuing to use it, even as a paid app.
Regards,
Art
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repo owner
Hi Art,
Thanks very much for the feedback.
If I understand you correctly, you haven't yet come across the "Export to CSV" feature in the Forecaster. It's available under the File menu.
Thanks again for the feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'll keep working on the 2015 upgrade and let you know when I have something ready.
Regards,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
So, no, I hadn't realized there was a CSV export feature! I guess I was expecting to see it as a button somewhere in the output window - didn't occur to me to look in the menu. Great!
I've also given the topic of other features some thought. As I said, I used MS Money a long time ago and I seem to remember their forecast module did more than just chart data from reminders - I believe it also included additional data - maybe budget numbers or built an algorithm based on past expenses (sorry can't remember). I do remember discussions around this not being available in other finance programs - including Quicken - but I don't know if that's still the case. So, maybe that's something you could think about in added value for Forecaster. Either way, as I said earlier, I would gladly pay for it as it is today.
Thanks,
Art
ps - I did ask the Moneydance group why Forecaster wasn't included in the 2015 beta and was told it was developed by a 3rd party, which is how I got here after some Google searches. So, maybe my asking (and hopefully others will too) shows that this extension adds value to their product. Balance Predictor is better than nothing, but it doesn't come close to the current Forecaster features.
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repo owner
Hi Art,
I like the suggestion. I'd like to perform analysis of past spending in order to better predict future spending.
Could you point me to a link of where you were asking about the Forecaster for 2015? I've searched the 2 forums I'm aware of. I'd like to keep an eye out for any questions.
Regards, Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
I have been communicating with the Moneydance developers with 2015 beta feedback just through their support email. I wasn't aware there were any active public forums. Their old public forum just points now to a zendesk link which just seems to open a documentation page.
I know they make posts on Twitter and Facebook, but I refuse to have accounts for these (yes, I'm a dinosaur) so they are basically "read only" to me. if there are other public Moneydance discussion forums I'd appreciate the links.
Thanks,
Art
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Hi Kevin S,
Happy New Year to you and yours!
I agree with Art's responses. You should absolutely be compensated for your work on the Forecaster. As in Art's case, the Forecaster has become a staple on my Homepage and I would gladly pony up a couple of US dollars to continue to use it. :)
I have to confess that I am at something of a loss as to how you could improve upon it. It currently does everything that I need it to do.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you might have in mind as far as additions to the Forecaster.
My initial feelings on beta testing MD 2015 are lukewarm but hopeful. As it stands though, I may be staying with MD 2011; again, because it does everything that I need it to do.
Hi Art,
You can reach the Zendesk public forums from here: https://infinitekind.zendesk.com/hc/communities/public/topics
Be forewarned, the Zendesk forums are a sorry comparison to Moneydance's previous forums at Tender. Interaction with the support staff is comparatively non-existent. It is primarily a user-to-user forum.
HTH -Kevin N.
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repo owner
Hi Kevin,
Happy new year to you too. What a year. The little one just had her first birthday and she has a little sister due in a couple of months. It's going to be crazy.
There's quite a few things I'd like to add to the Forecaster, such as the past spending analysis Art mentioned, but I never have enough time to do everything I'd like to. I'll have to take it one step at a time for now.
Art, the 2 forums I was referring to are the old one that you've found and the one that Kevin linked to. So you're not missing out on anything as far as I can tell.
Cheers, Kevin
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Thanks, guys.
Just an FYI, I reported to support that Balance Predictor doesn't work properly in the 2015 beta:
https://www.evernote.com/l/AD4LvLIe8-ZCwLAxzGliq39QQ1pjcOfpdeM
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I just updated to Moneydance 2015 when I was notified of the new version via their RSS feed. I noticed right away that Forecaster was missing (I wish I had been informed prior to updating that many extensions are not compatible with the update).
I immediately reverted to Moneydance 2014, and will wait to try 2015 again once your extension is updated. I'd be happy to pay a small amount for Forecaster.
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Yup, I just reverted back to 2014 as well. I had been using the 2015 preview on my desktop with a copy of my MD data file and then using 2014 on my laptop. It floored me that they went to a final release since the current build is still so buggy (and lacked Forecaster along with several other extensions not working) - I have several emails in to them with bug reports and they haven't responded in the past few days. Hopefully that will get straightened out, but for now I'm back to 2014. Actually, other than a UI makeover and a new data file structure that's supposed to be more efficient, I hadn't really seen much change.
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repo owner
Thanks for the update Bill and Art. I too wasn't expecting to see it released so soon. I've still got a bit of work to do before I'm ready to release the new Forecaster. To warn you in advance, there won't be any new features at first. It's just taking some time to add functionality related to registering paid users.
