Rating: 
Summary: "Report" functionality sucks
Review: The reporting feature does not always reflect accurate information. Say, I selected ALL categories to be reported on my Monthly Income and Expense Report, the report came out missing including several categories, and so the total on the report were all screwed-up. If I were not paying attention to that details, I would have been sued by clients for inaccurate billing.
Rating: 
Summary: MS Strikes Again!
Review: There are more than one reason not to buy this product!
1) All support for MS MONEY is now in INDIA and the folks there smile a lot while talking to you, but they do not know the product.
2) There are major software bugs in the software - features that worked in MS MONEY 2003 are broken in 2004 and MS knows about them but refuses to fix them!
3) Is a very hard product to install if you have MS MONEY 2003 and are upgrading - more so than the 2003 install was over 2002.So if you want to ensure US employment of folks in the USA, then don't buy this product.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money if you already have 2003...
Review: There isn't one reason to get this update if you alerady have MS Money 2003 Deluxe and Business. Wait until 2005 when they actually might include some real reasons to upgrade.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Limited Customization Options
Review: This was a new install rather than an upgrade, so I came in without preconceived notions. First impression, fairly intuitive and nicely integrated with banking and basic inventory systems. The HUGE drawback is that it is amazingly rigid! You cannot, for example, change the billing terms on an invoice! Hope your terms are the same as one of the 5 options Microsoft gives you, otherwise you're out of luck. More examples: invoices do not reflect partial payments; you cannot change shipping methods beyond the options they give you (Has Microsoft ever heard of customer pickup?); and you are very limited in your decisions about what information can and cannot be included on correspondence. Setting up inventory system is also tedious as you can't duplicate and edit similar items. Lastly, as the previous reviewer mentioned, tech support is worthless. It's an overseas support line and while the operators are polite and speak English well, all they do is enter search criteria into the help dialog and try to find the answer for you! Literally no more helpful than if you were to do it yourself. Bottom line - probably would have been a great package if it was released in 1998, but of course, 5 years of progress is tough ignore.
Rating: 
Summary: MS Money Small Business 2004 -
Review: Was I excited that "MONEY" was finally going to make the transition to the Small Business Community? Absolutely! I have been too busy to want to learn a REAL Accounting program. And I have been using "Money" since the early 90's to balance my checkbook and surely one of the first to use online banking; so the idea that I could integrate invoicing was icing on my cake. Now for the disappointing reality. While you can make and email invoices and they will be tracked in a receivables account, you will need to create a cash account to receive the money into and then transfer that amount into the account that you download your banking transactions into if you deposit more than one check at a time. Otherwise, you will have double entries in your account. This makes for many extra steps, shuffeling payments here and there. I would have appreciated this information prior to purchasing yet another version of Money, I could have done this without the Small Business edition. (I think this puts me in the position of Beta testor, and I had to pay for the job.)
Also, I was very disappointed not to find ANY information in either the help files or online. That search in itself was exhaustive. The help from Microsoft was indeed good. But, I was required to sign up for a "PassPort Account" to communicate with them (not opting for the toll call). They indicated that it was indeed a problem, and they are working hard to fix it. My wish is that the repair is not a "version upgrade" as this is a definite flaw to a Business package. Effectively, the only thing that was added to the previous version of Money (I was using Deluxe) was an invoice template, and the ability to change your fiscal year end. (This is something I complained about in Money in the 2002 version.) I will, of course, continue to use it and I am quite sure that eventually it will be a great ENTIRE solution for a small business, since it already integrates with Excell and TaxCut. It just needs to do it sooner...
Rating:
Summary: MS Money Small Business 2004 -
Review: Was I excited that "MONEY" was finally going to make the transition to the Small Business Community? Absolutely! I have been too busy to want to learn a REAL Accounting program. And I have been using "Money" since the early 90's to balance my checkbook and surely one of the first to use online banking; so the idea that I could integrate invoicing was icing on my cake. Now for the disappointing reality. While you can make and email invoices and they will be tracked in a receivables account, you will need to create a cash account to receive the money into and then transfer that amount into the account that you download your banking transactions into if you deposit more than one check at a time. Otherwise, you will have double entries in your account. This makes for many extra steps, shuffeling payments here and there. I would have appreciated this information prior to purchasing yet another version of Money, I could have done this without the Small Business edition. (I think this puts me in the position of Beta testor, and I had to pay for the job.)
Also, I was very disappointed not to find ANY information in either the help files or online. That search in itself was exhaustive. The help from Microsoft was indeed good. But, I was required to sign up for a "PassPort Account" to communicate with them (not opting for the toll call). They indicated that it was indeed a problem, and they are working hard to fix it. My wish is that the repair is not a "version upgrade" as this is a definite flaw to a Business package. Effectively, the only thing that was added to the previous version of Money (I was using Deluxe) was an invoice template, and the ability to change your fiscal year end. (This is something I complained about in Money in the 2002 version.) I will, of course, continue to use it and I am quite sure that eventually it will be a great ENTIRE solution for a small business, since it already integrates with Excell and TaxCut. It just needs to do it sooner...
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