Microsoft Money Small Business 2005 [Old Version]

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Comprehensive finance solution for small companies
• Categorize income and expenses; handle billing effortlessly
• Get expert advice from current news and useful articles
• Keep up with taxable expenses automatically
• Free financial services, including 1 year online payroll from PayCycle

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0002D1522
• Item model number: S67-00011
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 2, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,486 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #27 in Software > Personal Finance > Investment Tools

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

It's no small task running a small business. But with Microsoft Money 2005 Small Business, you'll have a comprehensive finance solution that provides powerful tools for cash flow management, tax planning, inventory tracking, online payroll management, and income and expense categorization. It makes managing your personal and business finances easy, so you can spend more time with your customers.

Effortlessly manage your business and personal finances.
Microsoft Money 2005 automatically connects with thousands of financial institutions nationwide, including banks, credit unions, and brokerages. It automatically updates your account balances, categorizes all your transactions, and shows you income in and expenses out.

Let your business take care of itself.
Money 2005 helps you take care of all the details. Includes everything in Money 2005 Premium, plus:

• Categorize business income and expenses automatically.
• Manage accounts receivable and accounts payable.
• Create, manage, and monitor invoices.
• Track tax expenses automatically and link to your Schedule C report.
• Manage Payroll Online with Payroll for Money by PayCycle--calculate and print paychecks, sign and mail completed 940s and 941s.
• Manage inventory with the Products & Services list.
• Track customer information.
• Create business reports.

Get a business snapshot at your fingertips
Money’s customizable Home Page lets you easily view the business finances you want to see. You can check account balances on your small business banking accounts, see spending by category, check bills due, and get a business snapshot that shows year- and month-to-date revenues and expenses, and receivables and payables due.

See what’s new in Money 2005!

The new look of Microsoft Money 2005 makes managing your finances effortless and ensures that you get quick answers to your financial questions. Now it’s easier than ever to personalize Money to focus on the information that’s most important to you. If you just want a top-line view of your finances, then check out Money’s new Essential features: the Essential Account Register, the Essential Budget, and Essential Report and Charts. If you like working through all the details, then Money’s advanced features are for you. And Money 2005 automates more of your tasks, so you can spend more time balancing your life, not your accounts.