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For me, the Forecaster is by far the most useful extension, and only found after updating to Moneydance 2015 that it was not yet compatible with the new version. I think the Infinite Kind slipped up in not making that clear when promoting the update, and have now reverted to Moneydance 2014. I'm looking forward to seeing your updated version of Forecaster, and certainly think it will be worth paying to have it.
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Here is also one Forecaster user how is waiting MD2015 compatible version and ready to pay for it. I would have been nice from Infinite Kind part to tell that not all the add-ons MD2015 ready.
Hopefully new version Forecaster is ready near future.
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repo owner
Hi Ryder and Jukka, I'm glad to hear you find the Forecaster useful and apologies that I don't yet have a 2015 version ready. I'll post here as soon as I have something available.
Cheers, Kevin
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Hi Kevin.
Like others have already stated, Forecaster is essential to me and I wouldn't use MoneyDance without it. I have tried Balance Predictor but it is nowhere as good. I am going to have to revert to 2014 until it is available.
I will happily pay for Forecaster and since it is a key component, I would pay whatever it takes but £15-20 doesn't seem excessive to me. I hope the updated version will also fix the pesky bug which sometimes duplicates future payments scheduled on a 4 weekly basis.
What else would I like to see in MoneyDance or an extension? That is easy, a decent budgeting module. I HATE the current solution. Firstly due to Income budgets being an after thought that utilise the old method, and secondly since both methods are so clunky to use. The best method in my opinion is the well tried and tested spreadsheet design that was used in Quicken. Now I would pay serious money for an extension that did this well.
Cheers, John
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repo owner
Hi John, Thanks for the feedback. My first goal is to get the existing forecaster out the door as is but after that one of the first things I have on my TODO list is to review the existing bugs. The one you reported will be the first one I look at. https://bitbucket.org/kevinstembridge/moneydance-forecaster/issue/12/duplicated-transaction-in-the-forecast
I'm with you regarding the existing budgeting feature in MD. I waited years for them to produce an 'envelope budgeting' feature and I was very disappointed when it was released. After that I tried to write my own but I was constrained by the API that MD makes available to extensions. But I do want to have another look at it again at some point.
Cheers, Kevin
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Kevin,
Just a comment - many of us (it seems) are planning on staying with MD 2014 for, at least, the short/medium term. I'm not sure I'm seeing a lot of inertia behind bug fixes that leads me to believe 2015 will be useable any time soon. And there are a lot of extensions just plain broken (not just Forecaster - I also can't get Balance Predictor or Find & Replace to work and Money Pie hasn't worked in a long time (more on that one later). I could be wrong about how quick they will bring 2015 and the extensions up to speed, but....
Anyway, if you are planning on selling an unlock key for the new version of Forecaster, that's great - I'll buy it and hang on to it for whenever I update to MD 2015. If not, then you might also think about having a "donate" button for those of us that want to help finance updates. It would be nice (I know, developers probably dread those 4 little words) if some of the new paid features would be backwards compatible with earlier versions of Moneydance. I have no idea how tough that would be to code, though.
On the topic of Budgets - I agree that the existing Budget feature in MD is pretty bare-bones. I had used the Money Pie extension for a little while, but it stopped working, even in MD 2014. If you go to their info page, there is this statement:
"Being a free product, the bills just don't get paid putting more time and effort into this project." Sounds familiar :)
http://www.ragingcoders.com/moneypie-help/
So, I'm not happy where Moneydance seems to be heading, but I've tried other Personal Finance apps and still like this one best. Investing in those willing to develop sound extensions (like Forecaster) may hopefully breathe new life into it.
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+1 What Kevin said.
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repo owner
Hi Art,
I'm also sticking with 2014 for my day-to-day stuff and only using 2015 for extension development. I hadn't thought about creating a paid version of the Forecaster for 2014 but it's certainly something I would consider if it was going to be economically worthwhile. MD 2015 is very different from 2014 under the hood so I wouldn't be able to create something that would work on both. I'd be doing twice the work for any new feature but that in itself is not a problem if it means I have twice the number of customers.
