Good point. I know which ones they are and fix them immediately when I
accept them. Unfortunately, there are at least 20 items higher on my wish
list for them to fix than this. Wish I hadn't spent 2 months with Microsoft
tech support trying to get 2005 fixed before I just gave up. By then it was
too late and I have paid ever since. Never again. Even now I fantasize
about reinstalling 2004 on a going forward basis and orphaning 2005.


"R. Ian Lee" <RIanLee[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C1DCC924-B7C2-4F37-BD06-3252BBE6F80D[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Nope. Budget Planner/Advanced Budget has been pretty much the same for many
moons now. They've made minor tweaks and bug fixes and each time proclaimed
something like

* Great New Trouble Free Budgeting Features Make Getting Rich With No Typing
Easier And Simpler Than Ever

Essential Budget added in M05 is a sign that Microsoft thinks Budget Planner
is still 40% too complicated, so count on seeing something that's only 60%
as capable at some point in the future.

I also believe that, short of robbing market share from Quicken, there is
probably a point, near where we are, that Money has all the penetration it's
ever going to get no matter how dumbed down they make it. Sadly, this is a
real problem to a company whose whole business model is defined by unlimited
market growth.

"- Bobb -" <bobb[at]netscape.net> wrote in message
news:eZjkGMhkGHA.4212[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Dick,

I don't use budget, but just reading/wonderin' - are earlier year's
version of Money any better ?
If so, maybe OP could get a copy of ... M2001 etc ?

As for the "dumbing down" I certainly agree. However, there are SOME
people who aren't going to use it - no matter how easy. I have neighbors
that bought PC's with Money ON it and they don't use it. I've tried to
show them how easy to download check register etc - ain't gonna happen.
Same for family with free Quicken on their PC's. So the fact that it's
'not simple enough' would never get them to use it - nevermind BUY it.


"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:O1pkZ9YiGHA.4368[at]TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
- quote -

From: "Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.comNewsgroups: microsoft.public.money
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 12:03 PM
Subject: Re: Money 2006 Date Issues


- quote -

Personally, I've stopped downloading transactions and just reconcile them
when the statement arrives. Then the date I spent on my card/wrote the
cheque is the date in the account register (why the hell isn't it called a
ledger?), not the date it cleared my credit card/bank account.


COLIN


"R. Ian Lee" <RIanLee[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C1DCC924-B7C2-4F37-BD06-3252BBE6F80D[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, R. Ian Lee wrote:

- quote -

That would seem to promote unneeded spending. Somehow I have a bias
that a budget should be used to reduce rather than accelerate
spending.

- quote -

Thanks. It goes a long way toward explaining that view of a budget.

- quote -

I would like to see managers get rewarded for coming in under
budget. I understand that in some environments they are penalized
for doing so.

That's what I've been doing, but I find it to be a real pain to have to do
this since I don't always figure out what happened until after I'm done
reconciling several transactions and then I have to try and figure out what
happened. I try to limit my time managing Money to 15-20 minutes a day and I
would rather spend that time analyzing where improvements in my habits can be
made rather than where Money's habits could be improved...

"John Barnes" wrote:

- quote -

This is only my second month using the budget feature, but from what I can
tell Money does use a spend-it-or-lose-it method (from a budget
point-of-view). When you setup the budget, you tell it that you want to
allocate say $500 for groceries. If you only use $450 in May, then you will
not have $550 available in June. Likewise, if you spend $550 in May then you
will still have $500 available in June. You could carry over the balance
from the previous month, but it doesn't do this on it's own. I prefer that
it act this way, since mine and I think most personal financers operate on a
month-to-month budget rather than an annual budget where overages or
underages would carry over to the next month. Perhaps the confusion comes
from the fact that I do not budget every dollar of income at the beginning of
the month. We only budget those categories where we expect expenses and then
at the end of the month I evaluate how well we stuck to the budget and
determine how much is left and then apply that amount towards extra debt
payments and savings.

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Dick Watson wrote:

- quote -

It seems to me that for a personal or reasonable budget, that
budgeted funds not expended in one period would be automatically
carried forward for future use.

The idea that you spend it or lose it is used by governments, but
does not seem suitable for reasonable people.

