When is synching coming to anMoney?

[anMoney Developer]

This is a question that's asked me practically on a daily basis.

Synching is a very complicated issue.  It must work 100% of the time across addition, modification and deletion of data and across multiple devices that are connected unreliably.  This is a topic that some of the brightest researchers have struggled with.  Creating this from scratch will almost certainly lead to data loss in some cases -- 99.9% is not good enough.

Currently, as far as I am aware, no body provides a platform for creating record level syncing in the cloud.  I am looking at Google and Amazon that would be natural candidates, but even they only provide file level syncing, which is a much simpler scenario.

So, in short, there will most likely never be syncing in anMoney until one of the cloud storage companies offer a platform for doing this.  I realize that some other competitors claim they do synch, and while I cannot prove it, I am absolutely certain that those solutions are not 100% reliable.  

I would love to hear people's opinion on this.....

[Ed]

Actually it's not that hard if you give the user the means to set conflict priority and to see where and when each record was last changed, then leave them to it.

That said, they'll never let you leave them to it. You'll get endless requests to solve their individual problems, it'll make the files bigger and the code more complex, you'll have to add credential management, handle it all when archiving and, frankly, you'll regret taking it on.

The Dropsync type file level approach you already suggest is a reasonable method if not ideal. I would like sync'ing to be available, BUT I'd rather my present and forecast balances are accurate so, overall, I'd prefer you to focus on not breaking the key features instead of adding complexity.

Thanks for a pretty damn good app,

Ed.

[grayme]

Does it not depend really on what people want the syncing to do?

For me, I just want the ability to be able to add transactions to my phone when I am out and have those transactions automatically sync to my tablet without me having to do anything other than click a button within anMoney on the tablet to call the data. 

The alternative of adding items to my phone and me then exporting those transactions from the phone, emailing/sending to the tablet, finding the file, importing, does work, but I just don't do it.

A real nice to have would be real time two way syncing, but that doesn't appear to be an option, just being able to transfer one way would be a great feature for me. Maybe phone putting a file into a folder on Box, Drive, etc. and the tablet looking for these files, importing and deleting when finished?

[Shaun Harris]

Hi Tom

I have been trialling YNAB4 which has a windows and Used to use EEBA web both synced.

Also BOTH offer OFX imports with on screen matching.

YNAB get around the payee mess by creating payee relying on user to create PAYEE rules. ie Starts with Ends with Contains etc.

You can even assign the Categories/Subs at same time.

Running in parralel at moment. 

Tom, dont take this to heart I am just giving you the info.

Their system seems to link to either Dropbox and Google and saves a file that is saved on all, which is not the database i do not think, but it says Device Y has updated to latest version.

There does not appear to be any data loss.

Hey and since rulings Payees WORK yippee !!!!

Regards

Shaun

[P Gee]

The complexity of the sync will depend on what is been synched.

Like grayme I just want to be able to add transactions and have those additions available across phone and tablet. 

One way to achieve could be as used by SynchSMS. 

It create a file in Dropbox for each SMS message created in either phone or tablet. 

The devices then poll Dropbox to retrieve the file they need to stay up to date, or changes can be synced manually.

The same approach could be adopted for deletion and modifications.

Okay modifications may result in conflict. Instead of attempting to resolve it, which can be very complicated, simply give the user options to chose from.

You could start by offering synchronisation of transaction Additions and Deletions, and introduce Modification at later schedule if there's demand for it.

Alternative could be to have another version of anMoney with cloud storage if you can guarantee security for users' data, but then you still have to manage offline changes.

I'll be willing to pay annual premium for the cloud managed version if I can sync across devices.

PG

[grayme]

I think what I'd really like is simpler and doesn't involve any 'synchronisation'.

Thinking about it, I don't even need to have a full anMoney on my phone, just an input screen to create the data that is added (without any synchronisation with existing data) into my main database on my tablet (using box.com, etc.)

Occasionally, being able to copy the account names, categories and payees from the main database over the input app would be useful, but again not requiring synchronisation.

[Carl Argent]

Can you afford not to offer the service. This is a very serious omission in an otherwise excellent product. You pride yourself it appears on making anMoney as good as a desktop product (well almost); if that's the case, synching is required. File level synching is all that's required with the ability to store the book in the cloud on Dropbox or similar or if the cloud is unavailable at the time of the change, store it locally to upload to the cloud when the network is next available. You can't obviously modify the file from two different locations but why would you? This approach lends itself well to anMoney because most users I'm sure just want to add a transaction on their phone and see it on their tablet version of anMoney when they get home.

[Andy C]

Dropbox have today announced a new Sync API for developers to allow easy syncing of databases between devices and Dropbox (see dropbox.com/developers/sync). It is completely free to use too. I cannot now see a reason why you cannot enable this feature?

