Customer Reviews

Microsoft Money 2006 Small Business [Old Version]

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

 

 

I purchased Microsoft Money 2006 Small Business to handle my business' invoices, customer list, and banking. I am very pleased with the banking aspects of the software. However, the business features are terrible. The customer database does not have a field for company name. Therefore, I have to squeeze my customers' company names into an address field. The address fields aren't very long, so this has caused major, major probelms. Also, if a customer wants to have the merchandise shipped to a different person at another address, you are only able to change the ship-to address. The name field cannot be changed. Because of this, I've had to cross out names and handwrite a new name in. Another huge problem is the fact that the invoices cannot be adjusted to reflect shipping charges towards the bottom of the invoice under the subtotal. Your shipping charges need to be entered as a line item. We're an online retailer, so this is a significant setback because all of our orders are shipped and we need to break down the subtotal and the shipping total. The invoice designer featured in Money 2006 Small Business is an absolute joke. You're limited to strict templates that all look like something out of the 1980's. Because of the banking features this software has, it's been worth it for me to use it. The $35.00 program I upgraded from (Invoices and Estimates Pro) was far better. Before I forget... I also tried to call Microsoft to discuss the problems I was having with the software. Unless you're willing to be placed on hold for 45-minutes, it's not going to happen.

I've been using Microsoft Money since Money 99. Every year, I buy the new small business edition. It's certainly not the most intuitive Microsoft application, but once you are familiar with the ins and outs, it's quite useful and a great way to keep your finances in line.

The 2006 edition, however, is a different story. I've had nothing but trouble with it since installing it. It does not properly match my downloaded transactions to entries in the register, and when I try to update them manually, I am unable to - I either get a blank page with two radio buttons, or I get the correct page, but the 'done' button does not work. To fix this, I have to run a repair on my .mny file every day. After that, it will work properly once or twice before breaking again.

I'm giving this application two stars rather than one because it does have a few improvements over the previous version, and I do like the updated look and feel. If Microsoft released a patch to fix the bugs, I would be quite happy with it. Unfortunately though, I don't recall a patch being released for a version of Money before, and it's not likely that they will release one for this version. I hope they prove me wrong (at which time, I'll add a few more stars to my review:)

While I haven't upgraded to Microsoft Money 2006 Small Business I do use the 2005 version (I usually go two years between upgrades on financial software) I have to comment that on all issues that S. Livingstone brings up are in MM 2005 SB and I cannot imagine Microsoft Money programmers doing away with them.

Specifically the following are in there - in the 2005 at least:

"The customer database does not have a field for company name."
There is a company name field and it is 64 characters long.

"The address fields aren't very long" is partually true. But you can get 32 characters in address 1 and address 2 lines in addition to City, State and Zip.

"if a customer wants to have the merchandise shipped to a different person at another address, you are only able to change the ship-to address" is true. You can change the billing and shipping address fields only on a one time basis per invoice. But remember this is a SMALL BUSINESS package that is a mere $17 more than Microsoft Premium (on Amazon.com as of 12-31-05) which does not include any invoicing or small business features. I would say that for $17 it is pretty good software!

"Another huge problem is the fact that the invoices cannot be adjusted to reflect shipping charges towards the bottom of the invoice under the subtotal. Your shipping charges need to be entered as a line item. We're an online retailer, so this is a significant setback because all of our orders are shipped and we need to break down the subtotal and the shipping total."

If you are an online retailer get the proper tool - MM 2006 SB is not the system you need. I run a small service business and it is working great for me. Sure there are a few things I wished were better but again for the price it's great.

"The invoice designer featured in Money 2006 Small Business is an absolute joke. You're limited to strict templates that all look like something out of the 1980's."

Yes, the invoice designer is not steller but at least you can add a logo and make other changes. Go to the Microsoft Money website and there are some good examples of some pretty cool invoices. It's not Crystal Reports (tm) but at least you can make changes!

Overall, I find Microsoft Money 2005 a very good application, for it's cost. Is it as capable as $1000 plus accounting software or even $300 accounting software? No, but for $20 it is very useful for the average SMALL business.

