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| Microsoft Money 2006 Standard | 
 enlarge | From: Microsoft Software
Category: Software
Buy New: $49.99
New (1) Used (1) from $25.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 910
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Me, Windows Xp, Windows 2000
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: 105-00521
Model: 105-00521
UPC: 882224018142
EAN: 0882224018142
ASIN: B0009KLGRM
Release Date: July 5, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Poor Interface, File Transfer Problems and Calculation Errors December 29, 2005
58 out of 65 found this review helpful
I have used Intuit's Quicken since 1998, upgrading about every 2 years. I have Quicken 2005 Deluxe on my computer and found that it to be very poor at managing my investment accounts. It has gotten so bad, that I have gone to tracking my investments exclusively in an Excel spreadsheet and only my bank and credit card accounts on Quicken, so I wanted to try MS Money to see if it was any better.
I have also been using Turbo Tax since 2000, but it always makes mistakes with my state return (I am from NY and in the military). This year, I am trying H&R Block's TaxCut software. The version I purchased at the military exchange here (Amazon does not ship software to FPO addresses) included a 100% rebate on Money 2006 standard, so I bought them both (since Money was free).
It took me 2.5 hours to convert my Quicken .qdf file to Microsoft money. The instructions in Money did not include telling you that you have to remove the password protection (if you have it enabled) on your Quicken file. Then, once I was able to convert the file, I tried to download from my bank to Money. This worked quickly, but it created 43 new entries (there should have been only 3 or 4). Once I reconciled these, I used the balance feature in Money and it showed over a $9,000 discrepancy between my online balance and my balance in Money. That is what killed the next 2 hours, going through 7 years of records to find the missing entries.
What I found is that Money randomly failed to carry over some entries - I could not figure out a reason why. Once I had entered the 14 missing entries, I visually checked the balances in Money and Quicken (which had the correct balance) and I saw that they matched. My wife checked them as well, and agreed they were correct. I tried to balance function again because it is the only way to reconcile an entry (whereas in Quicken, you can manually mark an entry as cleared or reconciled). This time, Money indicated a balance error of 98.26, which was a mistake. I clicked to make an extra entry to balance the account, which the program did twice for some reason. Then when I returned to the registry, there were no entries at all. Here again, I am not sure why this happened.
I have only worked on reconciling one account, but I have 19 other accounts I track in Quicken that I imported into Money, plus 12 investment accounts I would like to track in Money. I am not looking forward to spending hours fixing all of these accounts to repair glitches in MS Money. I have only had MS Money for a few days, but already I feel that it is an inferior product to Quicken and not worth buying, even if you can get it for free. This is especially a shame because Quicken's quality has really dropped off in the last two versions and there are no other comprehensive personal financial programs that I am aware of. Instead of wasting my time fiddling with Money or Quicken (which I have had since January 2005), I think I will spend my time transferring all of my accounts over to Excel or a hard copy ledger and get rid of the hassle all together.
Other issues I have seen in MS Money 2006 Standard:
1. Creating the MS Passport account is a hassle
2. The registry for a single account does not let you insert an entry by using a right click drop-down menu. Instead, you have to go to the bottom of the registry, which is a long way away when you are trying to insert a missing transaction that is 5 years old, and click on new.
3. Home shows your "favorite accounts" rather than you full portfolio and you current asset and liability balances, and upcoming scheduled transactions, which is the type of information I really need right when I log in.
4. The registry entries do not look like a typical check book, so there is a new format to get used to. Quicken at least uses this standard format for all of its cash, bank, and credit card accounts.
5. The Investing tab in the main display has the same problem as Home - it does not show you your accounts or performance when you click on it. Instead, you have a Web-page looking screen that has index performance and business news, but not my portfolio - and that is what I want to see.
 Money Std 2006 12/8/05 December 9, 2005
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
When upgrading from Mny 2004 to Mny 2005 my mutual fund summary totals got messed up. Further software version updates never fixed the problem. With that in mine, I test installed the 2006 software on my spare computer and loaded the data via a backup file. All went well and the numbers do seem to add up this time around. Otherwise very litte has changed with the new 2006 version of Mny. They made a few changes to the screen display such as removing the date from some screen displays or putting boxes and titles side by side rather than stacking them on the screen. I also noticed they added an additional tab on the investment screen which has to do with the display grouping function. Otherwise I dont see any big changes. 2004 had an investment display feature which allowed me to position the cursor on an investment by hitting the first letter of the investment symbol. I was hoping that feature might be returned for 2006. I think the investment reports could be better, but overall, I think the product is good.
Don't buy this November 12, 2005
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
We purchased this version when we upgraded to Windows XP. The old version of MS money we have been using for years did not work on windows XP. This version is terrible compared to the old version and we are going to move to Quicken. We can't figure out where it's getting the numbers for the budget portion of the program. It appears to be randomly multiplying deposits by two or just ignoring them. The budget numbers were just nonsense. We could not make corrections to investment stock symbols etc. The bottom line is this software has gone downhill and we no longer even trust it to add 2 and 2. It doesn't even deserve one star.
 Microsoft Money Software October 1, 2005
2 out of 25 found this review helpful
I am very pleased, so far, with this software. I am finding it user friendly.
MS Money '06 Std September 19, 2005
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
The interface between MS Money '06 and your bank/credit union is much improved (meaning it doesn't hang in limbo like it used to). It also shows the statement balance and the bank balance, which can vary due to credit card charges and other e-payments that haven't posted to the account. The initial charge categories have been simplified, with room to expand as you need to (I usually categorize Automobile Fuel separately, due to the cost and budget accordingly). All in all, an improvement over the 2005 version I was using.
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