Cash Flow Stopped Working

[Jana]

I use the Sunset Version of Money. Have used Money since early 90s.  One of the main features I love is Cash Flow screen. Well, it has quit working.  I have already tried deleting all of the Scheduled Bill Pay items in Bill Summary. Cash Flow still will not load.  And I"ve tried all the Repair options. I've tried to delete any previous budget items too.

The only Cash Flow I can see is on the Home Screen. Cash Flow Forecast box there is for one of my checking accounts. It is only a graph and doesn't allow me to change accounts. Nor can I see the scheduled bills that affect the forecast. It's just a chart. 

I've been dealing with this for a year, just found this forum and thought I'd ask for more things to try. Other than just starting from scratch for the new year,  I can't think of anything else.  My current transactions go back to 2009 when I started from scratch then too. 

I've been using Quickbooks Online for Business and it makes me NOT want to switch to Quickbooks!

Thanks for ANY suggestions. 

Jana

[Alan Wall]

A long time ago, I used to have an issue with the Bills which I think caused problems like you mention. It was not in Sunset edition at the time, but bug may still be there. I think it also stopped the monthly reports working. 

The bug was due to how you set up a new advance Bill (or Payment). If you set up a bill or payment in the Bill tab, there was no issue. If you are in the Account register and instead use the  suggestion on a transaction to create a recurring transaction then the cash flow and monthly reports stopped working. 

If this is the case, the solution was to find the Bill (or payment) transaction that was causing the problem. If you have not too many bills and payments then you could delete the lot and reinput them from the Bills page. 

If you had a lot of bills (I do!) then make a backup file and then delete the first Bill on your list. If the problem still exists  then reinstall the backup. Then delete the second bill item, test if works, if it does not, reinstall. Keep going doing this until it works. In which case you have found then found the defective bill, which can be reinstated manually.

The above method (top down) depends on there only being one defective bill. If there are two or more defective bills, then it won't find any of them. The other solution (bottom up) is  then is to make the backup, delete all bills except one and test. If it works then you know that one is OK. Reinstall backup, delete  all except the good one and one other bill, test. If OK reinstall the backup and delete all except these two and one more and so on. Eventually you will have tested all the bills & payments and found all the defective ones. 

Hope this helps. Alan

 

[Tom Roberts]

I use Sunset but don't use the cashflow often other than in the lifetime planner.

I just tried it know and it seems to work fine. 

I suppose you tried the Repair money file options. If they didn't work maybe you could move you mny file and reinstall Sunset.

In the worst case, you could do what I did when I went from Money 2000 to Sunset. I exported my accounts (about 20 of them) and imported them into Sunset. It requires being quite methodical, but if you make a mistake you can start again. Just a bit time consuming so it might not be worth it to get the cash flow forecast back working.
Some people in this forum even have experience repairing mny files. 

good luck 

[Dick Watson]

Cash flow is my key tactical financial management data in Money. I'm sure having this just stop working is a big problem.

You may not be in a position for this suggestion to help this time--but next time you might. My choice for this problem would be to work my way through backups of my Money file until I find a file BEFORE where this problem began and then I'd have to go figure out what transactions occurred after that backup and redo only those. (That can be easier said than done, but it's better than the alternatives.)

To enable this, I have backups *in depth* of my Money file. (There is no other data in my digital life that has more backups in form or depth.) The *in depth* part is essential precisely because of problems, like the one you have, which you may not spot as soon as they occur but only discover several days or weeks later. At the least, *everyone* should run Money with its "on exit" backup enabled and set for a considerable depth of files to retain. (I have mine set at 10. But I also have more than a month of daily full+incremental PC backups. And Windows File History, running back almost a year right now--constrained by available storage space. And several other forms of backup that pick up the Money file, including offsite, cloud, and exported data separated from the .MNY file form, that I'll skip here.)

I've had to recover a functional Money data file from a backup file several times over my thirty years of using Money. This is why I'm crazy about backups in general, and backups of my Money file is specific, in having these backups in depth, multiple forms, and onsite and offsite locations.

Best of luck resolving your problem.

[Dick Watson]

Two other general pieces of advice for circumstances like this:

1) Immediately upon discovering an issue like this, BACKUP your file and backups so that you have a set not getting overwritten.

2) One technique to identify a specific munged bill or transaction or account or ... causing this kind of problem is to take a copy of the problem file and delete half of the (bills or transactions or accounts or ...) and see if problem resolves. If it does, take another copy and delete half of that half. If it doesn't resolve, take another copy and delete the other half. Through this kind of "binary search" technique, you can sometimes narrow down a Sad Money File to a specific transaction or account or bill or ... that is somehow "corrupted" in Money in ways that Money repair doesn't find and correct. It's sad that Money outlived Microsoft's interest in fixing the root causes of problems like this, but there it is.

On Tuesday, November 23, 2021 at 11:23:00 PM UTC-10 Jana wrote:

[Jana]

Wow, This is great information.  It does sound time consuming, but I will try the suggestions. Since I tried deleting all the bills in bill pay and the cash flow still wasn't working, I think I might need to dig back and find the backup where it was working and go from there. That will be time consuming as I have backup files on many backup devices and will need to methodically narrow it down. 

