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Splits

Dave Richmond

27 Jun, 2009 11:19 AM via web

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Hi, I've been using MoneyWell for a couple of days, and I like it quite a lot, enough to ditch Quicken. For the most part it's really easy to use, but I just tried doing splits for the first time, and I have to say, that was the most confusing thing ever. I get it that you have to change the Amount of the first item in the split table to get it to make a second item, but it's not entirely obvious, and when you're playing around with the numbers it seems to do funny things. It was very frustrating. I think it needs to have +/- buttons to allow you to explicitly add and remove line items.

1. Support Staff 2 Posted by Kevin Hoctor on 27 Jun, 2009 03:47 PM

   

   If you use the splits the way they are designed, it's incredibly fast compared to other apps that require more steps to add line items. I've tried to reduce the steps:

   1. Create a new transaction with the total receipt amount
   2. Assign it to the primary spending bucket
   3. Click Create Split
   4. Change first amount to the value for the assigned bucket
   5. On the new line, assign a new bucket and optionally change the amount
   6. Continue steps 4 and 5 for all split items

   You can also click the "C" column to transfer the final amount to your cash account so you don't need to add splits for spending money.

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2. Support Staff 3 Posted by Kevin Hoctor on 27 Jun, 2009 03:49 PM

   

   I also meant to let you know that there is a new split management panel coming in a future release that will give you add/remove control as well as the express entry method that exists today.

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3. 4 Posted by dave on 27 Jun, 2009 10:11 PM

   

   Yeah, once I figured it out it's pretty quick, if you do it right. But if you start playing around with the values, it starts behaving funny. I was able to get it to leave a positive value in one of the line items, even though the overall transaction was a withdrawal. (can't replicate the behavior now, though). If you change the Total amount it weird things can happen. Right now I have a transaction with a total of -100, and line item amounts of -500, -20, -230, and -650!

   From a design standpoint the problem I have with it is that when you create a split, you now have 3 value fields, the Amount at the top, the Total, and the Amount in the first line item. It is not immediately obvious to the user what to do next. It took me a while to figure out that the first line is mirroring exactly what's also in the main Amount/Bucket/Memo field above. This is a bit confusing when you're changing values, trying to achieve a particular effect, and your entry also changes all the other values. Sometimes when you change a value in a split field the app changes it right back to what it was before! (This kind of behavior in software is always incredibly frustrating to me.) Also, as far as I can tell, once you've created a line item in a split, there's no way to delete it.
   

   I like the idea of making the splits as quick as possible to do, but I think the interface still needs some thought and redesign to make it really 1) quick to use, 2) easy to learn quickly, and 3) fully functional.

   On the whole I really like using MoneyWell instead of Quicken, which I've been using for about a decade. I look forward to all the future enhancements!

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