Thanks for the suggestion to help finance development by donating or paying in advance but I'm afraid my main constraint right now is finding enough spare time. I appreciate the offer but I would prefer for you to hold on to your money until I have something of value to offer. Also, the feedback I'm getting from you and others on this thread is a fantastic way to help me out. At this stage, finding out why someone might pay for something is more valuable than the actual payment. Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin
I came to Moneydance 2014 from MS Money, largely driven by a desire to be able to update my shares and pension fund holdings automatically, but I have discovered that MD does not do that anyway!! In terms of this thread, your forecaster is vital - the balance predictor is useless as it can't be put on the home page. I logged a feature request to IK some time ago about forecaster, not realising that it was not theirs. I tried the credit card reminder function, but gave up on it as I kept ending up with duplicated payments and problems with statement and payment dates as the credit card statements are not always done on the same day. I also have to change the actual payment day due to weekends and Bank Holidays. The reminder function in MD is not very good in that you can't change a single instance of a reminder. I tried MD 2015, but it was not even stable enough to be called a Beta, so went back to 2014. In my humble view MD is useless without your forecaster and I will not use it, but if I am expected to pay for the forecaster on top of having to pay for MD, I will expect to be able to request a lot of enhancements to bring it up to the standard of what I had in MS Money 10 years ago. In short, I would pay for a forecaster extension, provided that it included more functionality than at present. I am surprisingly in the position of seriously contemplating reverting to MS Money, which gave me the ability to accurately predict the future balance in all my accounts.
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repo owner
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback.
I understand the issue you have with the credit card reminder function. I'm a little constrained by the API that Moneydance exposes to extensions but I'm going to have a look at that and see if there is a way I can match up actual payments against forecasted payments. It will probably require some kind of confirmation from the user but it should be possible to do something.
I fully intend adding some new features. I have some in mind already but I'm very interested in ideas from customers as well. I have to warn you in advance that it will be slow going. This is still a project that I do in my spare time and I don't have as much of that as I used to. I'm going to try and be as transparent as possible about what I'm working on for those who are interested.
Thanks again for the valuable feedback.
Kevin
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Hi Kevin
I really appreciate your frankness and I am very encouraged with your intention to incorporate new features. I wanted you to know that I would be happy to consider paying for something so useful, but that there would be a resulting expectation. I cite the example of MD itself. I raised several suggestions, all of which resulted in the same response - 'it has been passed to the developers' I installed 2015, to discover no new functionality, merely a new look and feel and then went on to find that it did not even work. Users will only tolerate being charged money to Beta test for so long and will also become tired of suggestions being ignored - the forum is full of suggestions going back years!
If you wish to charge for the extension for 2015, please think very carefully about the time that you would be able to commit to the project. Most are happy to accept your lack of time when it is free, many will be less tolerant when they have paid.
I hope I do not sound too negative, so I will finish on a positive note. The forecaster extension for 2014 is very good and I very much appreciate your time and effort in providing it. I would go so far as to say that I would not have purchased MD without it.
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You know, the right answer here in my mind is that a mature app like Moneydance shouldn't need to rely on "extensions" to provide basic functionality that should be inherent in the design. Forecast reporting, CSV imports, Find & Replace, Detailed Budgeting, etc. should all be basic to the app (and are basic to competitor finance apps). Relying on free/donation ware to fill in the gaps and make Moneydance competitive doesn't seem like a sound business model (well, maybe in the short term, but Forecaster and Money Pie are two examples of what happens when you rely on people maintaining key extensions without compensation).
I've used Moneydance for a long time. I like the app a lot, but loss of many of the extensions will make me remain on older versions that eventually won't work after a future OS update. I'm not updating to MD 2015 (even though it's free) and I'm darn sure not updating to the next paid version unless there is (1) much better QC and (2) solid extensions that keep MD current with other Personal Finance apps.
Bottom line is IK should pony up to extension developers and compensate them for keeping MD competitive. It's not Kevin's responsibility to continue to provide updates for free. It's IK's responsibility to be sure their product is competitive and provides the basic functions we expect a Financial app to have in 2015.
In that sense I think Kevin's commitment to updating Forecaster, even with some minimal compensation from us users, is pretty admirable, considering. Maybe he'll make enough extra cash to be able to take his family out for a nice meal once in a while to make up for the extra spare time he loses working on these kind of pet projects.
Regards,
Art
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Hi Kevin S,
I offered help to a user on the Zendesk forum who wanted to know if there was a way to print out a list of Reminders w/dates & amounts. I instructed him to install the Forecaster and export the 'Table' to a CSV and print it from within a spreadsheet program.
It dawned on me then that a nice improvement to the Forecaster would be the ability to print the 'Table' from within the Forecaster.
BTW, congratulations on your new arrival. :)
Best Wishes, -Kevin N.
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repo owner
Hi Kevin,
Thank for the tip. I'll add that to my list.
Cheers, Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
Do you have any idea, when you are ready to release first beta?
