Just started with KMyMoney … made one trial start and have learned some things; checking with you all to see if I am making good decisions.
I have 6 banks, 6 credit cards, 5 investment brokers with multiple accounts, other assets. Seems like the best way to migrate is to first set up the institutions and then accounts in KMyMoney before i move actual transaction histories. Is that a good idea?
Also, what is people’s recommendations to use SQL instead of XML ??
Also is there a way to create both a full data base (15 years) and a trimmed down database for the previous 3 years?
thanks for any help you all can offer
The approach to create the accounts first before importing data is probably a good idea. My recommendation regarding the storage is to use the XML file. If you want to use the SQL database to run external reports, you can always use the “Save as database” at any time to create a snapshot in SQL. At the moment, the XML backend is better maintained than the SQL backend. Plus, the database is used like a file, means all data is loaded into application memory upon open and all data is written back to the DB when the user starts the save operation.
The question about a trimmed database has come to the surface a few times in the past. It has some disadvantages and has therefore not been proceeded by the developers (mainly due to time constraints). In case you worry about performance: I have more than 23 years of transactions at hand here and things are smooth.
Hope that helps. In case you have more questions, let us know.
Does your word “Account” have two meanings? for me it means a specific savings or other at a specific institution; but it seems it also means a class of money like asset, equity etc. confusing.
Also, most of my accounts are dollars in USA but i have some banks NOT in USA and not in dollars [Euros, e.g.]. I try to setup a new account in Euro but the drop down list only gives dollars. How do I do this ?
Why is there a difference between investment account and broker account ? I have 6 accounts at RJ, for instance. so RJ is institution and the 6 accounts are …? investment? broker? both ?? all 6 have both investments and cash inside … how do I set this all up ??
i am very confused, would appreciate any insights/explanations.
thanks again for your help
Your idea of an account is a subset of KMyMoney’s view. It actually knows about five base types of accounts: assets, liabilities, income, expense and equities. An asset account could be your savings or current account at an institution but at the same time it could also represent a loan that you give to someone or your personal asset (e.g. house, jewelry, …) or investment (e.g. stock). A liability is a loan you take to finance a house or your credit card. Income and Expense accounts are called categories in KMyMoney (but under the hood they are accounts). The equity accounts are a group of virtual accounts that are used to balance the opening balance transactions. They are usually not visible to the user (but can be made visible with an option). Most (if not all) of this is also explained in the manual. Please feel free to take a look.
To use a different currency, you need to inform KMyMoney about it. Open the Tools/Currencies dialog, press the Add button, select the currency you want to use (e.g. EUR) and press OK. It shall be visible in the list of available currencies now. Close the dialog and start creating the account.
KMyMoney (for historical reasons) does not provide to keep investments and cash in an investment account. The cash part is kept in the brokerage account. It allows to keep multiple investments in a single account, though. Not sure if that is of help for your usage. Maybe, the section about investments in the manual can provide some more information.
hi. now trying to organize downloading of transactions. many questions:
Is OFX still a viable thing? I read that its being discontinued by many banks?
following the manual, setting up OFX Direct Connect. says click on Map to Online Account but program only has Map Account. try that. options are kbanking and ofximporter. says: “A list of banks will be downloaded from the Internet and a wizard will guide you” … get error: could not connect to host www # ofxhome # com ssl negotiation failed. now what ?
OR says choose online account but no online accounts organized as yet .. not sure how to organize one .. ?
OFX is still a thing, but Direct Connect is getting harder and harder to use. Many banks are dropping it, instead using aggregators, making it useable only by commercial products. However, in most cases, you can use “Web Connect” which means logging on to the bank’s web site and downloading a file with transactions. It might be labelled OFX, QFX, Web Connect, or by name of an application, such as Microsoft Money. If you have your browser set to automatically open that type of file with KMyMoney, it is not as seamless as direct connect, but reasonably close.
ofxhome.com was a website which maintained a list of the ofx direct connect settings for many instiututions, but it disappeared some months ago. My feeling is your best bet for setting up direct connect is to list your bank/institution here, and someone who uses the same might post the settings they use here.
Note it is also possible to set this up with the aqbanking/kbanking back end, but I have no experience with that, so I don’t know if it currently works any better then ofximporter for initial bank setup.
trying kbanking [i think] … am on a screen called Online banking account setup and it is asking for username and pw which I do have, then it wants a “Client UID” about which i am clueless … how would i find that one ?
then when i moved on i get error box: Access to restricted port in POST denied. explanation ?
This also requires the data that the ofximporter needs plus AqBanking is (from mpov) not the most user friendly UI. Not much KMyMoney can do about.
@JMorgie without the required data from your bank either one of the two implementations will not help you. The only thing I can point to is the documentation over at our friends at GnuCash which also uses AqBanking under the hood and their collection of OFX data.
trying to set my stocks and mutual funds. entered all the ticker symbols, a few of the current pricing. set all to download from yahoo. then tried u pdate stock prices … all errors:
Fetching URL query1.finance .yahoo .com/v7/finance/quote?fields=regularMarketPrice&symbols=CGDV…
Could not connect to host … query1 finance yahoo com: SSL negotiation failed. tried using the Wall Street default … no error but nothing happened either. what do you suggest ?
Hi. Thanks for all your help but I am giving up on using KMyMoney. too difficult to import history from MoneyDance and no automatic downloading of current transactions from banks etc. I am looking for other solution.
I believe that for automated downloading, you will only find commercial applications, where (at least in my opinion) you end up trading privacy for convenience. Migrating from another application is a one-time activity, and may end up best addressed using some custom scripting.
Please let us know if you do find anything you think is better.
[edit to add] It’s not quite true that there is no automatic downloading of transactions. It works fine for me for Merrill Lynch. For others which have stopped supporting OFX Direct Connect I use Web Connect (downloading explicit OFX file which automatically opens in KMyMoney,) leaving only a few where I need to import csv files. I do agree this is all much more effort than should be necessary, but I will be surprised if you find it notably better in any other free/libre application.
I just found this thread and was interested because I’m looking at the same move from MoneyDance to KMyMoney. I know you indicated you aren’t going forward but I have no interest in automated downloading (for all the reasons others have indicated regarding how it is pretty much going away).
Would you be willing to share the rest of your experience with importing from MoneyDance to KMyMoney?
Background: I was a long-time MS Money user (over 10 years) before they killed it and I continued using it until I finally decided to ditch Windows and move to LinuxMint in 2019. I was successful going through the migration and import of my Money data into MoneyDance so I’m not unfamiliar with what’s involved.
Lately, I’ve been evaluating KDE and like a lot of what I see – thus, my interest in KMyMoney. Of course, I could continue with MoneyDance under KDE but am open to a new tool – especially since it is allegedly similar to MS Money.
Anyway, anything you wish to share would be appreciated. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I’ve been using MoneyDance for just over a year and it works for me. It was a bit of an adjustment from using MS Money but I’ve now become used to it, I guess. I do miss some of the reporting capabilities from MS Money but, honestly, I haven’t really explored that in MoneyDance to any great degree. And, of course, MoneyDance isn’t FOSS, so there is that.
I do miss some of the reporting capabilities from MS Money but, honestly, I haven’t really explored that in MoneyDance to any great degree. And, of course, MoneyDance isn’t FOSS, so there is that. 