Customer Reviews

Microsoft Money 2006 Premium [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Here is what you must do to have a good experience with this product:

1. Never use Microsoft Passport.

Passport is a universal password that can be used to sign on to multiple bank accounts, brokerages, merchants, and God knows what else. It is a security disaster. Avoid it!

Your installation of Microsoft Money will be a bit awkward if you want to avoid Passport. Some users believe that Money won't install unless you get a Passport. This is false, at least for Money 2006 and earlier versions. You just have to be careful (and resolute!) while you install. See also item 6. below.

2. Never store your financial data online with Microsoft

MS Money allows you to keep all your financial data stored on Microsoft's computers, as well as on your home computer. This allows you to access your MS Money data when you are away from your computer. For the unlucky user, it leads to virtually insoluble computer nightmares. Apparently, the local and remote copies of your data can get out of sync. It becomes difficult or impossible to overcome data corruption on Microsoft's computers. You fix up your local data, and it gets scrambled again when you connect to Microsoft's computers.

If you observe 1. above, you will not have to worry about 2.

3. Never use Yodlee to download account information from financial institutions

Yodlee (spit) is a company/method for downloading your account information from banks, credit card issuers, brokerages, etc. The way it works is that it impersonates a web browser and surfs your bank's (or brokerage's or ...) web site in order to suck in your account details.

The problem is that your bank's web site is designed for browsing by humans, not software. Small design changes to your bank's web site can cause Yodlee to scramble the data. Frustrating for you.

Many (but not all) financial institutions will download your account transactions directly into MS Money without the use of Yodlee. Yodlee gives you access to a larger collection of financial institutions. But it is not worth it.

If you observe 1. above, then you will not have to worry about Yodlee.

4. Keep several backup Money files

Microsoft Money stores all of your financial data in a single disk file on your computer. This is convenient for you. Money also allows you to store several backup copies of this disk file. I suggest that you configure Money to store 4 (depending on how paranoid you are) backup copies. What this means (for example) is that if you work with Money one time on each of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, then you will get a total of 5 copies of the file that holds your financial data. The oldest (backup) copy will reflect the state of your MS Money data from Monday. The newest (not a backup) will reflect the state of your MS Money data from Friday.

Why do this? Because like all Microsoft products, Money will occasionally scramble up your data. If you are not able to unscramble (there is a "repair" feature that you can try) then your only hope is to revert to an older copy of your data, and kiss your most recent updates goodbye.

You might not discover the corruption right away. That's why I suggest keeping multiple backups.

5. Back up your computer disk

This suggestion is not specific to Microsoft Money. But I feel obliged to mention this anyway. The more you use MS Money, the more you have to lose if your computer malfunctions. You can lose disk data due to a worn out disk drive, or an electronic failure in the computer itself. Your computer can suffer from fire, flooding, or theft. Your data can disappear from simple mistakes by users, or by the children of users!

So you have to back up your disk data. Most home computer users don't bother. But this bears repeating: the more you use an accounting program like Microsoft Money, the more you need to back up. Get to it!

6. Purchase the normal, CD-ROM version of Money, rather than the downloaded (electronic only) version.

WARNING: unconfirmed by my personal experience. Amazon.com sells this software product in a box containing a CD-ROM and some sketchy paper documentation. You can also download the software directly from Microsoft. But I have been told that the direct purchase from Microsoft requires the use of Passport. As I state in 1. above, I believe that Passport is a bad idea. So it is probably wise to purchase the physical, CD-ROM version from Amazon.com.

7. Find a community of knowledgable users

Like all mass market software, the technical support available for this product is useless. You should find a discussion forum for users of Microsoft Money. This is where you will go for help with problems that you cannot solve by yourself. I suggest that you read through the forum posts even when you don't have a Money problem. Look for major problems that might affect you. Forewarned, you might be able to avoid such problems.

Personally, I use the usenet news group microsoft.public.money. It can be found through microsoft.com or groups.google.com. Generally speaking, the intelligence level in this ng is solidly mediocre. That's in the nature of the Microsoft user community. If you find a better forum, please write an Amazon.com "review" of your own and share it.

Good luck with Microsoft Money!