-Jukka-
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repo owner
Hi Jukka,
Sorry to keep you waiting. I've been making steady progress over the last few weeks. The forecaster itself is now compatible with MD 2015 but I've been adding functionality related to verification and activation of registration codes for paid users. This involves creating a backend server, database and a website for downloading and purchasing. A lot of that work is also complete now. I'm almost in a position to make something publicly available. It could be a few more weeks yet but I'll keep you posted.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Jukka,
Is MD v2105 User-compatible yet? I hadn’t heard that.
Ron
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Hi Ron,
I have only tried it couple of times. 2015.0 had some bug that are now solved in 2015.1. I like the new GUI and lookup much better, when Kevin releases forecaster I am moving to MD2015.
-Jukka-
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Jukka,
I, actually, liked the GUI of the new version and was greatly disappointed that it wouldn’t work properly. When did they release v2? They were supposed to (well, they said they would) to inform me.
In any event, I, too, would have to wait for “Forecaster” before moving from v2012.
Ron
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Kevin
I had a thought about an enhancement for future versions. At the moment, the graph always plots from £0 up to the balance in the account - it would be nice if the lower limit set itself just below the lowest balance during the forecast period. I maintain a minimum balance and so it will never go below that.
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repo owner
Hi John,
Good suggestion. I'll add it to my list.
Cheers,
Kevin
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I have a suggestion: If put a trend line in the forecast. For example, if I earn more $ xxx or spend less $ xxx, what will be my forcast for the next xxx months.
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Could I suggest that priority is given to producing a forecasting tool (as soon as possible for which I am prepared to pay). Not having it increases my workload on the MD to a point here I am actively seeking an alternative.
Additional updates can then be introduced in Kevin's own time
cheers
Chris
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repo owner
Hi Chris,
I agree completely. My first goal is to get a 2015 version of the Forecaster out there and then I would add new features later.
The first step was to make the Forecaster compatible with MD 2015, which is now done.
The second step was to add functionality to allow registered users to 'activate' the Forecaster using a registration code that they receive by email. An unregistered copy will be fully functional apart from being limited to a 1 month forecast. That is now complete but will require a bit more testing after step 3 is complete.
Step 3 is to build a backend server and website that allows people to download and purchase via Paypal. It will also handle activation requests. The website is going to be bare bones at first and the functionality is mostly finished.
I'm quite close to being able to make something available. I'm hoping to be ready within 2 weeks.
Sorry to keep you all waiting.
Kevin
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Good news Kevin. I would, however, sound a note of caution. I have installed 2015 on a different machine, incidentally running Windows 10 technical preview. I can therefore transfer across my 2014 files and convert them each time there is a new version of 2015 and keep them totally separate from my real finances. The latest build I have tried is 1132 and that still screws up all my security history completely, adding spurious values and changing the history that comes across. I would therefore recommend that nobody adopts 2015 if they use it to track any investments. As I have both builds with 2015 on a set of accounts that I can bin and replace, I would be happy to beta test your forecaster if you want.
John
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repo owner
Hi John,
I think that's good advice for anyone looking to upgrade. Sounds like MD 2015 is still a work in progress.
Thanks for the offer to beta test. I need to get the server deployed and able to test the activation process. I'll get back to you when that's ready to go.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin,
I just created a BitBucket account so I can hopefully get notification of when Forecaster for Moneydance 2015 is available. I'm sticking with Moneydance 2014 until then. And, yes, I'm willing to pay for it.
Larry
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repo owner
Hi Larry,
Good to hear from you. I'll be posting here when it's ready to go. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin
As encouragement I just wanted to let you know that I am another user who is eagerly awaiting the arrival of your updated Forecaster for Moneydance 2015 and also that I would be happy to pay a modest fee of around 10% - 15% of the original price for it.
Alan
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repo owner
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the feedback. Definitely encouraging to hear from you.
Cheers, Kevin
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Account Deleted
Hi Kevin,
So relieved to discover this page and see that Forecaster lives! MD 2015 seems crippled without it, definitely worth paying for this extension. Best of luck.
John
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repo owner
Hi John,
Thanks. Glad to hear it's useful to you.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin, have you seen the latest release of MD2015 - does it affect what you are doing?
Chris
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repo owner
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the heads-up. I grabbed the latest (1145) yesterday and everything seems to be working fine with the Forecaster.
I'm on track to release something by the end of the week, probably Sunday.
Cheers, Kevin
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I'm just piling on to say that I also installed MD 2015 and immediately reverted to 2014 when I saw that Forecaster wasn't available. Looking forward to the update and I will also be happy to pay for this extension.
