Personal Finance

Eggman · Guest

I have been using Money 2004 for probably a year. I am constantly
encountering bugs that make it very difficult to accurately keep track of
things.

I download statements every few days from my bank. I go through every
transaction and verify them. Every week or two I make sure that the total
money gives me is the same as the total the bank gives me and I balance the
account. So why is it I am suddenly off by 26 cents and the problem goes
back as far as the account is being tracked. I would have balanced only a
couple of weeks ago and everything would have been fine at the time, so what
happened.

And why when I try and link a transaction to an occurrence of a bill does it
sometimes refuse to do so. It will simply treat it as though I never did the
linking. The only way I can get it to link properly is to delete the
transaction, enter it manually, and then download the statement again.

3 months ago I started a completely new Money file because my previous file
had become so out of whack with all the little bugs that keep cropping up.
Now I am just seriously considering buying Quicken instead.

Dick Watson · Guest

I don't download transaction data. M04 has the paycheck morphing scheduled
transactions. It mangles one element of one of my scheduled transactions
into multiple entries in cash flow forecast every time I enter one of the
scheduled items. It is very temperamental about letting me specify the date
to use on entered checks from scheduled items. Sometimes it pays attention
to the dates I force it back to, other times it ignores me. There are some
other issues. But in general I don't have problems like you describe.

Downloaded transaction data seems to cause more problems that I'd guess it
was worth to many people who post here.

William R Wood · Guest

Eggman,

I don't have any of these problems with Money 2002 which can be purchased on
eBay or Amazon. Don't recommend a switch to Quicken. I already switched
from Quicken to Money and Money is definitely better. If you do want to
look at a different program try Moneydance. It is not perfect yet but it
might be all you want. Many folks are really happy with it. I tried it for
a few months and it is small, clean and fast with no strange behavior of the
sort you mention.

Regards,

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ

Eggman · Guest

I did a search on the forums for bugs and looking at the replies, the general
response seems to be "I don't download transactions and I don't encounter
bugs". It seems to me the ability to download your transactions is a
powerful feature and if it doesn't work, then why is it even in the program.
A feature that doesn't work, isn't really a feature at all.

Chris Cowles · Guest

I use downloading extensively, as do other users contributing to this forum.
There are some problems in Money, but none that have made me switch or stop
online banking, in the 7 years or so that I've been using it.

My criterion for selecting a bank is that it supports direct banking with
Money. I'll switch banks before I'll abandon direct online banking, except
under very limited circumstances. I do not have a Passport associated with
my Money file, and therefore do not use the connection through MSN and
Yodlee. While that works for many, more users seem to have problems with
that than with direct banking (ie, banks that have their own servers
supporting Money.)

Without ranting, just what problems are you having?
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

Ron Rosenfeld · Guest

Dick Watson · Guest

Downloading transactions takes two to tango. For every bank that cares about
setting up and maintaining their systems up so this can work well, there are
probably ten who can't be bothered. Is that a Microsoft Money problem?

William R Wood · Guest

Chris is right, downloading does work. I can't personally vouch for any
version after Money 2002 but I have been downloading 90% of my transaction
data without problems for 15 years. I do not use and would not consider
using an MS Passport and like Chris I will not do business with a bank that
does not support direct downloads to Money.

I suggested Moneydance in my prior post if you are determined to switch
applications because MD has very clean, problem free downloading from many
banks and MD will not expire downloading in older versions like MSFT and
Quicken have determined to do.

But the most likely source of your problems is your own setup, not Money
bugs. Over my 20 years of Quicken/Money experience, I found that 90% of my
problems were my own fault or my lack of understanding of Money's behavior
and not the fault of the software. So before switching programs, check your
own data and procedures for errors or inconsistencies. It may not be
applicable but, as an example, the last problem I had with downloads related
to having too many old payee names in my payee list. Money was getting
confused and matched the wrong payee. I simply deleted the old unused payee
names and the problem is gone. The more carefully you study the program and
understand why Money does what it does, the easier it is to fix problems.

Regards

Bill Wood

Eggman · Guest

I don't know, it is possible that it is my setup (hey anything is possible),
however, I am trying to be quite careful about the way I operate. I don't
use a passport for downloading. I go to my banks website, and download
directly from the bank to Money. I do have background banking enabled so
that it can download my investment data.

Beyond that I don't do anything fancy. I download my statements every few
days. I have a setup of bills and deposits which I link to my account.

It is possible that having too many payees causes the second problem I
mentioned (of course I would again suggest that if tracking that many payees
causes problems in the software, the software should limit the number of
payees - thus it would still be classified as a bug). I will try and clean
out the Payees and see if the problem goes away.

Granted I don't know the inner working of the communication between my bank
and Money, but it seems to me that the first problem I mentioned must be a
bug. If everything balanced a couple of weeks ago, how am I now off by 26
cents and that error goes back as far as the account tracks. I know that I
could quite easily fix the issue by either adjusting the starting balance or
by adding in a correction transaction, but I shouldn't have to.

Anyway, I took a look at Moneydancer and the User Interface sucked. If
everyone seems to think that Quicken is even worse, then I guess I am stuck
with no alternative.

Overall I love the presentation of Money, I just get very frusterated by the
fact that I have trouble getting it to do very common tasks without errors.

William R Wood · Guest

Taylor · Guest

Chris Cowles · Guest

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