Purchased Microsoft Money 2006 Premium as an upgrade to my Money 2004. Did the same with Money 2005 last year but could not get it to run effectively (without crashing) so I uninstalled it and went back to Money 2004. Figured that Microsoft probably made a bunch of changes in the two years since Money 2004 so I took the leap to Money 2006. It migrated my data fine and runs without crashing but I am still in search of new functionality. I don't download account data from banks so if functional improvements were made in this area I am oblivious to them. I do know that the screen jumps when entering transactions in the portfolio summary - maybe something that can be patched by Microsoft before it is offered as a "feature" in Money 2007. Bottom line - if have Money 2004 or 2005 you may want to save your money as the features and functionality in Money 2006 are essentially the same.

I am a long time Money user, all the way back to '99. I've always preferred it over Quicken because I found it more intuitive, powerful, and easier to use all at the same time.

I have noticed that over the various incarnations of the software, more and more links back to Microsoft and other advertisting "partners" (read: embedded spam) have been popping up (and under) in the program.

With 2006, however, they didn't just massively increase the number of advertisements and links, but they now REQUIRE that you use the Money online services (i.e. sign up for a "Passport" account) to connect to online institutions.

American Express provides my monthly statement data for download. Why should I be forced to sign up for a Passport account when, in previous versions, Money just connected directly to the financial institution?

The big problem with being forced to sign up is right in their privacy policy:

"...if you choose to use some of the Internet-based services, you may submit sign-in credentials and/or financial data, consisting of some or all of the content of your Money file."

Are you KIDDING ME!? Now that just sucks. By signing up with Passport, I'm allowing Microsoft access to ALL my PRIVATE financial data.

Now you might think that an upstanding, honest, and honorable corporation like Microsoft would take every effort to keep the data private, right? Let's take a look at the next paragraph of the privacy policy:

"Except as otherwise described in this Privacy Statement, personal information you provide to Microsoft via the Microsoft Money 2006 product will not be shared outside of Microsoft and its controlled subsidiaries and affiliates without your permission."

Do you have any idea how many "subsidiaries and affiliates" Microsoft has? That's just a horrible, insecure, evil and counter-productive thing to do.

Privacy concerns aside, the other major problem with the new 2006 version is the interface. In a clear effort to merge the "online" part of the program with the "personal" part, they converted everything to web pages, and you basically browse your own computer for your personal data, and then seamelessly browse the online pages for advertising.

Now many of my right-click features, window position saves, and other minor little features are gone, and it makes the program feel "kludgy" and slow.

So, with no new or improved features I can find to dissuade me; the addition of a clunky, slow, all-web based interface; and the threat of even further reduced privacy; I'm throwing my copy of 2006 in the trash, and going back to 2004.

The one part of Money that works well is that it is an excellent vehicle to deliver advertisements to you. It's like paying for cable television and seeing only commercials 80% of the time. Most of the menu items in Money are cleverly disguised links to commercial web sites.

Online transaction downloads are atrocious. If you can get it to work (and it probably does work with some minority of banks), it completely garbles your finances at a fundamental level.

Here's an example. I have a checking account, a savings account and a credit card account with the same bank. After hours of effort, I was able to download all of my transactions into Money. After all of that, I wanted to see the valuable insights into my financial situation that I expected to get through the reports. When I looked at my tax situation, it warned me that I would owe thousands of dollars over my usual withholding. I finally figured out that it was treating every credit card payment, transfer to savings and transfer back from savings to checking as new income. So if I make $1,000 in a month and pay $200 to my credit card and put $100 in savings, then move $500 out of savings to pay for new tires, Money says I've made $1,800 in income.

The only way to fix this is supposedly to change the transaction type for all these transfers to "Transfer". Makes sense, right? So, I went back and changed the classification on all these transactions, then I looked at my bank balance, and Money's calculated balance was many thousands of dollars different from my actual balance. It turns out that when you change a transaction type to "transfer" Money automatically creates a corresponding transaction in the destination account. Since that account also has downloaded transactions, every one of them resulted in duplicates. As far as I know, there is no way to sort this out without some kind of black magic recommended by tech support.

Finally, if you must install Money 2006, don't waste your money on the Premium version. The only difference between Deluxe and Premium is some bundled coupons to some online services that may or may not be valuable, but which can be acquired for free through other channels.