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Can anyone confirm that MD 2015.2 is "ready for Prime Time"?
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Hi Kevin,
With all the issues going on in the Moneydance world, I decided to play around with a few other Finance app demos. It's been a while since I've looked around and I wanted to see what's current for the Mac.
One that appeals to me is iBank. It has a nice Forecast report generator and a more sophisticated Budget tool. I don't see a lot of difference in the Forecast reports compared to your Forecaster (it's amazing how close the values are for my data). There is maybe one thing the iBank report does that I'd like to see in Forecaster. Along with the chart, a table is available and it's very similar to the one you provide. However, in a header, the table lists: Starting balance, Ending balance, Low balance and High balance. Start and end points are easy to find from the table, but the high and low point are a little more difficult - either by scanning the table data or by using the pointer in the chart - easy to miss the actual low/high value (or at least it is for me). I would call it nice-to-have (either on the chart or as a header in the table), but certainly not a deal breaker.
By the way, I also like the idea someone posted about auto-ranging the y-axis to fit the max/min of the chart as opposed to always showing zero.
Anyway, Moneydance still has some things I've grown accustomed to that iBank does just a bit differently (as in more clunky). But, too many more hiccups and Moneydance may just get replaced...
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repo owner
Hi Art,
Sounds like a good idea. I'll get back to you with a couple of questions when I'm ready to start work on it.
Cheers,
Kevin
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I just updated to MoneyDance 2015 and discovered that the Forecaster extension no longer worked. After some research I found this thread and am glad to hear that you aree working on an update. Regarding your questions in the original post: 1. I would probably still use MoneyDance but I wouldn't like it. Forecaster was a very important part of my MoneyDance usage. 2. I would gladly pay for the extension. $5.00 or so would be fine. 3. The one thing that I would like to see made better is the Pay credit card balance feature. Currently it doesn't handle actual payments to the credit card well, it shows double payment until the payment day passes. I have to disable that card until after the pay day so I get a truer picture of cash flow, but that messes with the outgoing months because it doesn't show the payoffs in the future until I turn on the card again. I'd like to see it take into account the payments that I actually make.
What would really be nice is if MoneyDance itself would add a feature in their reminders that would automatically enter a payoff balance transaction into the registers each month like Quicken does. That would negate your having to have the credit card feture in your extension as it would just read the reminders like it does and see the payoff reminder.
Please let us know as soon as you are ready to distribute the Forecaster extention. Thanks.
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repo owner
Hi all,
Well, it's ready. I finally managed to get the extension to integrate with the backend this morning and I've spent the rest of the day trying to make the website look something other than completely ugly (it's still a work in progress).
Some points to note:
- The extension is now called Money Foresight.
- The vendor is Mahana Road Software Ltd. This is essentially just me operating under a limited company. You'll see this name when interacting with Paypal.
- It is compatible with MD 2015 but not MD 2014 and earlier.
- The extension is no longer hosted on Moneydance's servers. This means it is not available to be downloaded and installed automatically via Moneydance itself. It must be downloaded via the Money Foresight website (see below) and installed manually using the Moneydance extension manager.
- At this stage, the feature set is exactly as it was in the latest version of the Forecaster. There are no new features or bug fixes.
- Prior to purchasing a registration code and activating the extension, it is restricted to providing only a one month forecast. Other than that, all features are fully enabled.
- The cost is $10 USD. This also entitles you to 12 months worth of updates.
So here it is.
http://www.moneyforesight.com.
You've probably never seen a website with less fanfare. It's the bare minimum I could build that would allow you to download the extension and pay for it. At some point in the near future it will become more of a marketing tool but right now I'm only making it known to the people on this thread. And I assume you all know what you're getting.
What's next?
I want to fix a couple of issues with the existing functionality. Firstly, there is an issue with duplicated transactions for reminders that recur every 28 days. https://bitbucket.org/kevinstembridge/moneydance-forecaster/issue/12/duplicated-transaction-in-the-forecast
Secondly, the credit card reminder functionality is misleading if payments don't occur on the configured payment date.
But before providing updates for those issues I want to build into the extension the ability to notify you when updates are available.
Thank you very much for your patience and encouragement. It's been great hearing all the positive feedback. I hope you continue to get value out of Money Foresight and I plan on making it better as we go along.
Many thanks,
Kevin
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Thanks Kevin, I shall give it a try on my sandboxed MD2015. I am, however, highly likely to stay with MD2014, so I am very interested in whether you intend to work on the issues with the forecaster on the 2014 version, or just fix them in 2015? The duplicated transaction bug is really annoying and throws my forecast out all the time, so I am really hoping you can fix it in both versions.
