Product Reviews

It only seems like yesterday that Intuit launched its upgraded Quicken 2000 onto an unsuspecting public. Now it's Microsoft's turn with Money 2000, initiating the battle of the millennium money managers!

These two have been vying for pole-position since the genre of personal finance manager first emerged. Quicken traditionally opted for bells and whistles, while Money went for the simple but competent approach - well how things have changed.

Building on the features first seen in earlier Money incarnations, Money 2000 really does warrant the banner of 'a complete financial solution'. In fact, the primary purpose of looking after your bank account now almost seems an aside. You can still use the software to manage your cashflow, of course, but Money now goes much further towards helping you devise an overall financial game plan.

In fact, long-term financial planning is very much where the new Money is coming from. You stipulate the goals and financial ambitions you intend to fulfil, and Money takes this information, along with your everyday postings, and updates a lifetime plan. As you enter new items into the software, or change your plan, so Money keeps you up to date with personalised tips and advice.

Stealing a leaf out of the Quicken book, Money's new Savings and Investment Centre means you can keep track of your shares, savings plans and so on, all from within one interface. Options include tracking theĉfive best and worst performers, analysing performance and even checking out your calculated risk and return. The Investment Centre isn't just for viewing information either. Buying and selling transactions can be entered here, and you can also download details of prices you just want to keep an eye on.

Whether you want to track overall portfolio performance or that of an individual plan, the Investment Centre home page can be customised to show just what you need to see on a daily basis. You can quickly see an estimate of how much your savings will be worth at a given point in time, view a graph of your assets valuation, and go on-line to compare your plans with the best on the market.

Previously the province

ADVERTISEMENT

of Quicken, Microsoft's Internet links to the updated Microsoft MoneyeXtra Web site can be very useful - plenty of tools and planners here to help you manage the available financial information on-line. Money 2000 can even suggest appropriate savings plans for specific situations. Perhaps, like Virgin, Microsoft is planning to move into the financial services sector.

One area where Money has always pushed ahead of the competition is on-line banking. Providing your bank is supported (and apart from the odd stubborn exclusion, most are), you can ask Money 2000 to download your latest bank statement for you, and compare the transactions you've entered with those that have cleared in your bank account - quick and easy bank reconciliation.

You can even ask Money to enter the transactions found in addition to those on your downloaded statement straight into your computer bank account. Money 2000 users can also choose to pay bills on-line by electronic transfer, and even set up regular payments or transfers from one account to another. Microsoft can quite proudly state that if your bank supports it, then Money can presently do it, with on-line upgrades to the application should the banks offer new, currently unsupported, services.

For the die-hards out there, you can still post directly into the Money cashbook of course, either by clicking on a blank line in the Register display or by using forms if you prefer. Breaking the entry down across categories and sub-categories gives you plenty of scope for analysis later on, and Money offers maximum opportunity for reporting on your data.

There are endless permutations on the basic reports provided, and a new section helps keep a track of your spending habits, along with 'what I have' and 'what I owe' type scenarios. The reports are based on real-world situations, such as 'where does the money go?' and 'who is getting my money?' - this doesn't always make for a pleasant read.

Getting to grips with all of this functionality is obviously going to take some time, and Microsoft does provide a thin volume on 'strategies for success with Money 2000' as a getting started guide. There's also a new set-up assistant, a page-by-page Wizard designed to get you through the process of entering the basic information and creating the first bank account.

Even so, this is a big piece of software for a small price, so don't let the bottom line fool you - in order to get a lot out of Money 2000 you'll have to put a lot in. For existing Money 99 users, aside from a bit more of a UK localised focus, you won't find an awful lot that's totally new since that release. Money 2000 is really a tidying-up exercise, but one that confirms the software's overall position as the one to beat.