Alternative to Microsoft Money?

NotRichAtAll

Rather than start a new thread can i ask :- i use a simple excel spreadsheet to manage my bill's and income etc its very basic but it works for me, do you think are there any benefits to me by using msmoney? i have been tempted to try it out but it looks very daunting to a novice like myself. If anyone can point to any good msmoney setup tutorials i'd be grateful.

thanks

colsten

Google is your friend: https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=ms%20money%20tutorial

pmduk

MS Money may look daunting, but in use is pretty simple hence it's enduring popularity.

agrinnall

jackyann wrote: »

Money is running fine to all practical purposes and makes no significant mistakes. But it does things that make me think it is unstable:
it will never shut down without telling me that it can't, it has a problem, it can't fix it - then it shuts down.
It repeatedly warns me that I am spending ridiculous amounts of money - trillions - on certain categories, although when I go into them (assuming I've made a wrong entry) the totals are correct.

I've never seen it do any of those things, so it does seem as if something is wrong. A couple of suggestions:

1) Run the repair options in case there is any corruption in your Money files (File | Repair Money File | Quick File Repair or Standard File Repair).

2) Uninstall Money, download a clean version and install that.

NotRichAtAll

For me the bank list is unavailable so not able to setup an account with my bank as such

Shedman

NotRichAtAll wrote: »

For me the bank list is unavailable so not able to setup an account with my bank as such

Unfortunately since Microsoft stopped supporting MSMoney the online features (eventually) disappeared so the bank list doesn't come up and you can't download statements straight from your bank into Money.

There are some workarounds (again Google is your friend) but, in my opinion, its not really worth it (I prefer adding my transactions manually as I didn't like the way the statements came in anyway - if you keep on top by say entering your transactions weekly or even daily it's not too onerous - this coming from someone with over 40 bank accounts set up on Money).

Anyway you don't need the online bank list to set up a new account - just select "My financial institution is not listed" which is at the bottom of the Select A Financial Institution page and then click next. Then on the next page select Current account (or Savings as appropriate). You can then add name of your bank into the new account title if you like. If you don't want to input all your historic transactions just put the account's current balance in the "What is the balance in this account" box and then you need only add any new transactions going forward.

Once you get the hang of Money you'll find it surprisingly starightforward and pretty comprehensive as to the sort of transactions that it will handle (especially more so on Investments, Endowments etc) and the Reports section is really useful and reasonably customisable.

NotRichAtAll

Shedman wrote: »

Unfortunately since Microsoft stopped supporting MSMoney the online features (eventually) disappeared so the bank list doesn't come up and you can't download statements straight from your bank into Money.

There are some workarounds (again Google is your friend) but, in my opinion, its not really worth it (I prefer adding my transactions manually as I didn't like the way the statements came in anyway - if you keep on top by say entering your transactions weekly or even daily it's not too onerous - this coming from someone with over 40 bank accounts set up on Money).

Anyway you don't need the online bank list to set up a new account - just select "My financial institution is not listed" which is at the bottom of the Select A Financial Institution page and then click next. Then on the next page select Current account (or Savings as appropriate). You can then add name of your bank into the new account title if you like. If you don't want to input all your historic transactions just put the account's current balance in the "What is the balance in this account" box and then you need only add any new transactions going forward.

Once you get the hang of Money you'll find it surprisingly starightforward and pretty comprehensive as to the sort of transactions that it will handle (especially more so on Investments, Endowments etc) and the Reports section is really useful and reasonably customisable.

Thanks for the reply, i have spent the afternoon reading about and dabbling with the software, i think it is probably not worth my time to set this up as i only have 2 accounts to maintain my excel spreadsheet works well for this.
i may well continue to attempt to setup money when i have a bored moment.