Yes, I've tried all the repair options. Both before and after deleting all the bills in Bill Pay. Sadly no help there. It's been a few months since I tried to resolve it. I think I even began deleting out accounts. I gave up, but ready to tackle the problem again. 

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll try anything at this point.

[Dick Watson]

Once the Repair methods fail, well, all paths forward suck.

One more thing to try first is to either look in the Money sample file, or create a new testcase file, and confirm that you can create conditions in the data (one account with a balance, some scheduled items that add to or subtract from that balance at many future dates) and confirm that Cash Flow Forecast is working for the testcase file. Goal is to eliminate some odd quirk where the Money installation itself is somehow broken. I can't imagine what those cases could be, but stranger things have happened.

The "binary search" methods can also apply to backups.

The thing with binary search techniques is that the math makes them converge reasonably quickly. With your backups, say you try the oldest backup you have first. If it fails, well, that's no longer a path. If it works, then try the middle one (say you have fifteen, pick the seventh oldest one next). If it works, you split the oldest half again, if it fails, you split the newest half again. Rinse and repeat--keep dividing the working set in half each time. Even 256 cases narrow down to 1 in eight tries. (First cut is 128/64/32/16/8/4/2 then you gotta find one 1.) The problem with binary searches for problems in data is they assume you are looking for one needle in that haystack. If a Money "burp" of some kind created two problems, well...

You may get to some point where Money gives you one of its all but useless diagnostics like "transaction cannot be entered" (uhh, and why not?!?) or similar. The good news is that likely means you are narrowing in on the problem. The bad news is those can be difficult to find the workaround to.

If you haven't already stumbled onto it, see my "corrupted" Money file writeup.

[Chris]

There will be a corruption somewhere in the Category Table and not in any of the transactions in the Account Registry or Bill Schedule. You have to find the corruption and copy out any affected transactions to a new sub-category and manually remove the corrupted one completely from the Category Table.

The following steps are clunky and a bit brutal but will get the Cash Flow working again.

1. Make at least three copies of your current MNY file.

2. Its handy to have a print out the Category Table as you can use it as reference.

3. Open one of the copies of your MNY file open the Category Table and start deleting main Categories one at a time checking the Cash Flow after each time you perform the delete.
 
4. When Msmoney prompts you, make sure you send the transactions to a complete blank Category. This is important as using another Category name will just leave the corrupted entry in place and you will end up deleting all your Categories and not finding where the corruption lies.

5. When the Cash Flow starts to work you will know that the last Category deleted is where the error lies. (no transactions will be deleted from any account, only the Category will be cleared out from your transactions). Exit this copy of the MNY file.

6. In a second copy of the original MNY file, go into the Category Table again and start deleting the sub-categories from the Category that you have identified in the previous step, checking the Cash Flow after every delete. Make sure you continue to blank out the category when Msmoney prompts you.

7. When the Cash Flow starts to work, the error will be in the last sub-category deleted. (your Category printout will help you to keep track of where you are). Exit this copy of the MNY file.

8. Go back into your original copy of your MNY file, and in the Category Table create a new sub-category with a similar name to the faulty one or at least one that you can readily identify.

9. Using the Find and Replace tool, select all the transactions from the faulty sub-category.

Tools --> Find and Replace --> Advance search --> uncheck all the Categories and select only the faulty one --> Next.

10. Click the button Replace. On the next screen in the pull down menu “Replace” select Category and in the “With” menu select the new sub-category created in step 8.

11. Click the box to select “Replace all the transactions found” and then click the “Next” button. Accept the warning if you are changing reconciled transactions.

12. When prompted ‘Do you want to rename this category’ make sure you select ‘No’ (the default) and leave the faulty sub-category in the Category Table for the moment. If you select ‘Yes’ it will leave the corruption in the table. You have to delete it manually in the following steps. Click ‘Finish’.

13. Go back into the Category Table and copy the name of the faulty sub-category to the clipboard so you can easily re-use it later.  

14. Check the faulty sub-category has no records left just in case anything was missed.

15. Delete the faulty sub-category and when prompted, make sure you send the transactions to a blank category.

16. This is the most important step as using another sub-category name will just leave the corrupted entry in your Category Table.

17. You only reset the corruption when the faulty sub-category is set to a blank and removed manually.

18. Check the Cash Flow is working. In some rare circumstances, it may not be working as there may be two or more corruptions in the Category Table. If this is the case, exit the MNY file and make three new copies and run through the process again.

19. If it is working, rename your new sub-category to the old familiar name (from the clipboard).

20. Check your favourite reports to ensure the new sub-category is being selected where appropriate. 

Let me know if this helps. The key is to blank out the corrupted category and manually delete it. Nothing else works for me.

Good luck.

Chris

[Tom Roberts]

Very useful detailed explanation Chris. Thanks for posting 

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[Chris]

No worries Tom. I hope what I have learnt can help somebody else one day.