For the few items you are talking about, just edit the transactions and put
them back in the proper month. I have been doing that for years, with 1-2
items a month.


"R. Ian Lee" <RIanLee[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B115D5E3-45AC-486B-8FBA-36DA9680F92B[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Sure it does. And the effect is symmetric. It also seems, for monthly
expenses, the effect is one-time.

The bottom line in all things Budget Planner is that the data it generates
is only as good as your ability/willingness to analyze it. Otherwise it's
just GIGO.

"R. Ian Lee" <RIanLee[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B115D5E3-45AC-486B-8FBA-36DA9680F92B[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Dick,

I understand what you're saying about there being a zero-sum, but the
problem is that it effects my Monthly Budget report. For example, at the end
of May I run the report and find that I have some extra money in a category
so I go and order something using that money and enter the transaction as the
date that I ordered the item. On May 31st I can run the report and it
appears that everything is within the budget. I use this info to then
determine how much "extra" there is in my checking account to decide how much
of an extra payment I can use towards debt. Then, a few days later I download
transactions from my bank where the order from May's budget arrives and voila
Money now changes this to a date in June. If I were to go May's Monthly
Budget report and run it again, it would not reflect the expense. Even
worse, though, is that the expense will now appear under my June report and I
could believe that I spent the money twice if I wasn't paying close attention.

I understand what you're saying about Microsoft's attention to Money. I've
been using it for over ten years now and it seems that it has changed very
little since then. However, I still buy the upgrade every year just
hoping...futily it seems. I understand the need to have a "dumb" version of
Money for 90% of the home users out there. But, there should be an
"Advanced" version (Deluxe???) for those of us wanting to take take advantage
of more powerful accounting features.

Thanks,

Ian

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

Lots of people use the budget without getting all wrapped up in dates. I
think most just worry the date the money is out of their hands. Worrying
about the date you want something in the budget vs. the date it comes out of
the account seems like a zero-sum game. If you are "underrun" this month
because the bank doesn't reflect something you budgeted, you'll be just as
"overrun" next month when they reflect it and you didn't budget it.

If you are waiting for budgeting to get more capable in M07, please don't
hold your breath. Money is on continuous trend of dumbing down. They keep
doing (non-) user research to determine that the next version just needs to
do 60% of what it does now and more (non-) users will find it "simple" and
"easy to use".

"R. Ian Lee" <RIanLee[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:FA03A7DB-03DA-4B58-9520-2C562BC2D38B[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I've recently started using the budgeting portion of Money 2006 and I'm
mostly happy with it. However, I have one big gribe about Money - it only
allows one date for a transaction. I've worked with several corporate
financial systems and most allow you to enter both a "transaction" date (for
Money, this would be the date that the transaction was credited/debited from
an account) and an "incur" date (which would be the date that I want the
expense deducted from my budget). If you aren't using the budget feature,
then this may seem like nonsense but there are problems that are created by
Money only allowing one date:

1) I want to debit expenses from my budget during the month of the budget
that I'm tracking. For example, if I make a purchase near the end of May
using a check (using money from May's budget) then I enter the transaction in
Money using the date that I wrote the check, not the date that it clears the
bank (sometime in June). However, when reconciling my transactions with my
bank it would be useful to have the "transaction" date that would align with
my bank statement. This currently isn't possible (that I'm aware of).

2) As stated in #1, I prefer to use the date that I "incurred" the expense
as the date that I enter into Money. However, when I download transactions
from my bank and it matches them up with transactions that I've entered
manually and I "Accept" the transaction then it will override my date with
the date from the bank. This is not good! I've also known it to override
amounts which I believe should never happen unless the matched transaction is
an automatically entered transaction that is marked as having a variable
amount. When I "Accept" a transaction, I think Money should keep the date
that I entered as the "incur" date and the date that was downloaded from the
bank as the "transaction" date. And all info from both matched transactions
should be maintained. I don't know how many times I've clicked "Accept" only
to realize that it changed a date or an amount on me and I then no longer
have a way to get back to my original entry without doing alot of work to
figure out what was there originally.

If anyone knows of ways to deal with this, please reply. I hope some of
these issues are resolved in Money 2007...

Thanks,

Ian