• More banks online! Now there are thousands of financial institutions nationwide, including banks, credit unions, and brokerages nationwide connect with Microsoft Money 2005. No need to surf to multiple Web sites or enter multiple passwords to check your financial data--just let Money automatically connect to all your accounts and provide up-to-date account balances. All your accounts in one place!
• Enhanced. Up and running fast. Getting started in Money has never been easier. Now in a few swift steps you can automatically connect to your bank, get updated account balances and transactions and set up your accounts. It’s that easy.
• New. Essential Register. The Essential Account Register is designed for people who just want a quick snapshot of their finances. You can quickly see your account balance and recent account activity, and know at a glance which transactions have cleared your bank.
• Enhanced. Advanced Register. With its new look and feel and resizable click-to-sort column headers, the Advanced Register provides more customization for people who like to invest time in tracking the precise details of their financial situation. The enhanced Advanced Account Register lets you manage your checkbook electronically by entering uncleared transactions, assigning subcategories, balancing your account, and more.
• Enhanced. Auto-categorization. Money automatically and smartly categorizes transactions to show you where your money is going.
• New. Essential Budget. Lets you easily get a handle on all your day-to-day budgeting tasks without investing a lot of time. The Essential Budget automatically tracks your spending based on your account and bill-pay transactions. The Favorite Categories graph shows how you're doing in key areas of spending. Use the Advanced Budget if you want to track irregular or one-time expenses or do other detailed budgeting.
• New. Essential Bills. Offers all the tools you need to quickly and efficiently manage your bills. You don't have to spend time tracking bill and account details, so it's easy to pay both your recurring and regular bills. Use Advanced Bills for more detailed features for tracking and paying your bills.
• Enhanced. Bill Calendar. Integrated with the register, this calendar provides a basic snapshot of bills, or if you prefer, more specific transaction details such as paychecks and investment purchases.
• Enhanced. Favorite Categories. Once major trouble spots for overspending are identified in the Favorite Categories, Money automatically tracks their daily status and provides alerts when overspending occurs.
• Enhanced. Spending Analysis. Money automatically generates a pie chart of expense categories over various time frames and shows dollar amounts and percentage breakouts for each area. New Spending Average: Money 2005 generates a monthly dollar average for spending in each predefined category, based on historical account data. This helps you better understand your spending habits, so you can create a more realistic budget.
• Enhanced. My Money home page With a new streamlined look, the My Money home page gives you an instant overview of your finances--up-to-date account balances, recent spending, and upcoming bills. Want more? You can add, remove, or rearrange the information to match your needs.
• Enhanced. Reports home page. Money generates numerous reports and charts, enabling you to analyze key areas of your finances. Focused on spending and budgeting, New Essential Reports provide the basic financial information most people need. You can see at a glance how much you spent on groceries last month or how much you paid to the plumber. Or view a monthly overview that wraps up the important details in one report. If you want to analyze detailed financial reports and see more specific information about your financial position, then use Advanced Reports, which provides more than 40 customizable, detailed reports and charts that delve into the specifics of a financial area. All of the reports can be extensively customized, and sent to a mail recipient or the desktop as a chart, XML data, or CSV data.
• Enhanced. Investing home page. Money’s redesigned Investing Home provides timely market information, an enhanced Portfolio Manager, and an Investing Advisor FYI module featuring recent alerts. This area also features a Q&A of commonly asked investing questions and links to commentary from MSN Money investing experts such as Jim Jubak.
• Enhanced. Portfolio Manager. Money and MSN Money share the same award-winning Portfolio Manager, and you can directly download account information from brokerages nationwide. After setting up Money 2005 to synchronize with MSN Money, you can access your investment information wherever you are--at home or on the road.
• New. Pop-up alerts. These convenient alerts give you a quick snapshot of what’s happening with your stocks, notifying you of significant news so you can stay on top of your portfolio.
• New. Stock split entries. Now the Portfolio Manager tracks stock splits in the transaction list, as well as the portfolio and transaction report.
• Enhanced. Planning home page. Updated with a new look and feel, this area automatically provides a snapshot of debt versus expenses and easy access to recent planning-related Advisor FYI Alerts.
• New. Planning Decision Centers. Money’s planning section features 27 Decision Centers that address everything from planning a dream retirement to getting the right insurance coverage.
• Enhanced. Taxes home page. Completely redesigned, the Taxes Home page provides answers to frequently asked tax questions, up-to-date commentary from MSN Money expert Jeff Schnepper, and tools for filing a 1040 form or preparing a complicated Schedule D.
• Enhanced. MSN Money integration. Money is more tightly integrated with the MSN Money personal finance Web site. The navigation bars mirror those found on MSN Money, and Money features timely content and popular tools from the award-winning site.
• New. MSN Money News. This area features headlines from MSN Money, including articles from CNBC, MSNBC, Forbes.com, and Briefing.com ,as well as relevant commentary from MSN Money’s experts on topics such as investing, spending, and taxes.
• New. MSN Money Decision Centers. In these centers, you will find useful tools, calculators, and expert commentary relevant to a specific financial task, such as paying down debt or buying a home.
• New. MSN Stock List. Money 2005 now lets you set up your investment holdings so you can access them via the MSN Stock List, including MSN Explorer, MSN Messenger, msn.com, My Money, and the Portfolio Manager, as well as on a mobile device.
• Enhanced. Anytime, anywhere access. Money lets you view your account statements and balances, pay and track online bills, and view investment holdings, anytime, any place--in Money, MSN Money, or on your mobile device.
• New. Multi-user access. Because Money 2005 enables custom settings for every user, several people can share access to the same Money file with their own usernames and passwords.
• Enhanced. Help. Now online, the Help system is updated regularly based on consumers’ inquiries and feedback, making it easy to quickly get assistance in any area of the software, from accounts to taxes to investing.

Product Description

Microsoft Money 2005 Small Business is the comprehensive finance solution for small companies. It makes managing your finances easy so you can spend more time with your customers.* Categorize income and expenses Money automatically categorizes all your business and personal transactions so you can see exactly where your money goes.* Get expert advice The Business Resource Center puts the latest news and useful articles at your fingertips; Business Reports provide a snapshot of your business finances.* Handle billing effortlessly Money makes it easy to keep track of customers stay on top of accounts payable and receivable and create professional-looking invoices.* Simplify taxes Keep up with taxable expenses automatically link categories to your Schedule C report and find hidden deductions.* Includes free financial services One year of online payroll from PayCycle plus all free financial services included in Money 2005 Premium (Experian GainsKeeper and H&R Block). REQUIREMENTS- Multimedia PC with Pentium 166 or faster processor (or compatible); Pentium II 266 (or compatible) processor required for Windows XP (Pentium II 300 recommended).Windows XP: 64 MB of RAM (128 MB recommended); Windows 2000 or Windows 98 SE: 32 MB of RAM (64 MB recommended).130 MB of available hard-disk space plus 60 MB for Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (if not already installed) plus an additional 200 MB while installing product updates.2x or faster CD-ROM drive Super VGA color monitor with minimum 256 colors capable of displaying 800 x 600 resolution 16-bit color recommended.Windows XP Windows 2000 SP3 or later or Windows 98 SE or later.Most online features require Microsoft .NET Passport; for more information see the Microsoft Money 2005 Internet-based services policy.Super VGA graphics card or compatible video graphics adapter.Microsoft mouse or compatible pointing device.28.8 Kbps or faster modem; Internet functionality requires an Internet Service Provider (ISP); local and long distanc...