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You are a hero sir! You should wear a cape and have theme music play whenever you enter the room!
Just for the record, this functionality is the only reason I used Quicken at home. I would have just used Quickbooks "borrowed" from work but after a billion versions it didn't have this functionality built in so I stayed with Quicken (RIP MS Money).
I went to MD after the latest and greatest Quicken borked my info for the 3rd time. Quite frankly I would have gone back to it had this not been apart of MD. Evidenced by the fact they went to 2015 without doing this on there own I really thing they owe you something for this.
I tried the 2015 beta and when I saw this wasn't apart of it I immediately went back to 2014. My home desktop has been in disrepair since I moved in August so I've been working off a laptop. Now that I have it up and running nicely I went and moved the file over, downloaded MD and saw it was 2015 and nearly shit my pants that 2014 isn't available for download (I'm not about to download personal financial software from some 3rd party depo). I found this post and read through it anxiously line by line tonight not expecting to see your last post.
What a relief the last post only 6 hours ago showed you had it done... It was like the doctor going on forever explaining test results and by the end you knew the prognosis was terminal until at the very end you're told "You're gonna make it".
I would have paid much more for this and am willing to keep paying for future updates. Quite frankly, $10 a month would have been a fair price and while I"m an adult now, my teenage software pirater self sill reels a little when I pay for software so believe me that's saying a lot.
A few notes:
- Kill for a better graph in Windows. When I resize the screen and click on a data point the dotted line lines up by the balance shows across the screen and its the balance where the actually numbers appear on the screen correlated to its physical data point. Been that way since 2014. Easy fixed by clicking Calculate everytime. As an old time MS Access developer I know the insanity of the Windows screen UI and can only imagine how you deal with it through Java to work across platforms.
- Have you ever considered a mobile app? I have android but I'd carry around my old iPhone 5 just to have 3 basic functionality MD doesn't include in there app.
-. Ability to see you're reminders with a popup or some kind of calender integration but I'd live without that.
-. Ability to setup simple reminders. I'm a GTD guy and I use the reminders in Moneydance as my trusted list on what to do next. Transaction reminders would be a huge bonus but just the ability to put a general reminder while I'm on the go that says "Signed up for reoccurring charge for XXX - Add to auto transactions" and set that up on a weekly reminder until I get off my ass and actually do it would be phenomenal.
-. View the graph or some form of it remotely. Even if it's a simple as telling me my balances as of a certain date per the reminders would do.
That to me is easily a $30 app purchase.
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Being able to export the table to CSV would be killer, especially with greater detail than what MD shows. I have this issue where I can't delete an old account because MD tells me its apart of a Reminder. I'm afraid to just delete it not knowing how it will affect the overall picture and I have tons of transaction reminders. To be able to print the reminders list is again another feature they should have included.
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Credit card payoff feature. The simple way to do this would be to add some meta data to the accounts that says when it closes and when its due. (Still can't get my head around MD not having at least a field for this). I have no idea how IK has its SDK setup, I doubt you can change the UI so this is what I do: I maintain a transaction dated for the payment date on each account and as I download transactions I update that balance so it forecasts my Checking account properly per the due date. I mike the check number "Balance" and the description "Balance Allocation". I also keep a recurring transaction that posts mid way through the cycle called "Closing" so I know when my transaction closing date is so I can create the next months "Balance" transaction and then update that. If you had a way to automatically keep those things up-to-date automatically it would be enormous.
BTW, I'm writing this at 3 am EST because this is that important to me and I think it is for a lot of people. I'm perfectly willing to pay you to help me keep my finances straight. Keep up the great work and thank you again.
- Bill
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Account Deleted
Best $10 I've spent for a while. Thank you very much, peace of mind replaces anxious guesswork!
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Absolutely fantastic - thank you Kevin
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Well done - thank you. Paid my money and now feeling a lot more comfortable that I can see how my finances are doing. Looking forward to the updates ....
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Thanks Kevin! MD 2015 may still have some warts, but at least now it has a top notch Forecast tool back!!!!
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Great Jobs Kevin, here is also happy MD2015 and Foresight user. I gladly paid asked price.
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repo owner
Hi all,
No major issues reported today and I'm breathing a sigh of relief. Thank you for all the positive feedback.
@John Dingle, I'll keep you updated on the other thread for that bug. Without knowing the cause of the bug at this stage, I can't say for sure if it will be possible or easy to port it to the 2014 version. But I'll do my best.
