Jason, the problem is that in order for the data to reconcile
"automatically" to your bank, your bank and the Money data have to be
fully integrated so each KNOWS what the other says. I use my BRAIN for
this integration because I KNOW that there is currently no way that
Money can determine exactly what each bank out there is trying to
reconcile to Money. The data each bank sends is different. Things like
category matching, etc. make the technology a few years away IMHO. Steve

Steve,

For what it's worth, I agree with you... but I don't see why Money would
want to push people to other bill pay services. It used to be extremely
convenient to schedule everything within Money, enter it one time, and then
have it reconcile automatically to your bank. The change with 2006 is a real
let down. Can anyone from the support team please confirm if this is the way
it is designed to work, or if there is a work around?

Thank you,

Jason

"Steve" wrote:

- quote -

Is this really the way that bill pay is designed to work, can someone
please
offer an alternate solution?


Why not do what I do. Enter all your bills in your bank's bill pay
service. Schedule the bills in Money and then enter them there.
Reconcile the banks balance with Money's balance at your leisure.
Advantage of this method is lots less effort on your part and you will
KNOW the entries in Money are the way YOU want them to look. I've been
doing it this way for years and I find it works well for me. Steve

Additional follow up based on a call with Microsoft support:

I was told this weekend that in Money 2006, the bill pay account is designed
to be tracked separately from any other account, and his suggestion was that
I issue all of my electronic payments from this 'dummy' account and then
reconcile them when they show up as paid in my real Wells Fargo checking
account that is updated automatically from within Money.

This doesn't seem right to me, as I then have to manually go into the dummy
bill pay account and delete the bill-pay transactions there once they are
paid from my WF account. If you do not manually delete them, they will
continue to show a negative balance as they will never reconcile, since they
are not actually linked to any bank account information.

I have found that I can merge the two accounts together, but every time I do
this I lose all of my historical information in my real checking account,
which contains approximately 4 years of information I do not want to lose
just to merge these accounts.

Is this really the way that bill pay is designed to work, can someone please
offer an alternate solution?

Thank you!

Jason
"Jason C" wrote:

- quote -

Al,

I am having the exact same problem. I have upgraded from Money 2004 Deluxe
to 2006 Premium, and cannot get the accounts to Merge. The only way it
allows me to use MSN bill pay is to use it with a new account with a #1 after
the name. My original bill pay account is at Wells Fargo (to clarify: I do
not use their bill pay service, but my checking account is held there). The
Wells Fargo online services work fine, the balance is updated whenever I
request an online update, but the Bill Pay account is managed separately
under "Wells Fargo #1," and only contains my future transactions to be paid
by Bill Pay.

I believe that the name for the duplicate account is coming from the online
bill pay settings you can only edit at MSN's website for Bill Pay. There you
can specify the name of the account, which shows up in MSN Money... I'm not
sure if this is not working because the names are the same, or what is
causing the problem, but I too am stuck unable to merge the two accounts
successfully.

Help is much appreciated.

Jason

"Al M" wrote:

- quote -

"Cal Learner-- MVP" <via_newsgroup[at]please.tnx> wrote in message
news:8pp4e19dceaadedcce8l8bfukib7dei2vq[at]4ax.com...
- quote -

otherwise normal looking online accounts from another financial institution
show as merge target options.

Thanks, Al

In microsoft.public.money, Al M wrote:


- quote -

I was going to suggest MergeDuplicateAccounts from the Account List,
but I suspect you tried that several days ago.

I have one remaining question/problem with Money 2006.

In Money 2004 I had MSN Bill Pay enabled for an account that I will refer to
as "Checking Account"

After the update to Money 2006 a new file was created and named "Checking
Account-#1"
This account has a large negative balance and appears to be the last 60 days
of bill pay items.

My original file "Checking Account" is no longer enabled for MSN Bill Pay,
the newly created account"Checking Account-#1" is enabled for MSN Bill Pay.

Checking MSN Bill Pay from the web interface shows the original account name
as the bill pay account.

When I go to my upcoming bills list there is a check box by some, not all of
my previous online payments. If I edit these payments, epay is not an
option. However it appears that checking the box and clicking on the online
payment button the payments will be sent. I have not tried this.

I would like to get rid of the newly created account and make my original
account the one to use for online bill payments with MSN bill pay. I have
had several days of e-mail dialog with Microsoft that has yielded little
help.

Al