Moneydance offers a free trial download that allows 100 manually-entered transactions with unlimited imported transactions. This allows ample time to evaluate the features in Moneydance.
Getting Around and Using Moneydance
Moneydance is easy to learn to navigate by clicking around the software and referencing the easy-to-read help documentation. The customizable home page appears when you first open Moneydance. Change the information presented on the home page by choosing from accounts, net worth, investments, exchange rates, stock prices, reminder calendar and more.
Four icons at the top of each screen let you quickly navigate back to the home page, find transactions, create a graph or report or use a feature extension.
Entering transactions in Moneydance requires a click on the account name to open the account register, then clicking on the New Transaction button. Data entry fields then open at the bottom of the register to enter transaction details.
Moneydance Extensions
An extension is a small, additional financial management tool installed for use with Moneydance. Because Moneydance participates in the open source software initiative, extensions can be created by advanced Moneydance users. To use Moneydance Extensions, click the gear icon on the home page, then click Add Extensions to find extensions online.Available extensions include: Moneydance Updater to automatically check for updates, Text File Importer, Balance Predictor, Credit Card Payoff Calculator, Investment Profit Calculator.
Spending Categories and Budgets with Moneydance
Moneydance comes with a set of income and expense categories which you can add to, delete, and edit. You can split transactions into multiple categories as well, which is helpful when you buy cat litter at the grocery store.Track up to 10 different budgets simultaneously in Moneydance. Either have Moneydance automatically calculate a budget based on your transactions during any time period, or enter your budget figures manually. Automatic and manual budgets can be edited.
Moneydance Accounts
You can reconcile Moneydance accounts, make transfers between accounts and use these account types: Bank (checking and savings), Income, Expense, Asset, Liability, Credit Card, Loans and Investments where securities are recorded with your base currency but can be displayed in other currencies.
Sub-Accounts
Moneydance sub-accounts are used to set aside money for anticipated expenses, similar to envelope budgeting. For example, create a Quarterly Taxes sub-account (a 'child' in the account set up) under a Savings account. Set aside $50 a week into Quarterly Taxes to keep it earmarked, but you will see that the money is actually in the Savings account. When it is time to pay your quarterly taxes, transfer what you need from Quarterly taxes to the parent account and write your check. Accounts with sub-accounts still reconcile correctly when you check 'include sub-accounts' in the reconciliation set up.
Multiple Currencies and Multiple Languages
Moneydance offers multi-currency support and translations into Spanish, German, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, and Norwegian. You can download up-to-date exchange rates and choose different base currencies for accounts.
Moneydance Data Downloads, Imports and Exports
Moneydance uses direct OFX connections for secure data downloads and online banking. Most FI's offer OFX downloads, but you will need to verify if yours does. If an FI that does not offer OFX downloads, you can import account data into Moneydance if the FI offers data file exports in QIF, QFX, OFX or OFC formats.Moneydance imports transactions from Microsoft Money and Quicken, and will export Moneydance data in QIF, tab-delimited and Moneydance XML formats. You can select a date range and a currency for export data.
Moneydance Reports
Moneydance 2007 improves financial reporting with seven graphs and 12 reports. Reports and graphs have selectable variables such as account and time frame, and can be saved to avoid setting up often-used reports. Moneydance graphs can be saved as image files and reports can be saved to either an HTML file to be viewed in a web browser, or tab-delimited or CSV for use in a spreadsheet.