@William Astarita, wow, that was quite a response :) Sounds like your timing was perfect. Thanks very much for the feature suggestions. I can help you out with at least one of them already. There is a Credit Card Reminder feature available from the options menu. It works pretty much as you described. There is a dialog where you can specify the statement day, payment day and payment account for each credit card. Foresight then inserts the appropriate transaction into the generated forecast. This works well when you actually do pay on the configured payment date but it doesn't yet cope well if you pay early. I'll be working on improving that in the near future.
There is also an export to CSV feature for the forecast table, available from the File menu. I'm not sure if this is the table you were referring to or if you had the Reminder Summary table in mind. In any case, I think it would be a good idea to add this feature to the Reminder Summary table anyway. I'll add that to my list.
Regarding the issue with zooming the chart. The charting is done by a third-party library, so I don't know if I can fix that directly. But I should be able to come up with a trick whereby the app listens for a window resizing event and then invokes a recalculation automatically. I'll add that to my list too.
At this stage, I have no plans for an Android or iPhone app. But I'm open to the idea if there is enough demand for it.
Thanks again.
Kevin
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Kevin,
One of the new desired features for me is ability to calculate the average spending on the Credit Cards accounts and use it in the forecaster to predict balance if I'm paying it in full, or if I'm paying fractions.
Thanks!
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Given the problems with MoneyDance 2015 I have decided to stay with 2014 for now. I am pleased that you were able to rework the forecaster to work with 2015 and I certainly have no problem with paying for a good, useful extension like this, but I think that 2015 is just not a stable version and they have really screwed it up. I also don't like the mobile app that they developed so I will be waiting for HandyBank to update their extension so that will work with 2015.
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repo owner
- changed status to resolved
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Hey Kevin,
Wow do I feel lucky - have been using MD-2014 trial last couple months oblivious to the shortcomings of 2015, of which the absence of Foresight is a major showstopper for me. I finally bought the 2015 license (2014 is unavailable and 2015 is incompatible with 2014) - so had to install MD-2015. I was very disappointed when Forecaster was not there. I reinstalled 2014 to get the name and found this site just tonight.
I've reinstalled 2015 (2014 won't let me add any more txn's), and paid for your Money Foresight. I feel back on track and the world is worth living in again. Thanks for pulling through on this!
FYI when I installed MF I received the following alert. I haven't read through all the posts here, but if you haven't mentioned it yet you may want to give a heads up about it:
Warning: The signature on this extension is either invalid or missing. This means that the extension was not verified by a trusted party, and may have been tampered with. Continuing to load this extension may cause harm to your computer or your data. Given the possible consequences, would you like to continue loading this extension?I continued to install and all works just fine. Thanks again.
FYI - your site needs some love, I work in IT and would be happy to pop you a minimal-but-dressed WordPress installation in an evening (no fee), and hand you back the keys. Digital Ocean has a real affordable hosting plan. Ping me if interested.
Thanks again, - Richard
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repo owner
Hi @dharmapa ,
Glad to be of service.
Regarding the warning message, that occurs because the extension is not digitally signed by Moneydance developers. The way that works is that I give them access to the source code, they review it, then build and package it, signing it with their certificate in the process and then host it on their servers. I'm not currently doing it that way for a number of reasons. I'm going to have a chat with Moneydance to see what we can do about avoiding that warning message.
Regarding your offer to help with the website, very much appreciated. I'll contact you privately to discuss. It might be a little while before I get back to you.
Cheers,
Kevin
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I have been following this thread for a little while after having, like several others, upgrading to MD2015. From some of the recent comments it appears some now have the Forecaster upgrade you've been working on. Also like others, the forecasting capabilities brought to MD by your add-on is pretty much a "must have". How do I go about getting the new version?
Thank you, Jim Watson
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repo owner
Hi Jim,
Thanks for getting in touch. I see you found the website already.
For a little more detail, I made an announcement on this thread roughly 15 posts above this one.
Glad you find the forecaster useful.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Indeed. Thank you sir!
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Kevin, is there another way to access the extension? The website is unreachable due to error 502, bad gateway.
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repo owner
Hi Julie,
Very sorry about that. I'm not sure why the site went down but I've restarted it now.
Let me know if you have any more trouble.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin. the software works fine on my Mac but when I just tried to load it manually on my Macbook pro I got he following message "Error loading extension: com.moneyforesight.common.NullArgumentException: The 'registrationInfo' argument cannot be null" can you help please
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repo owner
Hi Chris,
Thanks for reporting. Another user has also had the same issue and logged it here:
https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight/issue/2
I'll look at it straight away and will hopefully be able to provide a fix today.
Sorry for the trouble.