I liked Money Premium for personal finances, and thought I'd give this a try. I quickly ran into so many problems that it's really driving me crazy...software shouldn't do this to us.

Problem 1: Money Small Business gets the online banking wrong.
I have tried with accounts at WAMU and CITIBANK and the syncronization keeps messing up and I end up with the wrong balance listed. I had to go over and over and delete the account, then re-add it, to get the correct bank balance.
This is a major flaw.

Problem 2: Invoice printing!
Go ahead, buy this software. Then fill out an invoice where you have more than 2 words to describe the product or service. You will find that Money adds blank lines to the invoice and leaves off text. The spacing of the columns and rows is wrong. You will try...*diabolical laughter* to use the Invoice Designer, which LOOKS like it is useful. Until you see that you have virtually no options, can't resize rows or columns, and then you will probably see that for some reason the Invoice Designer has shrunk your invoice to take up 25% of the page, and you have to start over again with a new one. You may google the problem, and you'll see dozens of helpless victims going into c:/documents and settings/all users/application data/microsoft/money/15/invoices and editing the html invoice files to try to fix the problem.

Why doesn't Microsoft fix the Money problems instead?
They just won't. You won't find a Service Pack, or any updates.
The software is buggy, take it or leave it.

This program is total garbage.

I am now demo'ing Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006, and am already seeing issues...Citibank doesn't show up in the Online Banking choices, there are apparantly only 10 or so banks that it works with although the ads claim a lot more.

I am pretty tired of Microsoft Money products.

We bought the product for a laptop that goes on exteded trips out of reach of the internet. After discovering that the upgrade had no internal help files, we downgraded to version 2004. Since the databases are not downward conpatable, all of our computers that use Microsoft Money now must use the 2004 version. For us, this purchase was a big mistake.

I had the regular Money product and bought the small business addition to manage receivables, invoices, etc.

Regarding Invoices:
You can create a very basic, awful, template using the new template editor. It's not something you would want to use unless you are a child selling lemonade. Hey Microsoft, why not use Microsoft Word for invoicing templates (duh?). It's only your own product! Oh, and if that's not bad enough, when you want to send an invoice by email, it doesn't use the invoice template you've created. Instead it generates an uncustomizable email in plain text which looks like something from the early days of punch card computers. Also, remember those customer accounts you created in Money? Well the invoice doesn't pull in the customer information! That's right, you have to use a different form to enter the customer billing information (again) for invoices. Terrible product. Yes, it manages accounts -- but no better or worse than other versions of Money. If you're using this to manage bank accounts, fine. Otherwise, unless stay away! Shameful.

I agree fully with the previous review by Travis. I have been using different versions of MS money from 1997 and this is the worst interface I encountered. I was using MS Money for Small Business - 2004 and was happy with it except for some of the invoice tracking functions. I skipped 2005 version after reading the reviews. Upgrade to 2006 version seemed like a disaster.

I was using Money 2004, My books were up to date when I made one of the worst moves I ever made with software. I bought Money 2005 for Small Business. I have yet to get my books straighten out. I have spent days on the phone with tech support. They sent me the 2006 version. I can't begin to describe what an awful program this is. I don't know if I can ever recover from the mess that has been made. It's six months now and I am still working on it. Buy Quickbooks and forget this.

It is more difficult to use than Quickbook in a practical sense. When I tried to enter a simple expense item, It took a while to look for the right pull down to get in. When I downloaded my Sear credit card history, Money2006 put expense items into credit column. It messed up my balance sheet. I always couldn't get right answer from Microsoft support for Money2006, although their tech support people are polite.

I have always been satisfied with MM and this one is no different. Sure, there are things that I wished were different, but when talking about software as you would anything you must look at the totality of the software. I believe for a small business this software is much better than others. I run two business from my MM, and it handles both just fine. Also this is a microsoft software so that makes it easy to use and PC friendly. Overall, I am more than pleased with this software and have no desire to try anything different.