Rating: 
Summary: Money 2003 Deluxe& Business weak for business
Review: I purchased Money 2003 Deluxe & Business to include my wife's self-employed service business. The regular 'home' part of the program is fairly good and has lots of feature. The business part lacks quite a bit in several areas. The invoice designer wouldn't save a modified version on my Win 98 machine but works on Win Me on my notebook. Modification are rather limited. Certain fields have to stay in a certain frames within the Invoice. Worse, payment of invoices doesn't allow to enter a check number. When a payment is received and put into an account it becomes divorced from the invoice. The invoice shows having been paid but it is no longer associated with the actual payment entry. Makes it very hard to look and and figure out when problems arise. Also the business reports are almost un customizable except in a few minor things. Very frustrating. Accounts can't be designated as business accounts, distinguished from home accounts. Also 'project' information can not be put on invoices. Fields (such as customer name) are limited in size. Some Businesses have more than 20 or so characters in their name!
Anyway, it looks like we will be buying the Quicken equivalent. From the 'tour' of the Quicken site at least we can enter a check number against an invoice!
Rating: 
Summary: No Microsoft Support
Review: I have used MS Money for many years upgrading every 2 to 3 versions. I recently received notice that Microsoft will not support online banking for the 2003 version. It is frustrating and disturbing to be forced to purchase an upgrade to process basic banking transactions. They have lost a customer to Intuit here.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Software, But Still Needs Improvement
Review: My upgrade to Money Deluxe 2003 from Money 97 went almost flawlessly. At first, I didn't like the upgrade, but decided to get used to the new presentation. Sure enough, after several months, I am now comfortable with the 2003 interface. I love the online NAV updates for my mutual funds, and the menus are relatively easy to navigate once you become accustomed to them. The only bug I've experienced is after I run the "update online quotes" utility. If you don't wait for the investment allocation bar to fully resolve before hitting the portfolio option, it freezes up on me. That aside, one glaring problem still remains from the 97 version. When entering a new buy transaction for an investment, MS Money calculates the shares purchased out to six decimal points, yet we all know that financial institutions round up or down to only three decimal points. As a result, when you correct the transaction to reflect the actual amount of shares purchased, the investment amount will often change to a penny above or below the actual amount, forcing you to enter the transaction separately in you checking register. On another downside, the cashflow forecaster is completely useless. Whatever AI the program uses for this calculation is quite flawed. But I probably wouldn't use it even if it worked, so I can't complain too much. All said, this is probably the best software available for tracking your investments and spending. I thought of giving Quicken a shot, but I just can't do it with all the negative reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Money 2003 is a disaster
Review: Money 2002 had problems, but 2003 is far worse. The initial install refused to use the Money 2002 backups, or archival files. Worse yet, when we deleted 2003 and reinstalled 2002, we found that 2003 had corrupted all of our backup files, and none of the 2002 backups (5 of them) could be read. As usual, Microsoft support was useless... they said what we already knew.... Yes thats a known bug, and you'll have to recreate everything from the beginning. Big help. Stay far away from Money!
Rating:
Summary: A nightmare of false assumptions
Review: I have been a user of Microsoft Money for a number of years, and have finally decided to return to Quicken after spending countless hours (on more than one occasion) debugging bizarre issues and unwinding transactions that Money has decided (often mysteriously) to name or categorize FOR me. I spent three days tracking down a vendor who had apparently charged me $490 over the course of a month only to discover that the transactions were normal ATM withdrawals that Money had just decided to import from the online bank as being from that particular vendor. As a small business owner, that sort of stuff is just way too scary to tolerate in any software package. Stay away unless you are a super-basic user, or super, super advanced and willing to deal with it.
Rating:
Summary: BUGS !! BEWARE!! or get a full refund...
Review: this goes on from Money 2003 into 2004 and will probably be there 10 years from now In transactions with BONDS the accrued interest which you put in at time of purchase doesn't go into any further calcualtions so your income calcs overstate the actual income (this affects all reporting in portfolio and tax segments).
Rating:
Summary: I had trouble printing a partial sheet of checks.
Review: After purchasing Money 2003, I had difficulty printing one or two wallet size checks remaining from an 8.5 x 11 inches sheet of three checks. Money requires a sheet containing three checks to be inserted in a normal portrait configuration and a sheet with one or two remaining checks to be inserted in a landscape manner or at 90 degrees. In addition the checks must be aligned so that the left side of the sheet (or the top of the remaining one or two checks) is against the left side of the paper tray as viewed from the front of the printer. My printer is a HP OfficeJet R80 and requires envelopes to be placed in a slot on the right side of a paper tray. This places the paper feed mechanism on the viewer's right side. Money's check printing software requires the paper feed mechanism to be on the left or center of the paper tray. After speaking to member of Microsoft's "Escalation Team", a work around for the problem is: (1) Insert the remaining checks in a portrait configuration (same as a sheet with three checks). (2) Limit the number of checks to be equal to or less than the number of checks remaining on the sheet. Print additional checks in accordance the procedure for a full sheet of checks. I decided to resume using Quicken (which has no check printing problem), and received a refund for the purchase of Money. Upon the release of Money 2004, I have downloaded an evaluation copy and found that the problem is still not resolved. Prior to my check printing attempt, I was impressed with the Money program which converted my Quicken data and offered features that were desirable. I was even ready to tackle the Quicken charge card transition, which didn't appear real easy. As long as I have this printer I won't have to.
Rating:
Summary: MAJOR CODE ERROR IN LIFETIME PLANNER
Review: BUYER BEWARE! I spoke with 3 Microsoft support technicians and never did get a resolution to a major problem with the Planner section. When attempting to prepare a phased Retirement Plan, the program apparently has a mind of its own and would insert its own version of retirement $ inflows in downstream years. I stepped through the program with various technicians so they could see that the program really does spontaneously insert its own versions of retirement $ inflows. The support technicians seemed to recognize the problem, but offered no resolutions. From my point-of-view, the program code/algorithms are unreliable and not to be trusted. What internal miscalculations are happening in other sections of the program? I plan to dispose of this program and purchase an alternative.
Rating:
Summary: I hate this version!!!
Review: I have been using Microsoft Money for many years and been pleased. I made the biggest mistake by upgrading to 2003. I had never bounced a check until now. It's register keeping is very confusing. It enters the electronic payments with a date of several days before it is due and it is very hard to tell how much money you actually have in the bank without calling and verifying with the bank. I am seriously considering switching to another software such as Quicken, since I can't go back to the previous version of Money.
Rating: 
Summary: Much better than Quicken
Review: I have been a Quicken user for fifteen years, loyally upgrading every year. But I finally got tired of the clumsy interface, the confusing report/subreport capability, difficulties in tracking my 401k paycheck contributions, etc. I switched to Money 2003 (and had to convert each account, since there is no converter for 2003). What a difference! The user interface is excellent & highly customizable. The focus on graphical representation makes analyzing the data easy. While functionally rich, the program never seems overly complex because the functionality is inobtrusively layered into the right spots.
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While I have probably not found all the defects in Money, I am very happy with my decision to convert from Quicken.
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