Money has a free trial available. See http://www.microsoft.com/money and
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=137.

Money probably won't do most of what you are asking easily, but you can
probably coerce it somehow. Quicken is probably the better choice for you.
Excel is probably even better.

"Finance05" <Finance05[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:68B2EE93-E26C-4086-911C-27512F340070[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I currently use Money 2003 and have been experiencing problems with getting a
quick snapshot of finances (budget vs actuals and remaining balance and
indicators to let me know how close I am to limit in any budget category). I
am contemplating buying Money 05 or Quicken 05, but need more info than web
sites provide.

My main concerns apart from above are as follows:
1. Need tool to automatically categorize transactions (Money 03 only
recognized certain transactions, like grocery store names, but didn't pick up
recurring transactions at particular clothing stores, for example).

2. Need capability for tracking of expenses of two parties (Bob and Mary),
individually per budget category.

3. Need ability to query finances based on party, budget category, overages
and average spending per category.

4. Need an indicator as to when expenses are within predefined percentage of
budget amount. (Money 03 had "thermometer bars that measured how close you
are to limit for particular category. Does Quicken have this or similar
feature. Can you customize it to let you know if, for example you've spent
more than 70% of budget category before mid-month?)

4. Need the tool to be customizable to include roll-up summaries for each
predefined budget category. This is helpful for the quick snapshot view of
finances. Do both products provide this feature?

Any insight on these features would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mary