Going by reports that tell me what people are looking for on this site, a lot of readers are still looking for a Microsoft Money replacement.
The comments under this post indicate that while Moneydance is o.k., it's still not quite as polished at MS Money was. If Moneydance made a few tweaks to the user interface, it would probably nab a good portion of MS Money orphans.
Here are my tips for replacing Microsoft Money, along with a ton of readers sharing the software they use in place of Money.
Have you found a replacement for Money? Let others know what personal finance software is working for you.
That’s awesome! It really help me. Very informative. I am looking forward for more post. Thanks!
It sure ain’t Quicken Premier 2009! I have used it for a year and a half and have yet to figure out how to do what was easy in MS Money.
My major gripes:
I can’t set up varying paycheck deductions. With MS Money I could change the overtime and deductions as needed by just editing that one entry and adjusting the total transaction amount. Quicken makes me start all over each time as if it can only handle ONE paycheck that has to be the same from pay period to pay period.
I can’t get it to NOT display reconciled transactions. Intuit says this feature isn’t available and they don’t plan putting it in.
It misses date when “to date” reports are requested. Reports I asked for stopped at 31 August, and transactions between 1 Sep and 6 Oct which were on my bank’s online page didn’t show up in Quicken, even though the transactions were updated daily.
I’ve been using both Dropbox and Sugarsync to backup my Microsoft Money file. Believe that hands down MS Money is currently still the best personal finance software around. I’ve tried several others such as Quicken, Pocketmoney desktop, Yodlee, Mint (not useful as in Australia). After buying Quicken I found that they no longer allow you to export your data to a common spreadsheet format such as CSV! Quicken has overstepped their monopoly power in my opinion, and their software is nowhere near as user friendly and intuitive as MS Money. So in 2011 I’m still sticking with my Microsoft Money…when will someone release something comparable?
2 months ago I would have recommended Mint, but after they changed how they update accounts the site has become worthless. It’s a real shame. It was a great site until bought by Intuit. Interesting that Mint was purchased by the makers of Quicken and now that users are hooked on tracking financial data they can offer an expensive alternative product.
Gnucash is is a free open source program developed for Linux but available on Windows platform. I actually found this program more flexible than Money and Quicken but not quite as pollished. However it was good enough for me to donate to their project.
I have for many years been a happy user of MS Money, considering the various bugs in the application. I changed to Quicken, oops, no good. Returned it and got my money back. Since then I have been using Moneydance, which is ok, but definately not up to MS Money standard in UI and functionality.
So I am still looking. Why dont any of those developers buy an old version of MS Money to get ideas about the UI really should work?
I think you definitely have a point about some developer out there using Money to get ideas for the UI. A developer that did this would probably get a good chunk of the market. And, they don’t even need to buy an old version, they could use Money Plus Sunset Deluxe, which is free.
Ditto – MS Money good, everything else, not as good. I seriously wonder what Microsoft was thinking when they pulled the plug on this one. It drives better than any online app (mint and moneydance included). Quicken I’ve owned a couple versions of. Guess I told myself they would make it easier “this time.” – eeehhh wrong again. The simplest of functions in Money and they way overthink them in Quicken. The register alone is enough to make you want to throw in the towel after a couple hours of beating your head against the wall of options. It’s just awful.
P@
Everyone knows about the Microsoft Money Sunset edition yes? http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20738
I’m using it and although I can’t use what was a great online banking link to send bills thru it – I now manage my bills through Chase’s online billpay and I set up “other” bills by the same name, amount and date to match in my Sunset of Money. With Chase I use their free tool to download my statement in money format (they still offer the money format download so you don’t have to do a .csv). Sunset recognizes the import coming down – offers to open Money and imports it. Still slick enough. I do my dad’s banking too but he’s with Wells Fargo. They don’t offer the Money download format, so I have to either drop a .csv which is a pain to import cleanly or I have to download to Quicken, export to Money, and then import – geesh. Yeah somone needs to buy and fix this tool.
I also thought it might be VERY cool if one of these big banks online-billpay systems created a forecast tool. Let you plug in amounts you’d have coming and going that might not be in THAT billpay system just for the sake of doing what Money lets you do. It’s always been one of the sexiest features in Money.
I wish someone would approach Microsoft and just offer to buy their old product and bring it back out under some other name or something. Why start over – Microsoft would probably ask too much for it though
P@ Stahl
We use http://www.bank2budget.com tool. $15 purchase and it shows all our activity and allows us to create a budget category level for measuring too. I could not find a more affordable and useful tool out there.