I was using the 2004 version which I thought was user-friendly with lots of nice features. I upgraded, not having a choice what with Microsoft's asinine online usage policy and what a let down. Probably 60%+ of this software is nothing more than links back to MS Money site trying to peddle you different services. UGH! I hate such blatant and self-serving marketing. I am unistalling this version, tossing it in the trash and switching over to QB even though it has far more features than I will ever need for my personal finances. I'm really disappointed with this product.

I have been using Money for years and use most of the features. After installing Money 2006 I had a difficult time finding anything different from the 2005 version. I think it is a good product but certainly not worth upgrading from the 2005 version. If you have 2005 version you might as well stick with it. I can't tell the difference between the two.

Money 2006 Premium was essentially purchased to manage portfolio investments in stocks. This is the first time I have used Money and find that it has some major problems particulary in respect of managing special investment activities such as Splits, Spin-offs and mergers, etc. The following details some of the problems faced during my usage.

1. First and foremost problem is the inability to correct any mistakes while entering the transaction. For example if a split is entered then the program automatically adjusts the number of shares and the cost basis. However there will neither be a record of this action in the Account nor any way to delete or reverse it.

2. Most surprisingly even if the entire transactions of that particular equity is deleted and reentered it will not allow the re-entry of the split on that particular date. The program will return a dialog stating that A SPLIT EXISTS ON THAT DATE. One can perhaps get around it by using a different date for the split but imagine re-entering all transactions including any dividends received etc. It becomes a NIGHTMARE.

3. Money does handle Splits, Spin-offs and Mergers nicely if the data is entered correctly the very first time. But God forbid if a mistake is made. THERE IS NO WAY TO REVIEW, CORRECT OR RE-ENTER the data.

Money also has very poor report creating functionality. To create a report for any other dates than year ends requires some efforts.

The Customer Support tries hard to be helpful but they seem to lack either the expertise or the knowledge to redress any problems like mentioned above. They probably have sufficient knowledge and experience to guide customers through basic features but they are completely at sea when it comes to some complicated transactions such as mentioned above.

At the end is Consumer Be Warned is probably true!!

I had read reviews of this product on tech sites and found that they were right "on". I can view my portfolio online with MSN Money, very easy to set up! Downloading transactions from my bank was simple to set up, too. (You have to call your bank and also have online banking.) I have been using a version of Quickens for many years and this is my first try at Microsoft's Money. It converted and downloaded my quickens files without a hitch. Very impressed by that feature. The only thing that I have to monitor is the banking downloads because it sometimes matches them to the wrong transactions I've entered, but I'm able to check them against the cleared transactions from my bank to make corrections. I think that I'm still learning about that feature, and will get it right eventually. Budgets are a little bit of work to set up, but not hard. Lots of good, useful features included, so it's worth the money.
In summary, I like it better than my old quickens mainly because of the investment tools. It does work well, no weird freezes. Overall, I'm glad I bought it.

Decided to try the free trial from Microsoft Money 2006 Premium. If your looking to change or upgrade, I highly recommend the free trial before you buy anything.

I use this software exclusively for tracking my stocks and options transactions.

I've spent about 3 days trying to get my Money 2006 setup and working correctly. It still doesn't work right. The program fails to correctly handle most of the options transactions downloaded during the account setup. It outright fails to recognize any option transactions that expired.

Reporting is terrible. The user interface is awful, you can't navigate your way through the application easily. You can't go back to your portfolio from reports without going back to the first menu and drilling back down to the individual account.

I really dislike that the program wants your Passport signon and password everytime you log into the application.

It also refuses to let you setup up a manual account that isn't tied to a bank or brokerage company. So your basically forced to deal with the automated links/downloads whether you want to or not.

I have been using Microsoft Money since 1999, upgrading every year, and have been pleased until I upgraded to Money 2006. I noticed that the checks that I printed did not completely fill out on the "dollars" line. The ******* symbol only went a third of the way, this has not happened on any other version. I called Microsoft Technical Support and after three days of "working on this issue" they concluded that it was a problem with my HP Officejet 7210xi printer. I found that hard to believe since it worked fine with Money 2005.