Would anyone recommend Microsoft Money?

Bill Gates?

If you are used to using a spreadsheet, why not stick with it? I've never tried Microsoft Money, but I did try Quicken once and gave it up rapidly, as it had a mind of its own, and wouldn't do as it was told. It couldn't handle standing orders and DDs for a start.

If you use a spreadsheet with a number of columns for different classes of expenditure, you can easily analyse where your money is going. One worksheet for each month, and a summary sheet in a workbook should do for each year.

No, it's arcane in operation and difficult to get it to do anythign other than what M$ wants it to do.

Quicken, of which MS Money is a poor clone, is much, much better. Sadly I dont think it is available in the UK.

I find that "quickbooks" works very well.

I have been using Money 2000 for several years, and don't have many serious complaints. I looked at upgrading once, IIRC to Money 2003, and immediately switched back to M2000 after experiencing something similar to 'bloody paper clip' syndrome. I would not buy a current version.

I would recommend that you stick to spreadsheets and databases which are infinitely more customisable for your needs.

well... I'm going to fight the tide here! I've been using it for some years now - started with money 2003, and now use 2004 (reviews say there's no real point going up to 2005 as the changes are very minor). As to using it - depends on what you want / expect it to do. I am currently paying off a couple of credit card debts (almost there!) and as a result run a very tight ship. The best thing about the software is the ability to track regular payments - these are set up once in the 'Bills and payments' section and allow you track you projected weekly/monthly etc spending according to their schedule (very flexible, bills/deposits can be set to daily/weekly/bi-weekly/monthly etc etc). Therefore, start of the month our two salaries go in, I then work for the rest of the month on the final account balance for the month given to me by Money (if that makes sense ?!) rather than whats actually in the bank. For the last few years I have NEVER been caught out by a bill, or ran out of money at the end of the month. This allows me to pay down the maximum I possible can on the debts at the start of month, taking into account everything else that has to be paid out later in the month.

I also use a few other features - reports on spending catagories etc, but none of the advanced bits like tracking investments / mortgages / tax etc.

YMMV with Money depending on your bank. Natwest used to allowed me to download transactions from their online banking; however I moved to cahoot and they do not. As a result, I spend about 2 mins a couple of mornings a week entering transactions. Sounds a pain, and takes getting used to, but I dont see it as a problem now.

At the end of the day, earlier versions of MS Money go for pennies - pick one up and see what you think...

I like yourself used to manage my accounts in excel. I then moved to Microsoft Money 2000 and used this for several years. Had no real problems or complaints with it, or at least if I did nothing major because I can't remeber having any problems. I now use Gnucash and prefer it to both the previous methods, but I don't think there is a Windows port so its probably not an open for you. From my point of view I found that moving from Excel to MS Money was worthwhile.

Gav

they have withdrawn Quicken from the UK market, I guess they didn't understand it. The USA seem to use "checks" to pay for everything so all their packages focus on checkbook reconciliation, whatever that might be !

Phil

A trial version is available from the MS web site, however I think this is only for the 2005 version. 2004 seems to be better.

Note if you create a file with the 2005 trial you will have trouble getting the data into an earlier version, also if you get the USA trial the file will not work with the UK version.

Various banks allow downloads from their online banking pages that Money can load and process. Nationwide allows you to use Money to download all your statements directly, without going to the site.

For any other questions you might want to try the microsoft.public.uk.money newsgroup.

get the free trial of the MS site and give it a whirl, be careful and make sure you get the one for your local country ie cannot open a USA file on the UK software etc

Waq

T S Skoglund wrote:

In message , rob. writes

Lots of bank sites, allow a download as comma separated variable files (ie: compatible with just about[1] any spreadsheet/database prog)

[1] Just bunged the caveat in to be safe but I would be surprised if there was something out there that couldn't handle a csv. I now stand ready to be corected!

should be "corrected" :-)

Seriously, there is one it's erm Microsoft Money!! You need to feed the csv through a conversion tool :-(