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than 2003 Deluxe & Business, but some lame issues, January 1, 2005

By 

eSavvy - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Money Small Business 2005 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

One of my trusted resources, PC Magazine gave this new version of Microsoft Money 5-stars. And given that some of the new features sounded good, I bought the upgrade. After using it for several months, I've got mixed results.

(Side note: I have not had any problems with slowness or crashing whatsoever. I'm on Windows XP Pro, SP-2. Other things are annoying, but no crashes.)

1. Upgrading from 2003 Deluxe & Business went perfectly. Not trusting it, I backed up my old data on disc, ready to roll-back to 2003 if I had to. But everything transferred flawlessly.

2. The interface is much more intuitive. My categories had become pretty jumbled up from my bookkeeper's inconsistencies, and I went in to clean it up. That was SO MUCH easier than with the earlier versions. I was able get that done in record time because the category moving/renaming process is vastly improved.

3. They FINALLY added mileage tracking.

4. The Reports page is much, much easier to use. They've got more common-sense terms like "monthly income/expense report," instead of just proper accounting terms. Also, I was able to customize the reports much easier to include different data. Now I love analyzing my profit & loss statements for the business. Also, I'm able to analyze my personal income more effectively by sorting out household vs. personal expenses.

5. They added a discount option on the product/services invoice. Long overdue.

6. The Invoice Designer has a problem that won't let you add a custom invoice until you change a file setting. If you have Microsoft Money Small Business 2005, do NOT waste your time creating a custom invoice until you apply the following workaround that I found on another site:

"You might need to enable the view of Hidden Files and Folders to do the search.
-Close Money.
-Do a search on your machine for *.ntd
-By default, the files will be located "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Money\14.0\Invoice"
-Right mouse click on the file and choose properties.
-Uncheck the box "Read Only"
-Click on Apply and Ok.
-Repeat this step for any *.ntd file that is located in the Money\14.0\Invoice directory.
-Open the Invoice designer and create your invoice template.
-Save the template then open Money.
-Your template should now appear."

7. Another thing I don't like about the invoice system is that there are no options to show that the invoice has been paid. So when I want to send a receipt by email, I have to manually delete the word "invoice" and "payment due," to turn into a receipt. If you have to send many receipts for small purchases, this is a big time waster.

8. I know you're supposed to be able to manage business & personal money all in one user file with this program, but that is unwise for tax reasons. I created totally separate files for Business Money and Personal Money. There should be a tutorial somewhere about that, but there isn't. Again, the help information is not really geared towards small business owners. If you use the program out of the box, and create just one user file, you will be commingling your funds. It's not enough to simply categorize some expenses personal and some business. They need to be completely separated.

9. One thing I love about using the software is how I can download my online bank & credit card statements right into the program. It is fast and relatively easy to do. After importing the data, all you have to do is confirm the payee names & categories. It's a lot faster than entering in all the data manually, and leaves less margin for data entry mistakes.

10. I also like the free year of PayCycle payroll service that is bundled with the program. (Savings is $10/month.) As a new employer, I found it VERY easy to use, mostly because of PayCycle's step-by-step tutorials that tell you exactly how to integrate the payroll information with Money. When I got confused about how to make my first tax payment, PayCycle's friendly support team answered my call on the first ring and walked me through the process. They exceeded my expectations considerably.

Honestly, the only reason I'm using this program is because I tried QuickBooks a few years ago and hated it. Even though that's the only program most bookkeepers use, as a do-it-myself business owner, I just couldn't figure it out. The company that makes QuickBooks (Intuit Software) has a horrible reputation for customer service, and having tried them a few years ago, I just couldn't bear to do business with them again.

