Importing Accounts from MS® Money

Exporting Accounts from MS® Money:

MS® Money only allows you to export one account at a time into QIF files. MS® Money also requires investment accounts to have investment specific transactions and regular banking transactions exported separately into different QIF files.

1. Open MS® Money and open the file with the data that you want to export.
2. Select Export from the File menu.
3. Select Loose QIF, and then click OK.
4. In the File Name box, enter the name of the account exactly how it appears in MS® Money that you want to export and click OK.
   ***See note below for how to name investment accounts.***
5. When you are prompted to select the type of account that you want to export, click the appropriate account type (Regular or Investment) for the account that you want to export and then click OK.
   ***See note below for needing to export each investment account twice.***
6. In the Account List click the account that you want to export and click Continue.
7. When the account is finished exporting, click OK.
Repeat these steps for each account that you want to export.

***Note: For Investment accounts you will need to export the account information twice. Once using the "Investment" account type choice to export the investment specific transactions and once using the "Regular" account type choice to export the regular banking transactions.***

***Note: For the investment account's file names, use the exact name of the account with "-Regular" and "-Investment" appended to the name of the account. For example, an account named "My Brokerage" would have two QIF files created for it. One being named "My Brokerage-Investment.qif" and the other being named "My Brokerage-Regular.qif".***


8. Once you have all of the desired MS® Money accounts exported to QIF files you will need to transfer these QIF files to your Mac using an external media device that can be read on a Mac, such as a thumb drive, CD, DVD, external hard drive, or other means of file transfer such as email. For easier importing keep all of these QIF files in a single folder.

Notes:

• Closed accounts have to be reopened MS® Money in order to be exported to a QIF file.
• MS® Money cannot export loan accounts to QIF files.
• Make note of all complex investment transactions such as investment splits to check after the import is complete.
• MS® Money QIF exports are missing account title information which is why the files need to be named with the account names.
• You may want to create and print a Customized Net Worth Report that is organized by Accounts (not Account Types) to help check off exported accounts.
• If you have investment accounts, you may want to create and print a list of held securities with their name, security type and symbol which is required to enter security information during the import later on. MS® Money does not export the necessary list of securities in their QIF file exports and this information is needed to correct securities for the missing security type and symbol information during the import process.
• For more specific information on how to export account information from MS® Money check out their How to export and import account information in Microsoft Money web page (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/178830)

Importing Accounts from MS® Money QIF files:

With your QIF files exported from MS® Money on your Mac you are now ready to import these accounts into SEE Finance.
1. Importing accounts can be done by either creating a new SEE Finance file and selecting "Get Started by Importing Account(s) from File" OR by opening an existing file and then selecting the program's "File" menu and choosing "Import" -> "Accounts...".
2. You will then be shown a file browser window. Select "MS® Money" for the "File Was Created By:" option and select "Import Multiple QIF Files" option if you are importing multiple QIF files.
3. Navigate to the location of the QIF file(s) you would like to import in the file browser and then click "Open". Wait for a moment while SEE Finance gathers the information from the selected file(s).
4. If you are importing investment account(s) you will next be presented with the "Securities Found in QIF File with Missing Types & Symbols" window. Since MS® Money does not export the necessary list of securities in their QIF file exports, you will need to go through this list of securities and set the proper security type and symbol for the transactions.
   • By default all securities will be listed with "Stock" as the security type and the name as the symbol.
   • To quickly set the symbols for the securities in the list, hit enter to edit the symbol for the selected security and press enter again to confirm the entry. Then the next security in the list will be selected automatically and simply hit enter again to edit the symbol for the selected security and press enter again to confirm the entry and select the next security.
   Once the security types and symbols are correctly set click the "Accept" button. Then wait for a moment while SEE Finance gathers the information from the QIF file(s).
5. Next if categories are present in any of the transactions you will be prompted with the import categories window, verify the categories you want to import and select or deselect the import checkboxes as desired. Select the import type, either "Import & Delete Existing" or "Import & Merge With Existing". Click "Import" and the categories selected will be imported.
6. Next the QIF import window will raise and show the transactions imported from the file. Check to verify whether or not you want to import any of these accounts. In the top table check the "Import" check box of the account(s) you wish to import. Also in the top table you need to set the name, account type, and currency of the accounts to be imported by clicking on the table rows. You can also check individual transactions to be imported or not using the "Import" column in the "Transactions in Selected Account:" table. Select the date format that specifically matches the transactions found in the file (see note below). You can choose whether the values in the number column are check numbers or transaction numbers. Select the kind of category matching you prefer. Check the "Run Imported Transactions through Filters" checkbox of you want to use your activated transaction filters. If you would like to have all these transactions set as reconciled (cleared), check the "Mark All Imported Transactions as Reconciled" (otherwise it will use the reconciled setting found in the file).
7. Select the "Import" button and you're done!

Notes:

• Make sure to check the checkbox(es) in the "Import" column to import the accounts found in the file.
• For QIF files, make sure you have chosen the proper date format from the date format pop up button when importing the QIF file. If you don't the transactions will not have the proper dates and may be given a strange date or might not be imported at all. Note that formats showing "-" for separators are for all similar formats using any kind of separator. For example, the date format "MM-DD-YY" would be appropriate for dates such as: "12/31/99", "12 31 99", "12-31-99", "12.31.99", "12/31'99", etc.
• For QIF files, make sure to select the type of category matching you prefer to be done once you click "Import". Select "Don't Match Categories" if you don't want these transactions to have categories. Select "Use Exact Match for Categories" if you only want transactions to have a category if they match up exactly to one currently in SEE Finance. Select "Use Closest Match for Categories" if you would like SEE Finance to try to match the imported transactions with the closest matching category.
• For QIF files, if you import accounts with transactions referencing transfers to accounts through the use of categories and these other accounts are not included in the QIF file or already in your SEE Finance file the transactions will be marked with categories such as "*The Missing Account Name". If you later import this missing account these transactions will automatically be adjusted to use the account's category keeping the original transfer information intact.
• Make sure you have selected the "Mark All Imported Transactions as Reconciled" checkbox if you want the transactions for the imported accounts to be marked as reconciled. Otherwise you will have to mark each one as reconciled manually.
• You may need to adjust your account balance using a balance adjustment transaction.