johnbusc[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

My experience isn't much. My recollection of the online-enabled vs not is
probably flawed.

Once I tried MSN Billpay and discovered I couldn't assign my primary
checking account as the MSN Bill pay account without creating a duplicate
account, and I couldn't merge the two accounts without disabling online
banking with one of them, I abandoned further attempts. I never thought of
using your workaround of transfers to the MSN Billpay 'Checking' account.

My purpose for having investigated this in the first place was to permit
direct transfers between banks using the ACH system. MSN Billpay supports
that, but you're initially limited to very low amounts. I discussed my
interest with tech support and determined that they would increase the
transfer limits, but only after they established a history with me.

Since my only use of the system would be for transfers, and those would be
infrequent, I would never establish that history. The limits on the system
were too impractical for me to bother with, so I ditched it.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

Chris,

When I go to the Merge Duplicate Accounts page, the only choices I'm
given for accounts to merge with MSN Bill Pay accounts are
online-enabled ones.

Money Help used to explain this but it recently has been updated and
now doesn't contain the same verbiage as before. Now it says something
to the effect that in order to merge two accounts that are setup for
bill pay each must use the same bill pay service.

When I was using Money 2005, I was able to merge an MSN Bill Pay
account with an account at my bank that had bill pay direct within
Money. When I did this, it did merge them but complained that only one
of the bill pay services would be active for the merged account. This
made perfect sense once I did it (don't know why I thought otherwise
before the merge). It turned out the bank's service was still active
but not MSN's. My other accounts with MSN Bill Pay still worked fine.
At that point I decided to undo the merge (disable online/setup online)
and then keep the accounts separate. That way I could, in effect, pay
from the same bank account using either bill pay service.

I was already used to this type of dual-account setup with a checking
account I had linked to a brokerage account. Even though the check
clearing was handled by an actual bank, the money was withdrawn from my
brokerage account. Since MSN Bill Pay won't let you use an investment
account as a payment account, I setup the checking portion in MSN Bill
Pay using the actual bank's routing and account numbers. When the
corresponding account was created in Money, I just transferred from my
brokerage account to the MSN account to reconcile the debits and
categorized the MSN account transactions as the expenses.

As for the new Money Help instructions about merging bill pay accounts,
I'm not sure if they mean it won't let you do it or if once you do it
you'll still only be able to use just one of the services for that
account (as was my experience). I suspect nothing's really changed (ie
the latter still applies). They're just not too clear in trying to
explain the consequences.

What are your experiences with this? Are you given a choice to merge
bill pay accounts with non-online enabled ones?

Regards,
JB

johnbusc[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

I think you meant "as long as the latter is NOT online-enabled"? That was my
experience.

Chris Cowles wrote:
- quote -

Even though the OP probably wouldn't want to, you can merge an MSN Bill
Pay account with another account as long as the latter is
online-enabled.

JB

johnbusc[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

Interesting way to address the duplicate account issue, since you can't
merge them.

Srinivas,

Thanks for the update. Good to know the standard plan will work with
Money.

If you do decide to schedule payments within Money from the MSN Bill
Pay account, make sure that when your bank posts the payment and you
download it into your other account, categorize it as a transfer to
your MSN Bill Pay account. This will account for the debit to your
bank account and keep your Bill Pay account at a zero balance since it
is not really a bank account. The payment from the Bill Pay account
can be categorized as appropriate to account for the actual expense.

Regards,
JB

JB: Thanks for the reply.

I went ahead and signed up for standard plan. After signing up I saw in
the help file that with standard plan I do get charged for each
transfer. I swear I read earlier that first five transfers or payments
free. Anyway, I also found the daily limit it has for transfers is too
low. Both together makes the feature pretty useless to me.

Anyway, the good news is that once I signed up for the standard plan it
indeed came available in Money 2005. (Although, I did not actually setup
any payments with it - so I can't vouch for actual usage)

Hope this helps others!

Srinivas

johnbusc[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

Srinivas Annam wrote:

- quote -

When you setup payment accounts in MSN Bill Pay, they will be
downloaded to your Money 2005 file as new accounts with MSN Bill Pay as
the name of the financial institution. As long as you don't use the
merge function in Money 2005 to combine this new account with the
account you created for your bank account you will be able to choose
which of the two Money accounts to pay from (and thus which service is
used).

- quote -

Supposedly, you have to have Premium to work with Money 2005 but I
don't know what would happen if you signed up for Standard at MSN and
then tried to link it to your Money file...(anyone out there tried
this???).

Regards,
JB

Recently started using Money 2005. I have already signed up with Online
bill payment with my bank and now considering MSN Billpay - mainly to do
transfers between various checking accounts.

Couple of questions -

1. If I signup with MSN Billpay - would it stop me from using my bank's
online bill payment? For any payment would I have the option of choosing
my bank's bill payment or MSN Billpay service?

2. If I try to signup for MSN Billpay from billpay.msn.com I get two
plans - standard and premium. Whereas if I attempt the signup within
Money 2005 I get only Premium option. If I signup for standard plan
would it work within Money 2005 (of course, I use the same passport)?

Cheers,
Srinivas