Conversely, one of the problems with using Money is that none of the bookkeepers know how to use the program. I interviewed at least ten of them, and they only learned QuickBooks in bookkeeping school. So if you decide to use Money, you're on your own as far as setting up and using the program. There has been a learning curve for me with the software, but now I have a weekly routine for my bookkeeping.
Tip: Making my own step-by-step instruction notes has helped tremendously.

Bottom line:
* If you're already using an earlier version of Money:
I like the upgrade and think it's definitely worth getting.
* If you've never used accounting software before, but understand bookkeeping: you might like Money for a do-it-yourself system.
* If you've never used accounting software before, and need a bookkeeper:
* you might as well by QuickBooks because that's what your bookkeeper knows.

57 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Do not upgrade, September 26, 2004

By 

R. Jones (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Money Small Business 2005 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I am a MS Money fan so was quick to get the 05 version. Well I am uninstalling and rolling back to last years version!

First there is a new Internet Services Policy you must agree to. It starts out with "Microsoft® Money 2005 includes up to two (2) years of Internet-based Services. You will be able to use the Internet-based Services in Microsoft Money 2005 for a period of two (2) years from installation of the product or until September 1, 2007, whichever is earlier."
**** In two years you can not perform online banking!!!

Second the little Money Express program that reminds you of upcoming bills is gone.

I have 3 words for this program - Do Not Upgrade!
Stay With Your Current Version

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Home Business Accounting Done Right (for MS users), February 9, 2005

By 

Steve G. (Traverse City, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Money Small Business 2005 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

There is a learning curve with every program.... I have been a user of Quicken Premiere Home & Business since it was first released, and loyally upgraded every year. In 2003, I gave Money Small Business a shot, and after 12 attempts or so to figure out how to email an invoice.... along with a slew of other issues, primarily plastering my system with ad links, I gave up, and actually shredded the CD out of spite (not knowing I could have gotten my money back).

Well, things have changed in 2 years.... a lot. Despite the rumors of difficult Outlook Integration, there was an "import outlook contacts" link under payees. It took all of about 30 seconds. My first attempts involved WAB (windows address book), an alternative method for those without outlook, but outlook express and Vcards... that worked fine, but I was starting to visualize having to export Vcards for everyone in my Outlook folder. I was soooooo glad to have the outlook import feature. One caveat - It imports outlook contacts, and all subfolders - so you get mom, girlfriend, the stranger you met at a tradeshow and wonder who the hell he was.... everyone. Not a huge problem, you can then delete them from Money, but it's a time consuming thing... be good if MS would let you select contact folders (i.e., business, vendors) individually).

The other unfounded rumor was about passwords, and mandatory .Net accounts. Not so. I am operating almost everything without .net, and without a password, even, although I'll change that eventually, just wanted to see things.

Setup wuz done in 3 minutes flat, and once installed it began an auto-update after installation. This is slightly different than Home & Business 2004, which had a configurable update manager. I could not find one in Money Small Business. I guess it's an always on feature, auto-update or something... maybe it's buried, I haven't hit every link in the program yet.

One thing I noticed is a lot of tie ins to MS, and MSN, and MS Products, Outlook, Excel Export, report exports, etc... I view it as a plus, but your opinions of MS may get different mileage.

Regarding the email invoice feature, it's still limited to text only, or text attachment to email. It's ok, but not super professional looking. Since I have full version of Acrobat, I just printed out my first invoice to Acrobat Writer, saved it to a client folder, and emailed it manually. I'm guessing it would work with any "print to acrobat" program as well... and it looks SHARP.

During install, it asks you from a drop down list what kind of small business you have (i.e., artist, professional services, writer, slacker (just kidding) etc.), and configures some settings (product/service category presets) on that entry. All billing categories are easier to update than in Home & Businss 2004, although H&B 2005 is rumored to have similar ease of category updating.

Another neat feature is the "draw" function... for those who have a small business, but only one bank account, or those (like me) who pilfer their business account for weekend fun. It tags such withdrawals for reports later, and is a great assistance for keeping business and personal expenses separate.

The final, and what I think is the best feature (besides that it actually works, and is intuitive 2x as much as H&B) is a neat little configuration control called "Turn off sponsor ads and promotions".

Overall, I am a convert. The learning curve with Small Business 2005 has been very kind to me. The rumor that MS is going to have a small biz accounting package out soon similar to Quickbooks swayed me a bit in my decision (i.e., should my sole proprietorship grow), plus H&B, despite it being a top-notch program (not dissing it's overall capabilities)... is feeling "aged"...