PalOMoney Release Notes

Version Information

For version information, see Current Version.

1.0.5

Available soon, 1.0.5 is a massive enhancement to implement online statement downloads and display, configuration, and a bug fix. Because the early stages of a large enhancement typically contain a correspondingly large number of bugs, missing functions, and inconsistent documentation, good luck testing!

Repair

• The File | Repair menu offers three experimental methods for using the Money database engine to Repair, Maintain, or Salvage bloated or damaged Money files. [However, this has stopped working in this version.]

File | Options Open View

• The File | Options menu offers four basic views to open when opening a Money file. The first two views (Portfolio and Statement) are implemented; the other two views (Account and Transaction) are not.

Statement View

• A second Money view has been implemented. Statement view displays and downloads Statement Items, which are lines from downloaded or imported Statements that have not been "accepted" by you in your Money account transaction journal. The Statement view list can be filtered by account, and sorted by one or more columns like the Portfolio view. Accounts can be filtered by Favorites, Closed, Online Eligible, and Online Enabled.

• A very useful function is to display statement items from all accounts, and sort the list in inverse date order, which will show the most recent statement items at the top of the list. This is a quick way to check your financial perimeter, and to see who's spending or charging what in a timely fashion. We hope this early detection tool will help reduce credit card and stolen identity fraud.
• A Statement view summary line displays the Debit, Credit, and Delta (change in) New Worth aggregates from the statement items.
  • The implementation is inexact, as items are classified according to their corresponding accounts as debit and credit (or watch), so negative items in a debit account are subtracted from debits, and vice-versa, instead of being reclassified as proper debits and credits. Still, the info is useful.
• A Statement view Update Now button downloads all online enabled accounts, and processes the download according to a selected Import Method.
  • Import Methods include Manual, Money (Open), Background Banking, Background Money, PalOMoney (direct import), (Edit), Notepad, and External #1. [Background Banking and PalOMoney (direct import) methods are not supported in this version. External methods are partially implemented in a primitive fashion, with no configuration dialog or parameter substitution.]

Account Connection Service dialog

• A new Account Connection Service dialog, launched from Statement view Online Connection Settings button, displays and manages Connection Services defined for each account. A Connection Service defines how to download statements for import from an account via a specific Online Statement Provider Login. Accounts can have zero or more connection services, and zero or more associated providers. The dialog supports:
  • Filtering Accounts by Favorites, Closed, Online Eligible, and Online Enabled, and changing the first 3 filter item values.
  • Creating and deleting new Connection Services and Providers. [New Accounts or Financial Institutions are not supported.]
  • Exporting and Importing Accounts, Financial Institutions, Connection Services, and Online Providers to one or more .csv files that you can examine and manipulate. This is handy for working with backups, etc., and can be used for automatic online connection service and provider configuration in a future version. Because Money uses a quite complicated schema to define these connections, which may use intermediary aggregating providers, automatic setup (not in this release) may be very important.
  • Downloading a statement for the current account and importing it into Money via the Money Shell Handler's OFX file import method.

Export Standard Connection Services dialog

• A new Export Standard Connection Services dialog supports options for exporting Exporting and Importing Accounts, Financial Institutions, Connection Services, and Online Providers to one or more .csv files. This dialog duplicates the options provided by the Windows Vista and higher File Save dialog, which already include these options so that XP and earlier users can select the options.
  • Save ASCII exports as ASCII (not Unicode). Required for Excel earlier version compatibility.
  • Append Date Stamp appends a date stamp to the combined export file name.
  • Enable Individual Files saves individual export files for all four tables.
  • Individual Append Date Stamp appends a date stamp to the individual export file names.

Import Standard Connection Services and Providers dialog

• A new Import Standard Connection Services and Providers dialog displays and selects imported Connection Service entries. Import Unicode or ASCII format detection is automatic (see below). The dialog supports:
  • Imported file statistics of the number of entries To add, To Delete, Identical (existing), and that require New Accounts.
  • Filter buttons (Yes, No, Ignore) for the above.
  • A list of the filtered entries.
  • Statistics of the currently selected entries to import: Services to Add, Services to Delete, and Providers to Add. It also displays Accounts to Create, which are not supported in this version.
  • Buttons to check and uncheck all entries that Add or Delete Connection Services.
  • Ok attempts to import the selected Connection Services, Cancel does not.
• The File Open dialog on Vista and higher include "Import as ASCII" and "Import as Unicode" override options, which are not available in XP and earlier operating systems. Request an enhancement if you need to specify these options.

Online Statement Provider Login dialog

• A new Online Statement Provider Login dialog, launched from the Account Connection Service dialog, displays and manages Standard (not Bill Pay) Online Statement Provider Login definitions. A Provider Login can be associated with a specific financial institution, or it may support Multiple institutions. A Provider Login can be used by several Account Connection Services for statement downloads. The dialog supports:
  • Creating and deleting Provider Logins.
  • Querying a Provider for its capabilities [not in this version].
  • Querying a Provider for a list of your accounts [not in this version].
  • Displaying a detailed Status Report for this Provider Login [not in this version].
  • Editing a Provider's Bank Service, Payment, Investment, and Provider capabilities, which may or may not cause problems.
  • Displaying and Editing a Provider's supported and enabled Services, which may or may not cause problems.
  • Enabling and disabling a Provider Login's Online Statement status.
  • Entering an override AppID and AppVer entries for use in this login [not in this version].
  • Get Capabilities, List Accounts, Status..., and More Detail buttons are not implemented in this version.

Provider Login dialog

• For security reasons, Exporting and Importing Provider Login passwords is not supported. Accordingly, a new Provider Login Password dialog opens during Manual downloads to allow the user to Enter your Password for this Provider. The dialog supports displaying the password while typing, and saving the password in the associated Online Statement Provider Login record.

