Apple Credit Card: Issue with QFX Export

TidBITS Talk
#1

I generally import the monthly QFX Export of Apple Credit Card transactions into Moneydance for my financial record keeping. I also do this for several other credit card accounts. For there Apple Credit Card, credits do the account (from refunds or trade-ins) are being recorded as debits rather than credits. My other credit cards show similar credits with no problem.

I’m trying to determine whether this is an issue with the file or with Moneydance’s handling of it. It’s possible that Apple records the credit in a legal but non-standard was, that Moneydance interprets incorrectly. So I am wondering if anyone else has seen the problem with other financial programs (e.g. Quicken). That would help me know who should be responsible for correcting the issue. If Quicken has no problem with it, then I should lean on Moneydance; otherwise, I should lean on Apple and Goldman Sachs.

Note: I find that while OFX export should work, there are problems with how it identifies fields so that Moneydance picks up the ‘wrong’ field to identify the transaction.

#2

I don’t seem to be having this problem with Moneydance and QFX import with my Apple Card account.

I wonder if you have changed the setting in preferences, in the network pane, “Ignore transaction types in favor of amount signs”? I have that set off; at one point I had it on when I was having issues importing QFX files from another bank, but that bank seems to have fixed that problem.

#3

Thank you, Doug.

I had the setting turned off, but turning it on seems to fix the problem. I’ll carefully monitor future downloads and see if the issue reoccurs here or with other accounts.

#4

I spoke too soon, I guess - I just tried to reconcile my statement and found that a few credits were listed as charges. But not all were - the payment activity was categorized correctly. That’s probably what threw me off.

I’m glad changing that setting will work.

For what it’s worth, for the last month I have been trying out SEE Finance, and that app handled that QFX import perfectly, recognizing the credits. So, I’m thinking that this is a MoneyDance issue (though they will probably say that you can use that preference setting.)

I’ve decided to try out SEE because of a couple of small gripes I have with MoneyDance. The biggest for me is that the iOS app is terrible - I can’t use it to search complete history for transactions. It’s really just a way to enter transactions (but not with a great user experience) and see only recent transactions. SEE’s iOS app isn’t perfect, either, but it is much better, and resembles the Mac app. I still haven’t decided if I will switch.

#5

A few comments and questions here:

  1. I hope that t toggling that item doesn’t affect the correct handling of other credits (mainly cashing in reward points on my Amex Blue).

  2. I agree that the Moneydance mobile app is pretty minimal. I use it only for noting checks that I rarely need to write away from home. For that function, it’s fine.

  3. My chief worry with Moneydance is that I don’t see a nice way to move to another financial program, should that be necessary. I’d be curious to know how much work it was to move your data from Moneydance to SEE. In particular, if you are using the investment side of Moneydance, were you able to preserve your history. so that you can somewhat accurately figure the cost basis and capital gains for particular securities? None of the export formats (qif and csv) provided seem adequate for that. Can SEE work with Moneydance native or backup files or did another way work?

  4. One feature of Moneydance that I like is that I can attach files for particular transactions. This is helpful for documenting unusual transactions. Does SEE provide that capability?

#6

I don’t track investments with MD.

Moving data was incredibly easy. I exported a QIF from MoneyDance, imported it into SEE, and everything came over, including my custom categories that I use to track my transactions. The only things that I had to do were to create dummy initial balance transactions for the few accounts that are older than my MoneyDance history. MoneyDance’s account settings let you set an opening balance rather than create a dummy transaction for this.

As I said, I don’t use MoneyDance to manage investments, but I’ll create a dummy MD file with a few dummy transactions based on my own history from 2019 and let you know what SEE shows. I’ll reply in a few days when I get a chance to try this.

I also never do this, but, yes, SEE does offer attachments to transactions. I have no idea if they would transfer over, though; I kind of doubt it.

#7

Absolutely yes it does.

SEE Finance has a 30 day trial, so it should be easy for you to try out yourself.