Is MIcrosoft Money any good?

laurajayne

maryb wrote:

Hope this isn't a stupid question but if you download your statements through online banking how do you stop the entry going through twice. ie once because you have set up an automatic entry for gas or whatever and then again when the direct debit actually goes through. If I could get this sorted it would make Money really useful for me because I find the cash flow forecaster is a bit hit and miss.

One thing I really like about Money is that they do a version you can download onto a Pocket PC for free (there's probably one for Palm as well) as long as you have got the desktop version. I rely totaly on my Pocket PC to synchronise my calendar at work with my calendar at home. It means I can have three diaries and they are all up to date - that would just never happen with a paper diary. With the pocket Money version I can remind myself what my fiancial position is even when I am at work

When you download a statement from your bank (Natwest is the best I've found for this so far), if you don't match the payee exactly the transaction will be flagged for you to either 'accept' or 'change' - I get it a lot with how I set up my cashpoint withdrawals.

Hope this helps

laurajayne

smokybabe wrote:

can I ask a stupid question as well? I've just bought microsoft money 2006 excel (off Ebay of course!) and I can't figure out now to get my Lloyds bank connection set up for the online banking. Maybe I'm being a bit thick but I've puzzled over this for the last two days. The link posted in one of the previous posts above shows that Lloyds is affiliated so it is possible but when I try I only get a list of ?American Banks in the list in money itself. Any help would be much appreciated.

I bank with the black donkey...if you go onto their help thingy (lol..I'm a lot of help aren't I ) they state that because of 'Security Issues' they do not support downloading onto either Microsoft Money or Quicken :mad:

tomstickland

I've never used MMoney, but I can tell you, ultimately, it can't do anything that Excel, or a notebook and calculator can't do.
There's not much more to money then what comes in and what goes out.
The key to managing your finances better is to understand what's going on.

Personally, I manually log onto my bank accounts each day and keep an Excel spreadsheet of totals. For me that's got the right balance of effort, detail and useful information. Each to their own as to what they want.

Grade_A_Reject

tomstickland wrote:

I've never used MMoney, but I can tell you, ultimately, it can't do anything that Excel, or a notebook and calculator can't do.

By the same logic you could use Excel as a word processor by typing each line of your document into a new row in a worksheet. The reason people don't do this is there are better tools for the job i.e a proper word processor.

Unless you're a real whizz with Excel you would probably find it difficult to set up multiple accounts and inter-account transfers and schedule recurring payments like DDs and standing orders to automatically appear on predefined dates. If you're only interested in recording payments after they have occured then Excel would be fine, if you want to plan ahead to avoid getting hit with overdrawn charges then a proper money management program really is better.

wigginsmum

I'm with tomstickland with this - my Excel spreadsheet is fairly complex (which was enormous fun to set up). I log all ins/outs of my main account and reconcile with my online statement on a daily basis and with my paper statement monthly. I include the savings accounts and any debts with projected payment plans. The shopping section splits into categories so I can log expenditure there for monthly budgets. The cells reference cells on other sheets to automatically update the summary sheet, it calculates projected interest on everything, and I know to the penny how much I've got left each month. I have all my projected income and expenditure set up until Dec-12 now. I really can't see how MS Money could be an improvement on that; really the spreadsheet is a whizzed-up extension of the personal accounts book I've kept since 1985.

Edinburghlass_2

I have used MS Money for years, since I got it on floppy disc with my first pc

I have upgraded since then although to a certain extent I prefer the older versions. I do accounts for various small business's and produce end of year reports ready for the tax returns.

I also download bank statements into it from Royal Bank of Scotland. You can get it pretty reasonable on Amazon too

tru

Another spreadsheet fan here

All income and expenditure is on there, up to december 2011. It's full of calculations for shopping, savings, 2 bank accounts and debt.

tomstickland

if you want to plan ahead to avoid getting hit with overdrawn charges then a proper money management program really is better.

You can plan ahead using an old notebook and a calculator. Yes, some things might be better suited to what you want, but that depends on what you want.
Notepad.exe is an adequate tool for writing an essay.Some people would find this good enough; using MsWord or AdobePresentationBuilderLite(Gold Edition) might produce a better looking result, but the content of the essay would still depend on the person who wrote it. They could write it on the back of old utility bills for all that it matters.

devonbirdy

wigginsmum wrote: »

I'm with tomstickland with this - my Excel spreadsheet is fairly complex (which was enormous fun to set up). I log all ins/outs of my main account and reconcile with my online statement on a daily basis and with my paper statement monthly. I include the savings accounts and any debts with projected payment plans. The shopping section splits into categories so I can log expenditure there for monthly budgets. The cells reference cells on other sheets to automatically update the summary sheet, it calculates projected interest on everything, and I know to the penny how much I've got left each month. I have all my projected income and expenditure set up until Dec-12 now. I really can't see how MS Money could be an improvement on that; really the spreadsheet is a whizzed-up extension of the personal accounts book I've kept since 1985.

Hi wigginsmum,

I'd be interested in a copy of your template if poss as I'm struggling with excel.

Kind regards

Gaby

Anticapitalist

I just downloaded microsoft money essentials, I think it is the most recent version of microsoft money, not too sure but, it doesn't syncronise with a natwest account, infact i can only see Barclays on there? Can anyone help?