This release adds a new Search Report. One of the nice things about this report is that you can type in a transaction amount and it will find all transactions that match that amount. So, for example, you can type 45.50 to find all debits/deposits of 45.50.

In addition, you can search by phrase or using all or any of the keywords. You can even use these together to create a more powerful search. For example, I could search for Auto 50.50 using the “All Keywords” option and it will find all transactions that have Auto in them with the amount 50.50. The report also provides a monthly totals graph option that gives you a visual representation of the data.  You can click the arrow on any transaction to jump to it in your account list.

Next up: Prospects 1.3! More details will be coming later this month as it gets closer to release.

During the past few months, Prospects development essentially came to a halt while I determined how to best proceed with the product.   I did not see the increase in sales I was hoping for with the release of version 1.2, but I continued to develop updates that I hoped would start to drive some sales.   As I worked on 1.3, sales continued to decline and the marketplace began to shift with some interesting changes in the online personal finance space and personal finance applications in general.

I did not handle the situation well.   I neglected to answer the majority of support emails and did not respond to postings on the support forums.  This was a large, inexcusable error on my part.   I am sincerely sorry for the lack of support and communication.

After much thought and planning, I have decided to proceed with Prospects development.   I am very excited about the potential for the future!   With the new year will come some changes:

• Prospects will move to a Family Pack license only (no more Single Use license) priced at $25.  This will allow you to purchase one copy and run it on all your family’s machines.  If you already purchased a Single Use license, you can now use it as a Family Pack license.
• I will not be providing a road map for Prospects.  I will discuss features and upcoming releases and keep the community informed as best as I can, but I will not be discussing all features.  I will do my best to communicate progress and some features from each release via this blog and Twitter.
• I do not currently plan on releasing a Prospects 2.0 in 2010, but instead will continue to release incremental updates (1.3, 1.3.x, 1.4, etc). This means that everyone who has already purchased a license will continue to be able to upgrade to the new releases at no cost.

I am currently working on Prospects 1.3 and will post more details about it in the near future.  I know this post will not answer everyone’s questions, but hopefully it is a start.  Please feel free to post in the support forums or email me at the support email address if you have any questions.  Again, I would like to sincerely apologize for the lack of communication during the past few months.

Thanks – and happy new year!

Mike Rutt

http://www.twitter.com/motimotion (the link is also available above at the top of the blog)

I plan on using this as a means to communicate at a lower level what I’m working on for upcoming releases. If you are interested in participating in the development of Prospects, this is going to be a way for you to do so! I will be posing questions and thoughts regularly on specific features I am working on as I work on them. You can respond via twitter to provide your input. I will be monitoring feedback throughout development and hope this can help me make the features as useful as possible from the start.

I hope anyone who wants their voice to be heard checks this out! There may be a few bumps in the road as this gets going, but I hope it turns into a great way for people to participate “real-time” in the development of Prospects!

(I will still be posting to the blog every week or so, as I do now. It will continue to be a summary of events, future updates, etc…)

• Fixes rare issue where balance would sometimes not be saved properly
• Fixes Budget Advisor so YTD and Average YTD amounts now roll-up sub-categories
• Improved import duplicate matching
• Fixed issue where report content would overlap report options
• Scheduled transactions now record notes when being posted
• Fixed issue where transfer account would be incorrect when editing a scheduled transaction
• Fixed bug that caused save problems when deleting categories
• Recent Transactions ViewPoint no longer shows “new” transaction in list

One other key item is that this version has additional debug information in it.  If you experience a crash, please submit the crash report to MotiMotion when the window pops up following the crash and enter a few details about what you were doing when it occurred.  It will help me resolve some of the remaining outstanding crash issues that I’ve been unable to duplicate locally.

Download link:  http://motimotion.com/downloads/prospects_124pre1.zip

Please report any issues to the support email address or the forums – thanks!

In the meantime, I am also working on Prospects 1.3.  I’ve reworked the category panel so you can now edit everything directly in the panel – including the color.  It is much faster and you can do a better job of assigning colors.  You can now also double-click QIF, OFX/QFX files to open them directly in Prospects.  This comes in handy since you can also associate these files to open automatically in Prospects in Mac OS X.  This means that after you download it from your bank’s website in the browser of your choice, it can automatically open in Prospects and it begins the import process.  I know this should have been there from the beginning, but it’s finally coming in 1.3!

I’ve just begun work on the ability to merge two transactions (presumably duplicates) via drag and drop.  I have some more things I’d like to implement using drag and drop, but this may be the only piece that gets into 1.3 to ensure it gets out in a reasonable time frame.

I have a long list of additional enhancements coming in 1.3 that I will be discussing over the coming weeks.  The focus, as I’ve mentioned before, is the import process – and I have to say I’m getting really excited for this update.  As it’s been progressing, it looks like I may be able to incorporate “direct connect” functionality where Prospects will automatically download the data from your bank (if supported).  This is something that I was originally thinking would be in 2.0, but I was able to get it working with one bank and believe it may get into 1.3 … I’ll be posting more on this later.  If I am able to get this into 1.3, I will need some serious help beta testing the many banks out there that support this.  I will post details on how to help out with the beta if/when this occurs …

Thanks for reading and take care!

Mike

After some additional consideration, I’ve also decided to enable comments again in the blog since the blog discusses things that are not discussed in the forums or other areas of the site.

Mike

I am really hopeful that I’ve been able to track down the majority of the outstanding bugs in 1.2.x and fix them in 1.2.3.  I think the application stability is greatly improved and I hope I can move forward with 1.3 without any additional 1.2.x bug fix releases.

I’m continuing to refine the details on version 1.3 – what will and will not be in the release.  I’ll be posting later this week with some updates as to what to expect.  I’m getting really excited about it and am looking forward to providing more details in the near future!

Mike

So now that 1.2.2 is out I am beginning work on 1.3.  The biggest thing going into 1.3 is a major update to the import process.  I am still finalizing the feature list and will post it once I’m sure I can do everything I want to in a reasonable amount of time.  More on 1.3 in the coming weeks…

Mike

First, importing has quite a few bug fixes.  Thanks to all the users who sent in the problems they were experiencing!  One great new addition is that Prospects will no longer force the transaction dates to be identical when checking for duplicates on importing.  It will now be more lenient and go back a few days during the duplicate check.  This will really help out users who manually enter a transaction on the day it occurs and then import it from their bank at a later date.  Previously, this situation would typically result in duplicate transactions being present following the import since Prospects required the dates to be identical.  The dates would be off by a few days because transactions usually take a few days to clear and appear in your account, thus resulting in duplicates after the import.  With the upcoming version 1.2.2 this will now be resolved and will result in far fewer duplicate transactions in accounts following an import.

Second, Prospects 1.2.2 adds exporting to QIF files.  This is great if you use multiple financial applications to manage your data or if you need to export date for tax purposes.

Third, Prospects 1.2.2 adds a preference for showing ViewPoints data across all accounts instead of just the current account.  This was requested by a number of people.  You can toggle this on/off in the preferences real-time and the ViewPoints will update immediately.

I’ve also resolved a few annoying crashes/bugs and added a few other minor enhancements.  All-in-all, it should be a great release and will be the last 1.2.x release (barring any major problems) until version 1.3 is released (which will be focused primarily on importing enhancements).

Thanks for reading!  Look for Prospects 1.2.2 later this week!

Mike