|
|
 - Great For Small BusinessI've used MS Money for Small Business since 2004. It works great for me. I own a sandwich franchise (the #1 sub shop in the world) and a cigar store. At first I used Quickbooks Pro 2003, but it was not very compatible with online banking (maybe they've improved it, but I'm not going to try it until MS Money stops working for me). I needed software that would effortlessly import data from my online bank and MS Money has been a godsend. I have up to six months to update my checking account by downloading the information from online and the download is free. When I used Quickbooks online banking, my same bank charged me $15 a month for that service. It doesn't matter how many times I've downloaded information for a given period, MS Money is smart enough to know what has already been downloaded and not make duplicate entries. I've never had a problem reconciling my account with MS Money, with Quickbooks Pro it was a mouse clicking nightmare. MS Money imports the data seamlessly and all I have to do is verify the categorization of each entry by hitting accept. Quickbooks was far more cumbersome. At tax time, all I have to do is create profit and loss reports and give them to my accountant. I am buying 2007 because I do payroll online now too, and my bank has a direct export to MS Money 2007 option that will make things even easier. Right now I have to export as a QIF file and import. 2007 will import the download directly. It does suck that you have to keep upgrading these financial software programs every few years, but they all do it and MS Money is way cheaper than Quickbooks Pro. Believe me, $60 every few years is nothing to keep track of your business, my accountant costs me 20 times that. I may try Quickbooks Pro in the future, but for my small business needs, I don't see it anytime soon. I have a hard time believing the highly negative reviews of this product. Some people may be bothered that I'm commenting before I actually buy the product, but I use 2005 now and for what I do I already know this program will work. I will write a subsequent review if it doesn't work out, you can bet on that. Rating:  - Performance is harassament and functionality is faultyI am a seasoned user of "Microsoft Money" since 2001 and used Money-2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 versions. On the subject of convenience and integration of multiple financial activities, Money (and for that matter even Quicken) does fantastic job. However, with 4-5 years of usage of 'Money', my money file has grown to nearly 21MB. With this size, I am getting pathetic performance which is consistently annoying. I have a laptop with 1.6GHz dual core CPU and 1GB RAM, however very basic activities such as looking at monthly report, budget report etc. takes 2-4 minutes to display on the screen ! Even if I go back and try again, it will again hang for 2-4 minutes. I will be lucky if I get 'any' operation finished faster then 5 seconds/transaction. The problem is with specific version but the way Money is designed to store its information. There were some comments on improving performance by using Database to store information but Microsoft chose not to invest money on that. Another annoying thing I observed with Microsoft Money is with every newer release you will get fancier but more BUGGY software. So far I found '2004' release best in the bunch but once you upgrade the version and make new entries it is not feasible to go back to earlier version. Let me give you example that will explain the problem. Most common activity one will have is it to download data from financial institutes. Money will connect to these institutes and get the data. It will turn back in 2-3 minutes with newer data and status as 'done'. On the "Account List" you will see, for example, 5 new transaction and when you go into that account there is 'nothing' yet ! Reason being, data is still in flight but status shows 'done'. After 2-3 minutes you will get the data in the account. When you try to accept the transaction it will say "data is still in flight" but you got status 'done' ! In short, after getting data downloaded from the institute, you won't be able to 'accept' them for nearly 5-6 minutes. I am surprised to see Microsoft is selling software w/o testing such basic functionality ! FYI, I noticed this bug only in 2007 release. I wish to have a better software for my need w/o losing existing data but Microsoft hasn't decided to have better (not just newer) version yet. Quicken seems to have similar issues and it doesn't allow any migration facility for me to move my existing data from last 6 years. I can just wish that Microsoft Money 2008 comes with higher performance and basic testing. If you are a first time user, prefer to compare both Money and Quicken for yourself before locking your data in one of the them. With 'Money', once your file grows larger, performance deteriorate significantly. One last point-- even with above limitations, I am better off using this software then not having it at all. Microsoft is doing a good job of marketing its positive points so I won't spend time on that. Rating: - Better than QuickenVery intuitive, solid backend DB and internal backup. I switched from quicken 5 years ago and never went back. Rating:  - Trash!I have been using this program for five years now and I'm finally going to switch to Quicken. The 'Invoice Designer' is a total waste of time... it just hasn't worked for years and Microsoft will do NOTHING to get it to work. This is the unwanted step child of Microsoft, so please don't waist your time! Rating:  - Minor Enhancements of 2006Little real improvements over 2006, however the biggest omission on day one is the absence of money for the pocket pc. I use this as my main entry point while away and now am worse off than before the upgrade.
|
