Microsoft Money (PC)

Like many people I have been a Quicken user for years and years but suddenly found that Quicken was withdrawing from the UK market and stopping all user support at the end of 2005. I use some of the more advanced features like live portfolio updates so doing nothing was not an option. Given that the choice in this market had been Money or Quicken, it is now microsoft or nothing.

The software comes with a converter for changing your Quicken files to the Money format to help migrate your old data. I suspect if you only used the Quicken software at the simple level it will work fine. If like me you have complex transactions recorded like stock splits or share buybacks recorded then you will find the file converts with some errors. Also my mortgage account was thousands of pounds out for some reason (it was trying to make me reconcile against an incorrect starting balance). It seriously took me an afternoon to reconcile all the errors.

That said, if you have no data to import, or if your quicken files are simple, then what of the program itself? Well, they have tried to make the front end very 'web' like. It is all very integrated with the internet - and so interesting articles and links are onhand. The thing is I don't want my financial software to look like the web - I want it to look like an accounting package. It is not that obvious where to click to find your balances! In short the front end stinks.

The reporting is adequate - it can slice and dice your data any which way you like - but if you're not expereinced with reporting programs I fear the casual user will be lost getting Money to show your data the way you want to show it.

What does work well is importing downloaded credit card statements etc. This is far, far better then quicken with the program making very good guesses at the categories which really speeds up reconciliation.

Also good is the portfolio section - it manages to find even my most obscure stocks and update them real time (something that Quicken failed at). Again though, the front end of the portfolio manager stinks.

This software does the job but is flawed. Given there is no competition on the market I fear Microsoft now have little incentive to improve it. A real shame, as tracking my finances has been one of the more useful benefits I have got from my home PC.

I am not usually a great fan of Microsoft, and have used Quicken, Money's main rival, since 1993. However, Quicken has pulled out of the UK market, leaving users somewhat stranded. I looked at an earlier version of Money several years ago, and felt it was well behind Quicken in all areas, so I was feeling increasingly vulnerable using a critical piece of software (Quicken 2004) with no upgrade path and no support.

My worst fears were realised a few days ago when my Quicken programme advised me that it was "unable to repair a critical error in my data file". Although the programme seemed to still function, the writing was on the wall.

I reluctantly purchased Money more in hope than expectation, and have been delighted with it.

First, Money can import and convert a Quicken datafile, meaning that all my data back to 1993 has transferred over. The programme does occasionally have to make some adjustments and assumptions to do this, but it helpfully places a note in the "memo" field when it does, so you can track and review them and correct them if necessary.

Second, this version has far more capability than Quicken 2004. Far too many features to list them all but, for example, you can cut and paste a transaction entered in the wrong account to the correct one; you can transfer shares and unit trusts from one account to another; there are more available categories for investment income etc, etc.

Third, and most helpfully for me, the online capability is superb. Money will, for example, access current share and unit trust prices online, and as frequently as you wish, saving hours of manual input.

Fourth, the report writing capability is much more extensive than in Quicken.

One hint if you upgrade and transfer data across. My Quicken file was corrupted, so it transferred across with an unknown error or errors. This meant that, at first, Money could not run some reports, more particularly net worth, account balances and investment performance. I fixed this problem by starting the report writer, which locked up, but then using the "customize" function. By clearing all the selected accounts, and then adding them back a few at a time, to find when the report writer locked up, I was able to find the account containing the corrupted data. By then adjusting the date settings, I was able to pin it down to a single transaction causing the problems. Deleted and re-entered the bad data and everything has been fine since.

There are a couple of little niggles. It does not come with a manual and some of the programme and online help is a bit limited. But there are lost of guides and help books out there, and I was up and running effectively pretty quickly by trial and error. If you've used Quicken, you should not have many problems.

In short, a very good programme representing astounding value for money. I now suspect that Quicken abandoned the UK market because they realized they could not upgrade their product to keep competitive, particularly with the online capability.

I've been using Microsoft Money for about the last 10 years. Upgrading to each new version as it's released. This time, I wish I hadn't!

I've had nothing but trouble with MS Money 2005 since I bought it, and have in fact, gone back to using Money 2004 (which, incidentally, is excellent!).

A few of the problems I've come across are:

1) The new "merge" accounts section really doesn't work for me. In older versions of Money you could simple select which on-line accounts Money downloaded statements for. With Money 2005 it downloads all accounts from your financial institution. Annoying if you either don't want to take all accounts, or you share accounts (eg a joint accounts) with a partner.

2) For some reason it changed all my opening balances, so my balances were wrong for every account

3) My previous 3 months of bill payments were reset, so I had to manually go though nearly 200 transactions and "skip" them

4) My ISA and share account balances were way, way off. Looking at it, it transpired that Money 2005 decided to subtract money from my associated cash account for both "buys" *and* "sells"!! (Sells should obviously be a deposit to my cash account

And a few other minor niggles such as I couldn't get on with the new UI, although to be fair, I expect I'd get used to it in time.

In conclusion, most of my problems appeared to be due to upgrading from a previous version (although I've never had this much trouble upgrading older versions). So if you're already running a version on MS Money, stick with it. If you're new to MS Money, and you don't use a UK bank which supports background banking (I think Nationwide are the only), then you'll probably be okay. Mind you, I'd still recommend you try and get hold of a copy of Money 2004!