Rating: 
Summary: Serious flaw in reporting
Review: I've been a Money user for many years. I love the design and find it easy to work with.Imagine my horror, then, when doing my tax reports this year I discovered that Money failed to list all my tax expenses. I noticed this only because a major expense was missing from the report, so the error was glaring. When I then went to check, I found Money failed to list around 20% of my expenses. If I had not discovered this error, I would have ended up paying $5000 more tax than necessary. I haven't checked past years' returns, yet, but if this flaw has existed in previous versions, then I've been overpaying my taxes for years thanks to Money. I have checked and rechecked over a dozen times to ensure the error is not my own. It's not. The missing expenses are correctly categorize as tax expenses, they are in accounts which are included in my tax reports, and they are for the correct reporting period. Strangely, Money will report a similar expense and then skip the next, similarly categorized expense. If you're going to use this product, treble check your reports at tax time.
Rating: 
Summary: Do it Microsofts way or else!
Review: I've been using MS Money products for about a year now after switching from Quicken. I was tempted by the lower costs and on-line freebies. While the product overall works ok, I believe that the reviewer that made this comment >>>2. It's a typical Microsoft product. That means the software tries to outsmart you rather than letting you work the way you want to. <<<< makes a very good point. This is very frustrating to me because we don't all think alike. I've always been able to set up Quicken exactly the way I wanted and it was always very intuitive. I've never felt that way with Money. Just this week I was trying to get Money to set up my budget the way I wanted it. Paychecks can be entered in several different ways. I told Money that I was paid every other week. After entering the bi-weekly amount it then proceeded to calculate a yearly total and then avereaged it over 12 months. This then is the budgeted income amount that shows up on budget reports. Being that there are some months with 3 pay periods instead of 2, this averaged amount is never what I am actually paid. It's just one of the frustrating little ways that Money trys to outsmart you. I'm going back to Quicken.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth even trying
Review: I've been using Quicken for years, but I like to check out alternatives. So, since there were many positive reviews, here and in the PC mags, I thought I'd give Money a try. Forget it! Here's why: 1. A pain in the neck to set up.
2. It wouldn't import my Quicken data.
3. Couldn't review and modify what was being set up.
4. Documentation inadequate. Need I go on? I'm not a novice, so if I had trouble, I expect that so will most others. Quicken is far from perfect, but on the whole it has been solid, powerful, and fairly easy to use. The latest versions have annoying ads, but I find that easier to live with than the Money interface.
Rating:
Summary: Glad it's not just me....
Review: Microsoft just continues to top itself year after year with the continual poor quality of it's software. In that one regard, Money 2004 does not disappoint.
As other reviewers have noted, many previously functional parts of the (mostly well-designed) program have been crippled, or do not work at all. A prime example that I can site is the Debt Reduction Planner... the whole point of the tool is to allow the user to create a program to automatically pay-off the highest interest debt first. It no longer does this--- or much of anything else! When you set up a debt program, the tool used to schedule all of your payments in your Bills and Deposits listing to present an accurate cash-flow forecast. Now it only presents the most immediate payments... USELESS!!!
Add to this sporadic unexplainable data corruption and a complete absence of I/O load balancing in the "background banking" sub-app and you get a software tool that destabilizes and imperils your critical financial data. Oh yeah, and you're paying out the nose for that privilege!
MS Money used to be the only reason I stopped thinking about switcing to the Mac. At this point, Quicken is beginning to sound appealing.
I recently was subjected to inane blather from a financial number-cruncher about how MS is going to eventally conquer everything and everyone in the distributed computing arena.... I say it won't happen. They are committing the one sin that all companies have paid for eventually... arrogance and distain for the needs of their customers. Yeah, Windows will still be around in 30 years. But not much else... and who knows if MS will still be the owners.
Rating: 
Summary: Watch out, Money 2004 could ruin your life!
Review: Money 2004 might just steal your money. It stole mine. I used to be very wealthy, with upwards of $7,300 in my passbook savings account. Now I am homeless and am writing this on a computer at the library. All because of Money 2004. I believe but cannot prove that it stole all my money plus some of my ideas for inventions. Bill Gates is probably spending my money even as I write this. And yet I am not bitter.
Rating: 
Summary: premium is a ripoff
Review: money itself is nice enough, but paying more for the premium version over deluxe is a rip-off--every single additional "feature" is actually part of a limited-time trial for a 3rd-party Web service called Gainskeeper. Nowhere will anyone tell you how much this costs until you register for it. The regular Gainskeeper service is $20/yr, which is (surprise!) exactly what you paid to upgrade from Deluxe to Premium, so much for the "free" trial. Among the many ways this sucks includes you have to create and maintain a completely separate second version of your portfolio, store it on their web site instead of your own PC, and then (once you go past an introductory number of trnsactions annually) you have to pay per-transaction to enter your own trade data, anywhere from 20-90 cents each. Very very weak, there's no reason why this can't be included within Money itself for the extra $20. By all means choose Money over Quicken, but stick with Deluxe and save some bucks.
Rating:
Summary: Ritch Content
Review: This product is perfect for tracking my investments & keeping all my informaiton in one place. It is the only financial software I trust.
Rating: 
Summary: pushed by Quicken, happy with result
Review: very intuitive user interface, easy to use. I have finally abandoned Quicken after 10 years of use, and after Intuit has failed to produce a compelling version since 1999. Money has good support for multiple currencies, and the upgrade was smooth and even fixed a longstanding discrepency in a cash account balance that I could never chase out of Quicken. My biggest complaint so far is that the portfolio update feature is really slow (about 3 minutes), even with a 512 dsl. I don't really have that much data....
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