I’m no geek so I cannot give you any technical explanation but I can say without any doubt that the corruption is in the Category Table.

I experimented with various scenarios trying to fix my recent failure last week and the only thing that worked was finding and deleting the corrupted category (sub-category) from the Category Table. Nothing else worked.

The real secret is to blank out the category when Money offers you a substitute category after you perform a deletion. You cannot use another category and you cannot use a new category name either. You must blank it out completely with every deletion or the corruption stays in the table. I experimented with this extensively. Blanking out the category is the only thing that worked, both in trying to find the corruption in the first place and removing it when you do.

It sounds brutal but you have to delete a category (blank out what Money offers up as a replacement), test the cash flow and continue with deleting and testing until it starts to work. You can back track from there in another copy of your MNY file.

Remember you are not actually deleting any transactions from the Account Register and you are working in a copy file anyway so its stress free. If you check a record in any account after deleting a category (and you have set it to blank), you only see that the category field has been cleared out. The record is otherwise unchanged.

I was making some notes for myself to serve as a memory jogger for me in the future and thought it might be worth posting to help somebody else. If you follow my instructions you will fix the cash flow not displaying with no lose of data and without the need to re-input anything.

I’d be happy to answer any questions if anyone is brave enough to give it a try.

Trust me it does work.

Chris

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

Chris, I tacked on tonight's comment onto the article I posted as a reference page that you authored.  Might be easier for others to find in the future.

https://microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com/fixing-cash-flow-graph-issues-resulting-from-erroneous-category-flags/

[Chris]

Chaps, I have had another Cash Flow Graph corruption and in working through my procedure to fix it, I realised that what I previously posted was not right. I said that the corruption was in the Category Table and this is not correct. The corruption is in the Account Register but you use the Category Table to find it.

By systematically deleting categories from a copy of your MNY file and checking after every time to see if the Cash Flow Graph has started to work, you can find the corruption and repair the data from there.

It would be great if a boffin out there could write an App to find it without deleting categories, but until then, my brutal and clunky method will work.

Nevertheless I just wanted to set the record straight; it’s a corrupted category in the Account Register not the Category Table itself.

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

I folded your clarification into my article.  thx

[Dick Watson]

Let me give you a shallow dive into the internals of Money database schema. I’m not going to check my answer against my data dictionary, so column names, for instance, may be wrong. But general principles aren’t.

 

Money stores information about accounts in table ACCT. It stores information about categories and class1/class2 in table CAT. Finally, for my purpose here, it store information about transactions, whether in account register or scheduled bills, in table TRN. TRN has “foreign key” columns for transaction information about involved accounts with column names like hacct (handle to ACCT) and hcat (handle to CAT). In general, it works hard to maintain referential integrity. I.e., to prevent having one of these foreign fey references referring to non-existent rows of the foreign tables.

 

Cash flow forecast “should” be entirely possible to do with using data in table TRN.

 

I tell you all this so I can tell you that you can’t delete a CAT without updating every row in TRN that references that category. By deleting categories, you are, somehow, fixing whatever corruption, I’d bet a donut, in TRN thatis causing your issue. (Off the top of my head, in the middle of the night, I don’t recall what Money puts in the TRN hcat and similar columns that are foreign key to CAT. Let that be an exercise for the student.)

(Not sure why this pasted in Times New Roman. Go figure)

[Chris]

Thanks for the response Dick. You’re way more into the entrails of Msmoney than I am.

I have a cash flow failure at least once a year and being retired with an irregular income, its vital that I know I’ll have funds in my account in three months time to pay the electricity bill. I need the cash flow to work and I’m completely blind if it doesn’t. Its one of the big selling points of Msmoney I think.

When it failed the first time, I could find very little help on the Internet on how to fix it and what there was didn’t work. Even the Microsoft site was useless. It was with trial and error, a lot of swearing and ultimately blind luck that I stumbled onto a fix. I thought it was worth documenting what I had discovered and posting it. I hope it has helped someone other than me.

I have a lot of entries in the Bill Schedule so much so that the Bills menu takes so long to load that I gave up using it and I work only from the “Scheduled bills” report. It loads much quicker and you can do everything except create a new entry. I use the Calendar menu for that.  

Anyhow, from a layman’s point of view I know that deleting a category in the Category Table just blanks out that field in the Account Register. No account transactions get deleted. When that field gets corrupted, the cash flow stops working and the only way I know how to find it is to work in a copy of the MNY file and systematically delete categories from the Category Table, testing the cash flow as you go. When you find it, go back to the original MNY file and clean up the records with the Find and Replace utility. There is no loss of data.

What I didn't try and I will next time is to archive the corrupted transactions. That might be a cleaner way to fix the corruption. Of course you have to find them first.

I’d love a boffin to write a utility to search the Account Register to find the corruption. Until then, my clunky method will have to do and I know it does get the cash flow working again.

I was just worried that people with this issue might think reading my previous post that their Category Table could be corrupted. That is not correct and I just wanted to correct the record.

Thanks again for your reply.

PS: My Internet dropped out half way through posting this message. I hope it doesn't get posted twice :-(