As many have mentioned, this is a gaping hole in the functionality of your product. You are so good at providing updates, but when I see features added like "parsing SMS messages to allow Tasker to automatically add entries to an Money" I find it unbelievable you don't have database syncing to the cloud and across devices. It is such a useful feature. (By the way, I use Tasker and I use anMoney, but parsing my SMS messages for auto entries is not something I will ever use). Great for someone I am sure, but database syncing is vital.

You have a really great product. Please implement the Dropbox sync at the very least.

Andy

[anMoney Developer]

Yes, I downloaded that product....  It still requires the Internet permission.

[RickJ]

Interesting, but I have my doubts as to whether Dropbox sync would work effectively (if at all) with Sqlite database files. Dropbox still appears to upload/download the entire file, which in anMoney's case would be the entire book every time a single transaction was made - not a good idea. There's a whole raft of concurrency issues as well.

I'd love cloud sync, whether Dropbox or anything else, but it needs to be record, not file, based to be viable and I don't think there's much out there to help do it. It's not at all easy to do reliably, which is probably why!

Rick

[RickJ]

Hi Tom

Regardless of whether Dropbox sync is usable, I think internet permission would enable provision of a lot more useful features in anMoney. I'm interested in what resistance there is amongst your users - have you polled to find how many are actually hostile to the idea? AFAIK your competing products have net permission, and I'd be surprised if not having it were a net (oops!) competitive advantage for you.

Rick

[anMoney Developer]

You couldn't use DropBox Sync directly with SQLite -- it's a parallel database system.  I don't know what the implications are for performance as you would need to keep the DropBox copy in sync with the SQLite copy.

[grayme]

What about the option I and others have mentioned of just having a separate app that you can use to enter transactions onto one device that can be sent to the cloud, for the main device to download and merge (no syncing required)?

It could be a separate app from the main anMoney app so if people don't want to give internet permissions (though I'd trust the main app with it), they don't need this new app.

[Yiannis Ioannou]

An idea:
- fo every transaction posted on a device a text file is produced and stored in a folder. The file should contain the details of the transaction including a unique identification.
-the folder is sync among all the devices.
-the folder is constantly monitored and new transactions are processed on every device. The important thing is to keep a list of all the transaction ids a device has posted in order to avoid double posting.

Actions like modifications and deletions can be handled in the same way.

A central database can keep the last transaction each device has posted in order to enable cleaning of the folder. That is, all the transaction files less than the minimum transaction id posted can be deleted.

[Tim Bessie]

I use DejaOffice and CompanionLink for my PIM (Personal Information Management - contacts, calendar, tasks, notes), and they are set up to sync almost anything to almost anything else.

My own personal needs are just to sync locally, so the Windows CompanionLink app takes a device and a target program (eg. my android phone and Outlook) and sync them.  I do this via WiFi on my local network, and don't use any third-party services or cloud.

To me, this at least provides an easy backup, or the ability to sync my financial info between devices.

You could do something similar; provide a "sync tool" Windows app (or Mac for those Apple folks) that can communicate with anMoney via a WiFi network, and pull/push current data.  I'm sure people would ask for all kinds of features for it (eg. a full-fledged Windows app, syncing between devices where data may have been modified in multiple places, etc.), but just something that acts as syncing hub, without needing to care about duplicates or data discrepancies, would be lovely.

- Tim

 

[Luciano Donato]

Other Idea,

I also have a suggestion. I don't know exactly how you control the ID of each transaction in the database, but probabily is a sequential control. what you should do instead, maybe, is to increment some information extracted from the hardware (like WiFi integral  or partial, mac address) which is unique to a specific device in the register primary key, doing this only in the creation. Then you should treat sync as IO to a different folder always to the same file. these file is the one to be sync'd using some cloud service.

What happens is that you would never have to treat repetition ID between devices since it will never repeat. if you detect changes between same records, then update with the newer one. When editing you should maintain, of course, the original id. this rule is just for the creation.

When comparing files is simply import/export new data from one point to the other.

I am sorry about bad english, I am from brazil.

I hope this is clear enough, I tried to make it very clear

best regards,

Lucci

[grayme]

Can we ever reasonably expect to see syncing coming to anMoney across multiple Android devices?

[Leandro Sousa]

I'm also make the subscription of this request...

[Kyle Augustson]

I've been with android for years now. Never found an app that came close to the banking/budgeting that I used on my iso devices. I bought an iPad just to keep my favorite app. Last week I found yours. Excellent job. I would say it's better but it does lack this one ability. The cloud syncing to multiple devices.
The previous app I used was iReconcile. How did they manage to sync it to multiple devices?

[Shaun]

so what if they need Internet permission