Kevin
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Thanks Kevin. Can you let me know when it's done and presumably I will need to download again from the website. Chris
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repo owner
Hi Chris,
It's all done. You can download again from the website.
http://www.moneyforesight.com/download
For more information on what the problem was, you can check this bug report. https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight/issue/2
When installing it on a new computer you'll need to enter your registration code again.
Let me know if you have any trouble.
Cheers,
Kevin
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Just confirming it works perfectly, thanks Kevin
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repo owner
Great stuff. Thanks.
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Yep this works great - thanks Kevin
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Hi Kevin, Firstly I can only reiterate the positive comments on this thread regarding your hard work to provide the Forecaster / Foresight extension to Moneydance. Ignorantly, I thought this feature was part of MoneyDance and unaware of the 3rd party involvement. I found you and your new update to the 2015 version on the Moneydance main website and clicking the link beside your program showing your name; http://infinitekind.com/extensions
I wasn't best pleased to pay £6.55 UK Pounds to what is an already expensive sw package. BUT I do get you need paying for your work and quite rightly, hence i've paid.
Hopefully my support demonstrates the answer to your questions in the very beginning of this thread and yes, i would look elsewhere if this function was not available due to being an ex-MS Money user for many many yeas and recently moving over to an Apple Mac needing an finance sw program. I just hope you are not part of the Infinite team and making a sly buck on the side from something that really should be part of the program from the outset.....
Keep up the good work. I will also look forward to many featured updates from you and the Foresight Extension that will make my support through funding the purchase worthwhile ;-)
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repo owner
Hi @AndrewALJ ,
Thanks very much for the feedback and I'm very glad you find the extension useful.
I'm a fan of The Infinite Kind but I can assure you I don't work for them.
FYI, I created a new BitBucket account for Money Foresight. If you have any ideas about what you would like to see added as a feature or if you'd like to know what I have in the pipeline you can check it out here: https://bitbucket.org/mahanaroad/moneyforesight/issues?status=new&status=open
Regards,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin, I've found a problem with Forecaster. I run my current accounts down to only a few £'s by transferring any surplus to a savings account each month. Therefore the Forecast graph to show me where my account balance lands each month, qtr, year is essential to make my money work for me.
But is Forecaster only making predictions in the "Upcoming" area where future bill transactions are queued?
At the start of this month (June) Forecaster was showing a surplus in my current account for the next 3 months. I decided to pay a bill that wasn't due until the end of June (last week) (to gain an early payment bonus) that was shown in the calendar (as a transaction reminder) but not shown in the "upcoming" line up of bills due to only 3 weeks or so are shown in this window / view. As soon as I entered the transaction into my account Forecaster then showed me I would become overdrawn when before it showed a healthy balance. (WTF??!!).
I've now lost confidence in the ability of your program to show true projections. Please can you sort out this issue asap as I'm lost without it.
Kind regards, AJ
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(I'm not Kevin) Forecaster uses all reminder transactions to forecast your future balance. The home screen on MD shows you the "upcoming" reminder transactions but only for the next few weeks (as you said).
I suspect you entered the payment transaction into your Account Register for the payment of the bill, but you still have the scheduled bill payment in your Reminders for the end of June.
I have the Calendar turned on for my home page which shows a nice calendar of the month and all reminders are displayed on the appropriate date. If you right-click on a reminder in the calendar you have the option to "Record Next Occurrence" which will allow you to enter the transaction into your account register while also removing that reminder from future consideration (since it's been paid).
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repo owner
Hi folks,
Moving this discussion to the separate issue that Andrew created.
https://bitbucket.org/kevinstembridge/moneydance-forecaster/issue/23
Cheers,
Kevin
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Hi,
I've started working on updating the Forecaster to be compatible with MD 2015. There are quite a few backwards-incompatible changes. I hope to have it ready by the time MD 2015 is released but, as always, I'm pretty short on spare time.
One difference you'll notice with the new forecaster is that it will no longer be free. I'm hoping that it provides enough value to users that they will be willing to pay a small amount for it. One of the main reasons for charging for it is that I've heard feedback from several users that they wouldn't use Moneydance if they weren't able to forecast cashflow. So although I've been giving it away for free, The Infinite Kind has been benefiting financially from the work I've done. Another reason is that I've been wanting to add some features but I can't justify spending the time on it (in other words, my wife won't let me :) ).
I'd be very interested to hear what your thoughts are. Would you still use Moneydance without cashflow forecasting? Would you still use the Forecaster if it wasn't free? How much do you think it is worth? What extra features would you like to see in the Forecaster or in Moneydance in general?
Regards, Kevin