Nationwide to remove support for Microsoft money

JBower

Thank you rpb424 for the advice - and yes it does work as you have described.:beer:

rpb424

Glad to hear it! :j

If you are downloading information from a Flexaccount then make sure that you do it from the 'full' statement tab rather then the 'mini' statement one since you get fuller descriptions.

I've been playing around further with the MT2OFX vbs scripts this evening to customise things a bit further since I am downloading potentially from five different Nationwide accounts that I have (!), which generate 3 subtly different types of csv file between them. It really is quite powerful what you can do with it.

Money_Maker_Shaker

Could you keep us informed as to your progress with MT2OFX please rpb424?

rpb424

Its going really well actually....

MT2OFX comes supplied with about 100 separate vbs scripts to deal with different banks (UK and foreign), since many of them format the csv data in slightly different ways. You simply select the ones you want use, and MT2OFX will pass the csv file through each 'enabled' one in turn until it finds one that recognises the specific data layout in the csv file and then generates the OFX file from it.

The problem I had with Nationwide is that I have five different accounts with them set up in Money, all capable of receiving downloaded data. However the format of the downloaded csv file format is not totally consistent across all the accounts and the account number is not always consistently passed into Money, resulting in Money asking you which account you would like the data to be imported into rather than it happening automatically.

For a Nationwide Credit Card account there is a specific script supplied which works fine and needed no modification. Flexaccount and InvestDirect accounts generate another subtly different type of file, whilst e-Savings and ISA generate a third one. What I did was to modify the Nationwide Current Account script to look for the name of the account within the csv file and then automatically apply the matching account number into the correct OFX file parameter. Money now automatically routes the incoming data to the correct account with no extra prompting.

Hence my overall import process is currently as follows:

1. In Firefox, log into Online Banking (takes me automatically to Flexaccount 'Full' tab)
2. Click on 'Download text file' link.
3. Firefox asks if I want to save the link or open it. I have this configured to 'Open in MT2OFX'. Unfortunately a bug in Firefox means that it always asks this question even if the 'always do this action' box is ticked (something to do with mime types).
4. MT2OFX then automatically generates the OFX file and is configured to them automatically run the MS Money import handler (which tells the money app that some new data is available). The way I have it configured you never actually see MT2OFX open on screen, it all happens in the background and closes automatically.
5. If Money is not already open then a dialog box pops up saying that data has been processed and do I want to open Money and import it.
6. The data is magically imported.

Hence at the minimum at the moment it is a 2 click operation to get from downloading the csv to Money receiving the data if it is already open. Theoretically it could be one click save for the bug in Firefox.

You need to download individually for each account you are interested in rather than the old system from within Money where it would do them all in one go, but I honestly think that this is about the best I can hope to do, and it really works quite well and isn't anything like as much of a pain as I thought it might become.

nlamont

Thanks for the explanations of MT20FX. As I mentioned above I've had problems with it, but I think now that Money has somehow got corrupted by attempting to download from Nationwide when Nationwide's service is kaput.
I have three NW accounts. When I open Money two of them show as 'Update in progress'. When I try MT20FX with those, I get that silly message about 'A communication error occurred, please try your call again'; when I try it with the third it works perfectly. But I can't get rid of this 'update in progress'. In Manage Online Services there's a link 'Stop using online services' but when I click OK, it just freezes Money and I have to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out. I've been on Microsoft's site and it just tells you to 'Stop using online services'. I thought I'd be clever and set up a new account, export this account to QIF and reimport it into the new account. Money won't have it - says the data is corrupt. Which seems to even preclude me from moving to another program ! Any Money experts care to suggest anything?
I'm beginning to think 'What if I just didn't bother tracking my accounts at all?'

Money_Maker_Shaker

Not sure I can be much help nlamont, only thing I can suggest is when I've had problems with Money stuck on a Update in Progress message is I click on the icon in the toolbar to start the online update and I find it says 'online update already in progress' but then stops the update. Could you use your back up to restore your data?

I agree with rpb424 that MT20FX is a lovely, powerful little program. Looks like I'll be able to use it to keep my MS Money 2005 account with upto data on my Nationwide accounts. Yes it is more hassle than when Nationwide let you do it automatically but not a lot more hassle. Still knarked at Nationwide though.

I can't get my import process as smooth as rpb424, think I need to change some settings at the ms money end - how do I stop it importing duplicated items? The quickest way to import is to download and import the full statement but it doesn't seem to recognise already reconciled transactions so I'm ending up with loads of duplicates. Hmm any suggestions?

rpb424

There is an option on Money (probably in Tools - Online Services) to match transactions stretching back a specific number of days. If the number isn't big enough then transactions older than that will be duplicated.

I'm using a very old copy of Money 2001, so not sure if the settings are exactly the same for more recent versions.

Ron-ski

I've had a reply from Nationwide - I complained via the online banking messaging system (as well as phoning), apart from all the excuses they did say they were looking into/considering offering .OFX downloads.

They really should have notified us that they were dropping support, and they should have implemented .OFX downloads prior to dropping support!

I've been a customer of theirs for around 25 years, and used Money since they offered it free, my accounts in Money go back to 1996!

PS I installed Money (2004) on Windows 7 last night and it worked, although I've not really tested it thoroughly.

rpb424

It is ironic that by this action Nationwide have gone from being the major bank with the best support for Money (the only one ever in the UK to support direct download from within Money) to now being the worst with only csv support.

Given that they must have known for some time that this was going to happen it surely wouldn't have taken much to implement OFX and/or QIF support in advance and at least salvage some reputation. After all, this is not entirely their fault since the server that has been withdrawn was in part supported by Microsoft, who are really to blame for ditching Money.

From what I've read in other places Nationwide have actually lost some customers over this. Can't say as I blame the customers though, who are understandably not prepared to jump through hoops to regain some download support like I and others have.

nlamont

I got this response from Nationwide to my complaint about Money - note: no mention of considering providing any formats other than CSV.
I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the removal of Nationwide’s support for the Microsoft Money program. I appreciate that Microsoft Money is a valuable tool for many users of the Internet Bank. I have passed your comments on to our site developers, who are continually reviewing and improving the service and facilities we provide our members.

Whilst I appreciate you may not have any problems with the program, if we were to continue to allow customers the ability to download transactions into the program, we would still need to provide support. We could not allow the continuation of a program without support, equally the information being used to download transactions would involve Nationwide servers being used, so we would still be involved and would have to offer support.

We decided that the best form of notification would be on our homepage so that everyone could identify we were withdrawing support.