Customer Reviews

Money Plus Deluxe - Old Version

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(47)

 

 

I tried upgrading from Quicken 2007 to Quicken 2008 and was unable to do so without errors that caused my new installation to give an error message, remove new changes, and stop the installation.

I called Quicken tech support and the guy in India (while nice) could only help me do the same things I'd already done and that did not work. After 2 tries, he said, "I don't have any other ways to help you. Try calling Microsoft and see if they can help you. Here's their 800 number . . . Goodbye!" He hung up on me.

I decided to download Money 2008 for their trial period. Money installed immediately and completely! It transferred my Quicken data accurately and fully. (I have used Quicken for at least 16 years and this was a "big" change for me.)

I ended-up purchasing Money - on-line - from Microsoft and making my full change to their financial software, within a week from trying Money 2008. I was VERY HAPPY with the way Money worked, its interface, and its various options. It was easy to change from Quicken!!

MOST OF ALL, I liked being able to get tech support from Money's email help. My actual experience was to have an email within 4 hours, that included a name and phone number if I needed more help. (I had a small problem inputing my serial number because I had my system set to a larger than normal sized font. Money would not allow the necessary information for each spaced section. Their tech support wrote back to me with the help (answer) I needed - I had to reset the system font size to normal (which they told me how to easily do. My serial number information was immediately accepted with no problem. Now, I am the happy owner of Money 2008 and no longer an Intuit/Quicken user.

I must say, my only disliked feature of Money 2008 is it wants to send each electronic check I write for paying bills - individually, instead of allowing me to write all my checks and then send them at the same time.

I will take this problem - happily - since I now have updated financial software that is not "buggie" and with no tech support that actually helps me.

I am going to be a Money user from now on. I highly recommend Money 2008.

I gave been using Money 2005 for a while and have not upgraded until now because nothing seems to have changed in the newer versions. A few weeks ago I got a message saying that on-line services were no longer supported for my version and I had to buy a new version to get it working again.

I did this and installed the new version. I was not able to tell that I had upgraded because I could not see any new features. I had to go to help about to check it this was really the new version running becuase everything else looks the same. The only new feature from my "three versions behind" version is that there are a couple of graphs that can be displayed outside money but I am not sure how much that will be used.

I was hoping that some of the bugs that have been in the system had been fixed but they have not. The one I dislike most is that it gets completely confused when you short sell stocks. When you close a short position it will add that as a cost next to your other expenses for the full purchase amount and it gets completely confused about your current position when downloading statements from your broker.

For me it was worth upgrading because now my automatic downloads from my bank is working again but there is really no other reason to buy this.

I've using Microsoft Money 2004 since it came out; and before that, I used Money 98. Money 2004 recently started warning me that Microsoft will no longer be updating its online synchronization capabilities so I downloaded the trial version of Money Plus Deluxe to try it out.

Money Plus supports automated downloading of bills for banks that, over the last few years, have stopped working with Money 2004. It seems to offer the same basic features as 2004, and I haven't noticed any features that make this a better product. The interface has been tweaked slightly here and there. The one thing I liked is it clearly displays the bank's balance next to the locally calculated balance for each account. Other than that, it seems to just be a change in the colors and icons.

This biggest change to me is that, unlike Money 2004, Money Plus rarely matches downloaded transactions correctly with existing hand-entered transactions, previously downloaded transactions, or pending bills in the Bills Summary screen. What this means is each time it performs an automated update with the bank, random entries are doubled and random bills are incorrectly matched to completely unrelated transactions. To correct this you have to unmatch transactions and change what they're matched to. This wouldn't be too bad, except each time you unmatch or change how a transaction is matched, Money will stop responding. If i check the Task Manager, it'll show that Money is using 100% of the CPU time. I tried leaving Money running for a few hours when this happens to see if it will start responding again, but it never comes back. What this means is each time I sit down to update my accounts, I have to kill Money with the Task Manager 2 or 3 times for each transaction it matched incorrectly. I'll often have to kill and restart Money 20+ times in a single session. While this has been excellent for helping me remember my password, it's been less than helpful in assisting me in paying my bills and balancing my accounts.

I liked Money 2004 but, since they're not supporting that version anymore and this new version doesn't actually work, Microsoft is forcing us to switch to Quicken this year.

Regarding the Microsoft Purchase Agreement: I've been using Microsoft Money since 1995. My most recent version was 2005 - which I purchased 01/2005. I use each version until it expires and then use the trial version until it expires and then buy the new version. Similar to other popular money programs, Microsoft requires that you renew your lease of their money program every third year. If you do not renew, the online support of the program ends (minus one star).

Regarding the Program Functionality: If you're an accountant, you will prefer Quicken. Quicken operates like a formal accounting software package (probably because it is) for people who know & prefer a formal journal entry approach. For the rest of us, there is Microsoft Money.

Money behaves more like a computerized checkbook and is set up to feel as if you are sitting at a kitchen table balancing your checkbook. Money also handles the monitoring of various investment funds for the average value investor (those who's positions are long). Day traders, or short investors will not be happy with Microsoft Money because this program is not written for that type of strategy (although, I have shorted a few trades and didn't have any problem with how the transactions were posted in reports since the gain/loss is for the most part the same as personal income/expenses when trading under a year).

So, keep in mind the type of approach you wish to take when choosing your financial software. I have been very satisfied with Microsoft Money over the years. And, over time, have been able to set up my categories and sub-categories to accurately accumulate year end reports making tax time a breeze.