Details

• TBD by the Help sub-project.

1.0.4

Version 1.0.3 was pretty rough, wasn't it? Announcing 1.0.4, available now.

• The Ext Update Now and Ext Add History right click menu commands have been implemented. The commands have been renamed to indicate that they work only with external quote sources. Internal sources launch MoneyPal directly, but MoneyPal currently does not support an interface to specify which symbols to update -- it updates all securities with a ticker and the update method set to "Online." These commands also work with a selection of securities.

• The experimental Update Tax Table dialog and database interface has been implemented in debug versions. This dialog edits all the tax table records stored in Money, and can create new records for further tax years. This feature needs to be tested to make sure that an updated tax table actually works in Money. Please test and report. The forum topic is split between the Enhancement Requests and Testers forum. Actual experiences should go into the Tester's forum. Use the Enhancement forum to wish for changes to the software.

• The Toggle Online Quotes right mouse click context in the Portfolio View list window now actually toggles the Online Quotes field for each security between Online and Manual. Previously, the function didn't do anything. The command curently works only with a single security, any selection is ignored.

• Certain other unimplemented menu items now display the "The feature you selected is not available in this version." dialog instead of just doing nothing with no feedback (a UI no-no).

1.0.3-c

Version 1.0.3-c was a MoneyPal.exe only zip file download that fixed a bug that failed to open a Money file on certain computers.

1.0.3-b

Version 1.0.3-b continued to deal with drop dead issues discovered by testers. This version was distributed separately for a limited time in PalOMoney_exe_1_0_3_b_x86d.zip.

• A bug that interfered with internal and external quote sources when using long path names containing spaces has been fixed for all internal quote sources. This bug also affected external quote sources, since they use internal sources for import.
  • It turns out that the command interpreter strips initial quotes from its command line. If the executable quote source method is in a path that requires quoting, it is difficult or impossible to use the command interpreter to run the method when launched from another process. This affected MoneyPal in the C:\Program Files\PalOMoney.inc\PalOMoney folder when used with a Money file that also required quotes. This scenario was not adequately tested before release, and the testers had to suffer through this confusing issue.
  • This is not an issue with paths like c:\python27\python.exe, but other interpreters, exes, or batch files that may reside in C:\Program Files\... or My Documents, etc will be affected. Accordingly, external quote sources currently are restricted to paths that do not require quoting. Because the only executable that really requires the command interpreter is a .bat batch or .cmd command file, a future enhancement will deal with this in a more intelligent manner.
• Additional message dialogs have been added to indicate problems launching the internal and external quote source methods. Previously, under some circumstances, the methods would too quickly flash by making it impossible to tell what was going wrong.
• The File Open Error (aka Password) dialog has been expanded display longer path names. The error code now displays to the right of the Password control. Recognized error codes are: 800a1406.
  • Other codes most likely represent other kinds of errors. Try the password anyway, and see if it opens the file. If so, edit this paragraph and add the code. In a future release, the password dialog will appear only in response to the recognized error codes on this list.

• A bug that erased newly-created default quote source entries when opening a Money file for the first time has been fixed.

• For security reasons, the clear text password stored in the PalOMoney.ini Last Launch entry has been replaced by -pPASSWORD. When using this entry to launch MoneyPal in a command interpreter (for troubleshooting or as a scheduled job using some other software), replace PASSWORD with your actual password. Note no space between -p and the password.

Thank you for your testing!

• Note: this was not a planned release. There are some inaccessible additional functions and dialogs pertaining to ofx account statement downloads that make the .exe a bit larger.

1.0.3-a

Version 1.0.3-a fixed some horrible bugs caught by a tester. It also adds a dialog for password protected Money files.

• A bug that caused a debug assertion has been fixed.
  • Failing to find a current Microsoft Money installation and other problems that prevented opening a Money file resulted in a null pointer assertion.
• A bug that caused external quotes sources to fail has been fixed.
  • The bug incorrectly formatted arguments to external sources and MoneyPal, and failed to read and use initial and final double-quotes in the URL Template field.
  • The work around was to use short folder names that contain no spaces in order to avoid using double quotes at the beginning and end of the URL Template field.
  • This bug may have caused problems with the internal quote sources as well. Confirming this will require additional testing.
• Logging has been enhanced to more clearly indicate problems.
  • Many more function results are logged.
  • To reduce clutter, MoneyPal no longer displays the list of Money file securities unless the log level is 5 or higher.
  • MoneyPal displays and logs quote transactions.
  • MnyUpdate_XXX.log has been renamed MoneyPal_XXX.log, and contains the MoneyPal version info
  • The time stamp portion of MnyUpdate_XXX.log now includes seconds.
  • The File.CSV import method, used by external quote sources, now logs to MnyUpdate_XXX.log.
• PalOMoney now displays a Sign in to open your Money file dialog to indicate an error code when failing to open a Money file.
  • The dialog accepts a password and includes an Ok option to try again.
  • This dialog appears even if the error is not from a missing and incorrect password.
  • Click Cancel to abandon the dialog, and open the Portfolio window with no file.
  • This feature is early stage experimental.
    • Before using this feature, consider that the Money file password will be passed along in plain text to MoneyPal during its launch. The Last Launch MoneyPal command line is saved in plain text in PalOMoney.ini.
    • This dialog will be improved when the password error codes become better understood.

• A cosmetic bug in the example quote source QuoteCSV.py that wrote soft line breaks instead of hard line ends has been fixed.

• A PalOMoney website bug that caused the Store to download the .msi installer as a DOC file has been fixed.

1.0.3

Initial release for external testing. This software is experimental, which means very much pre-alpha.