Product Reviews

When it comes to personal finance managers, there are really only two that continually battle it out for pole position - Microsoft's Money and Intuit's Quicken. There was a time when the difference between these two was easy for a reviewer to define. Quicken offered financial bells and whistles galore, complete with multimedia presentations. However, all this came at the expense of ease of use. Money, on the other hand, was easy to set up and use but, when it came down to it, the Microsoft application was limited in features in comparison to Quicken. Basically, Money only concentrated on tracking your bank account debits and credits.

That's all changed dramatically with the arrival of Money 99. Obviously no longer content with the 'basic but easy' tag, Microsoft seems to have had a long, hard look at Quicken 98. The result is a new financial suite that's packed to the brim with extra features.

Microsoft hasn't forgotten the basic money-tracking features central to any personal finance manager. Money 99 provides you with the means to track all your income and expenditure from bank, cash and credit card accounts. You can also create separate accounts for mortgages, investments, loans and so on, building up a proper balance sheet of your net worth based on all your assets and liabilities.

Day-to-day transactions are input directly through the on-screen register (where you fill in the details of your transaction on a line-by-line basis) or onto a simple form for a slightly more user-friendly approach. You decide whether it's a payment or a deposit, choose a category for analysis purposes and Money stores the posting and updates all the accounts affected.

That's about it when it comes to tracking your ins and outs. However, right from the start, users will come across clues that Money now does far more than merely balance your bank account. When you first load the software, you're presented with a rigorous Personal Profile interview. This asks about your financial situation and needs, providing a plan of action that not only offers some relevant suggestions but also points you to the particular part of the software where you can implement your aims.

The Personal Profile interview is a good start and a clue to where Microsoft is heading with Money 99. It's now clearly intended as the place where everything to do with your financial lifestyle can be found.

Planning for the future

Keeping to this theme, the expanded version, Money 99 Financial Suite, adds even more to the mix. You now get integrated long-term financial planning, courtesy of the Lifetime Planner, Debt Reduction Planner and Budget Planner. These use the information in your data file, along with answers to questions about your stipulated goals, to arrive at a plan for life. Furthermore, as you use Money 99, the software keeps you up to date with tips and advice. These will include personalised suggestions, which are linked to and updated in accordance with your actual financial position. For example, Money will tell you when the goal posts have been moved due to a change in your financial situation. This might happen if your salary is increased or your bonus payment doesn't live up to expectations. Money will help you to adjust your plans accordingly.

The Planner Wizard asks about your income, and what sort of savings and investments you expect to achieve. Once the software knows what assets, loans and living expenses you have, the results screen can be used to improve your plan based on Money's suggestions. The Debt Reduction Planner can hone this even further. Should you wish to diminish a crippling financial burden, you can select and prioritise those debts you would like to pay off. You can decide either how much you want to pay off per month, or choose when you'd like the debt to be reduced to zero, and let the Wizard sort out a suitable reduction plan.

Money will then show you a chart illustrating the timescale involved, and will also tell you whether you have allocated enough cash to the plan. The Debt Reduction Wizard will increase the payments if you haven't stipulated enough, and show you the result this will have and how much you should be paying.

Money 99 also sports a significantly

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improved Money Manager. Here you receive independent advice about all manner of financial situations, such as income tax, borrowing money, managing debt, mortgages, insurance, pensions and school fees.

Articles are written by experts in their fields and, once you're up to speed on the information at hand you can also play with Money Manager worksheets. These help you to estimate your tax bill, compare loans and mortgages and work out what you should be saving towards your retirement provision.

So far then, Money 99 has a useful mix of information, calculation and implementation, all working well to help manage both your future plans and historical situation. Microsoft has gone a great deal further than before in these areas and is finally giving Quicken a run for its money.

Financial investments

Yet Money takes things one step further with investment facilities. Financial Suite now includes the ability to create investment accounts and the individual investments themselves in order to track trading deals. You can have any number of investments working through these accounts, including actual stocks, shares, bonds, unit trusts, ISAs, PEPs and TESSAs and investment trusts.

You can view your investments in a portfolio and enter buys and sells here or through the register into the investment account direct. You can also track performance, check allocations and so on. Using the Internet download you can watch the performance of investments you don't own and update the market prices of your investments manually or electronically.

Links to the new Microsoft MoneyeXtra Web site keep you informed of the latest financial information on-line. Considering that, in the past, Money's investment facilities simply meant creating a few special accounts this is a major addition.

On-line banking

It has taken a very, very long time for UK banks to take the concept of on-line banking seriously, at least in terms of providing the ability to dial up and interact with your bank, either on the Internet or using special software. Some banks have supplied software in the past, but this has been aimed only at business use and designed for BACS or automated direct debits and standing orders.

Microsoft has been at the forefront of technology where on-line banking is concerned and Money 99 goes even further down this road. At present you can interact to varying degrees with Barclays Bank, Nationwide Building Society, National Westminster Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sun Bank and the Woolwich.

If your bank is fully supported, you should be able to ask Money to download your bank statement for you. Money then compares the transactions you've entered into your PC yourself with those that have cleared in your actual bank account. This makes for extremely quick and easy bank reconciliation, as Money simply ticks all those transactions that match up and leaves you to deal with the rest.

You can also download the bank statement and transfer the details of transactions found in your actual bank account into Money's own software version. This happens automatically, without any typing at all.

Participating banks should support the payment of bills on-line by electronic transfer and allow you to set up regular payments and transfers from one account to another. So far, this sort of facility is pretty much exclusive to Money 99 and it will probably remain that way until Quicken 99 arrives at least.

Money 99 doesn't neglect people who are self-employed and perhaps working from home either. The package continues to provide invoicing facilities, but these have now been linked to a full sales ledger of customers. You can produce professional-looking invoices, quotations, proformas and credit notes on your existing company letterhead or plain A4 paper. Optionally, a company logo can be printed along with invoice messages, individually and globally. VAT records are automatically updated just like a full business accounting system and, by using Money's categories and classes, you can analyse your invoices for useful reporting later.

If you're in business a little, but dabble in personal finance a lot, Money 99 is without equal for the moment. Personally, I'm still not entirely happy with the browser-style interface. Quicken's combination of icons and toolbars is a little more effective in general use, but newcomers might not find that to be the case.

With Money 99 Financial Suite's on-line banking features, Microsoft really has stolen a march on the competition, at least for the moment. Admittedly, some of that famous ease of use has been lost, and it all appears to be more daunting for the first-time user. But, if you fancy putting all your finances in order (and that's no mean feat), Money 99 will certainly do the job.