I've been a MS Money 2000 user for a looooong time. For the past two weeks, I've been reading reviews as I worked toward making a decision re an upgrade. The reviews for 2005, 2006 and 2007 caused me to consider just sticking with 2000.

But, this evening, I decided to take the plunge and download the 60-day trial of Money Plus Deluxe.

So far, I am delighted! While I was fearful enough that I did not delete 2000 and backed up my two data files several ways, I discovered that the install was easy and the conversion of data files was perfect.

I like the new interface. In fact, I was as happy could be with the layout and look. I really wanted to use the budget feature as I have begun using the 60 percent committed/40 percent savings method. Again, I found myself smiling as I opened the budget and, without a hiccup, my income and expenses were converted to the 60/40 budget method.

I really am stunned at how easy things are -- and that's coming from someone who is not a Microsoft fan.

I'm still toying with this new software. So far, though, I'm VERY happy.

I was in the same boat as "Beerkens" - I'm a longtime user of MS Money, and I pretty much agree with that review. My electronic transaction downloads stopped working, and updating to the demo got them going again.

The one thing I want to add (and this may be *very* serious for some people) is that the performance got a lot *worse* when I installed the demo. There was an expected delay while the program "converted" the file to the newer (incompatible) format from the old format, but even after that, it was taking forever to open the file. Additionally, the updates from financial institutions were taking a lot longer. [but see also my update from 11/6/07 at the end of this].

There were some comments on other boards that large data files were problematic with the new version - but we're talking about 10-15 minutes to even get the file open (up from a minute or less previously).

So I pulled 5-6 years of transactions into an archive (which goofs up lots of the reports, of course), and it seems to be somewhat faster now.

The most annoying thing is that after you click the "OK" *after* it says "Update Complete" following updating account information from financial institutions, that there's an hourglass for many minutes before it lets you *do* anything. (Why can't they do all that stuff before they give the "OK"? Sometimes I don't know what these software people are thinking!) But after paring down the file, that is down from minutes to about 30 seconds (but it should be zero).

It would be nice if MS would put out a performance service pack and fix this, but somehow I doubt they will. If they do, I guess I'll have to come back and rate this package higher.

I'll be buying the full package because I really need to keep using it, but if you're a longtime user with a large datafile, beware!

For reference, I am running XP, Pentium D 2.8G / 1GB Memory.

**Update 11/6/07** I found you can significantly improve performance on this version by going to tools / settings / home page display settings - and remove EVERYTHING from your home page. Then put the items back one-at-a-time. I saw this hint on a message board, and I don't know why it helps, but it does. I have the same homepage as I did before, but I rebuilt it from scratch, and now it's faster. I think that between removing several years of back transactions and applying this fix, my performance is back to only slightly worse than before. I'm leaving my rating at 3 stars, though because you shouldn't have to go through this hassle, but I thought it might help some of you in the same boat.

I was forced to update to this version because my bank no longer communicates with Money 99. Believe me, Money 98 and 99 were the best versions. All since have added the "traditional" Microsoft bloat, complications, and features nobody much needs. After many hours, I gave up on transferring my data from 99 to Plus, even though the Microsoft website gives procedures. So now I have 10 years of data that is no longer accessible. Why is it that Microsoft won't allow two versions of Money to co-exist on a computer?
BTW, I'm not normally a crank, it's just that Money 99 was a very good, useful program, and they have screwed it up.

I used MS Money 2005 until MS terminated the online banking services, and forced me to upgrade to MS Money Deluxe Plus. I never had a significant problem with Money 2005. It worked (almost) flawlessly for more than 3 years.

MS Money Deluxe Plus does not reliably download banking transactions! I have discussed the problem with the my financial institutions (Fidelity and Smith-Barney). Their tech support groups offered no help. One individual (sort of) admitted that I am not alone.

I had several extensive chats with the MS Money "support" group. Again, although they were courteous and cooperative, they were virtually clueless. They made several (obvious) suggestions, none of came close to working. Then they declared victory and terminated the discussions.

MS forced me to abandon a product that was working just fine, and purchase an upgrade which is obviously broken. All in the name of their "improved" online banking services. What a bunch of ripoff artists!!!

MS Money Plus gets as many stars as it does only because I was so relieved to have the MS Money 2007 bugs fixed. MS Money Plus is a good patch to Money 2007, but has absolutely no additional functionality.

If you can find my review of MS Money 2007, you will see an extensive list of bugs. Money Plus fixes most of them, but not all.

I was very happy with MS Money 2004 and wish that I had never upgraded to Money 2007.

I am very dissatisfied at having to spend the extra money, but if you are struggling with Money 2007 then I would recommend getting Money 2008 to clean it up. If you are running an earlier version of Money - stick with it!!!

I am new to finanical software, I brought Quicken 2008, had to get a refund after a week, the transaction updates didn't work (lots of error messages,) probably something to do with the computer. Quicken did get great reviews though on the Internet. Microsoft Money, wow, ten times easier, I downloaded the free trail version, great. Automatically updated, and mainly catorgized my spending . Lighten quick opening and closing compared to Quicken. I am a PHD (push here dummy)type, and Money is perfect for me. The on line help user's guide, great. Quicken, well again I am clueless about this type of software, and had difficultly figuring out what they were talking about in the Help section. So take my review for what it's worth, my lack of experience.