Rating: 
Summary: another money downgrade
Review: i have been a loyal money user. once you start with either money or quicken, you are pretty much locked in to continue using the same product. 2002 money has been the poorest upgrade yet. it is interesting to see what improvements microsoft implements and what they end up screwing up all at the same time. i will be returning 2002 money for a refund. the one feature i can not live without was removed. in the scheduled bills area you can not highlight upcoming bills and see your account balance. i removed 2002 and am back with 2001 money.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic product but....not worth the upgrade
Review: If you already use Money 2001 or earlier, this upgrade is, for the most part, a waste of your time and cash. A recent Money 2001 user, I was immediately attracted to the new feature of 2002 that automatically updates account register information. This, I thought, was worth the upgrade alone since I would no longer have to spend time downloading all of my account information. Hey, it would be done for me! How easy could this get? What I found out was that in order to use this nifty feature I would have to pay my bank $2.95 per month to interface with Money. And, this only covered 10 downloads. Additional downloads would be 50-cents each. Because Money automatically updates your registers each time you open it, this could get costly. Imagine, if I didn't want to get charged more than my monthly fee, I would only be able to open money 10 times! This was ridiculous since I am already able to download my statements for free. So, check before you buy because this is really a financial institution's rule and not money. If you will not incur any charges to use the background banking feature, then I would say go for it. If, on the other hand you have to dip into your account, better stay with Money 2001. Rather annoying with this edition is the passport sign-in. Others have complained about it and I thought it would be something I could get used to. But, it is aggravating and I would have preferred a choice of whether to utilize my passport account. In the end though, Money is a fantastic program and worth checking out. Only, if you're a current user or even brand new to financial software, save cash and aggravation by purchasing 2001. Do your homework! You'll be glad you did.
Rating: 
Summary: Great upgrade from Money 2001
Review: For all of you out there, who were unfortunate to use Money 2001, this is a great upgrade! The speed is phenomenal, the functionality is much cleaner, and online banking is more intuitive.If you are using Money 2000, it is still a worthwhile upgrade, since there is no degradation in the performance, and you get more functionality, some of it, is very usefull. Some of the really useful new features are: -- online statements are inserted authomatically into your account register, showing new transactions in bold, so you can approve them. -- all the toolbars are customizable, which means you can create only functions that you are usually using and put them on top, instead of the satandard menu -- reports are enhanced, and they are faster too.
Rating: 
Summary: Bluto is right...
Review: Bluto said that a user must be logged in as either Admin or a member of the Admin group in order to *run* the software. This is correct and is a poor way to have to run Money. It's understandable that you'd have to be an "Admin" in order to *install* the software but to *run* it after its been installed? Why should you have to be an Admin in order to run Money each time, after its been installed by an Admin? robertl30 should try to set up a non-Admin account and see if that user can even get Money to start up. The KB article Bluto alluded to explains that non Admins can NOT run the program unless you set them up as Admins, install the software for them, then remove them as Admins. And even then it will not run properly unless they remain as full fledged Admins permanently. (MS Money Sounds don't work for non Admins, among other bugs). The point is that you shouldn't need to have maximum privileges in order to *run* a program like Money - after its been installed by an Admin - which does nothing especially privileged. It's not like its a disk partitioning program or something. In my house, I am set up as an Admin, but my wife is set up as a User. She does not need, nor want, Admin privileges. She is worried that she might accidently harm the system somehow if she has Admin privs. But if she wants to *run* Money after its been installed, she needs to be an Admin!
Rating:
Summary: Terrific Financial Organizer
Review: I've been using Financial Planning Software for almost 20 yesrs. I started with Managing Your Money then switched to Quicken and then switched to Microsoft Money. I prefer Money because of its easy to use interface and tight integration with MSN's Moneycentral website, which I use for portfolio tracking. This update contains several improvements I like, especially the ability to email reports. I track my Mom's finances for my family and email reports to my brother and for her each month. I recently refinanced my mortgage and it took about 2 minutes for my printer to spit out all the information I needed for my lender. I've planned a budget and can check it anytime I want. And, the software has terrific planning modules for college savings and retirements. No software is perfect but this is one package I use regularly.
Rating: 
Summary: Upgraders Beware - Online Payment Method Changed
Review: Checkfree, the folks who service online payments for Money and Quicken banks, have mandated a new system that appears in Money 2002 and Quicken 2002: Once you upgrade to one of these products, there's no going back because your bank will change the way they handle your electronic transactions. Further, Money has made a terrible change in electronic payment processing in 2002: Everytime you enter a new payment, the program puts you on hold while it connects to the bank and downloads the transaction. Yes, you're reading it right: you have to wait for each payment to be processed individually (no longer in batches). Microsoft Money tech support says that many, many people are screaming about this; so much so that it may encourage the powers-that-be to issue a fix for this version. Also, the fact that they try to force you to use a Microsoft Passport password is an incredible pain...but it can be disabled. The insidious thing about Microsoft is that they make it unpleasant and difficult to disable (repeatedly asking you, each of the next three times you start the program, if you're sure about your decision not to use Passport). Otherwise, though, the program is sound. That said, had I known what I now know, I would not have upgraded from Money 2001. By the way, I'm a Quicken refugee -- got tired of that programs' continuing instability. A friend told me today that Quicken 2002 is a complete disaster...so much so that he emailed the President of Intuit (and got a prompt and personal apology). Good luck with your choices...
Rating:
Summary: Show me the Money
Review: I would recommend this product to anyone. I have recently upgraded from Money 2001 and am taking advantage of the new features. One important improvement is that Money 2002 can easily itemize your paycheck, including taxes and pre-tax deductions. With this new feature, Money 2002 was able to give me a very accurate estimate on my Taxes for this year. It also linked the pre-tax contributions to my 401k on my paycheck with my Money 401k account. Another improvement is that you can set a time schedule for when you want Money to download your account statements. For example, you can setup your American Express statement to be downloaded every 3 days instead of every time you receive updates over the internet. Most of the interface and features have remained the same from Money 2001, but I appreciate the enhancements that Microsoft has added.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent web integration and customizability
Review: pros: background banking is awesome and the ability to do customized homepages is sweet. web integration better than quicken. the online manager is much more intuitive than previous versions. cons: taxcut is still inferior to turbotax. basically no skins like quicken, only the default money colors
Rating:
Summary: Satisfied (somewhat)
Review: This was my first attempt at using personal finance software. I must say that this kind of software is really useful in tracking & maintaining your finances. As to this particular software, I gave it a rating of three. I liked the easy web-like interface and really liked the fact that it is very easy to connect to some banks & credit cards (Automatic statement downloads is very helpful). All the different reports give an easy way to track your expenses.
As to the cons, I hate the passport sign in feature. Though the concept is good, I don't like that Microsoft almost bulldozes you to use it. Disabling this feature is not easy and it is annyoing to answer "no" to all the "do you want to use passport" queries. The Synchronization with MSN money is not upto mark. You cannot manually synchronize with it. I wanted to control when I synchronize with MSN but apparently, Money doesn't allow me to do that. You either give full access to Money or you disable the feature entirely. But, if you are patient enough to work through these somewhat irritating problems, I would definitely recommend this software. It has almost everything you want to manage your finances.
Rating:
Summary: Not much functionality over MS Money 2000
Review: I got disappointed by the added functionality. It is not worth paying (price)when you already have MS money 2000. Bill screen is worse than 2000. Disappointed.....
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