Like President Reagan used to say, trust but verify.

MS Money is a tool you use to manage your money. If you want reliable
information, like any manager it is your responsibility to implement
controls. Your procedures should include regular, frequent backups,
especially before importing downloaded data. For each account, you should
be able to devise an easy method to check the accuracy of Money's downloads.

My experience over eight years has been that the process is usually reliable
but that errors do occur. By catching the errors immediately with controls
and reverting to backup copies of the Money database, I've never been forced
to resort to the major recovery efforts you describe.

<fletchb[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9c40671d-d4fe-473b-a385-66f1efeea3fa[at]j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I posted two replies earlier that seem to have gotten snarfed up in some
anti-spam filter or some such. So then I did some binary search testing in
microsoft.public.test and several more attempts at posting to identify the
offender. Now that I think I know it, let me try yet again:

1) Many of the same underlying technologies are being used by both.

2) Sometimes problems in these regards come from the application, sometimes
from the vendor's online systems (Intuit or Microsoft, that is), sometimes
for the FIs systems (i.e., the bank involved) and sometimes from "third
parties" (screen scrapers like Yodlee).

3) There are variables from the users' end like what kind of firewalls and
so forth they have setup.

4) None of the bank computer systems were ever designed with this kind of
usage in mind. Worse, not many of the banks really want to let you see their
data accompanied by Microsoft's ads instead of their own.

Given all of this, even the "true believers" in this technology (of whom I
am not one) will have an almost impossible time telling you that one will be
more reliable than the other for your usage with any degree of certainty.

Read the posts here and in the Quicken NG. (Note I'd post the URL or the
name, but that seems to make msnews.microsoft.com eat the post. Go figure.
If you want the URL, drop me an email.) See what you can determine about
reliability. Bear in mind that people who are getting along don't post daily
reports of lack of problems.

FWIW, I don't think many people have ever found remove/reinstall the
application itself a helpful technique for dealing with download issues. I'd
be surprised if this is a terribly helpful technique with Quicken, given the
limitations and constraints listed above. The app could be bulletproof but
there are just a huge number of failure modes completely beyond its control.

<fletchb[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9c40671d-d4fe-473b-a385-66f1efeea3fa[at]j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

<fletchb[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9c40671d-d4fe-473b-a385-66f1efeea3fa[at]j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

It depends what you're looking for. If you want to download
transactions with fairly accurate payee matching and category
assignment, based on the most recent transaction for the payee
matched, and online bill pay, yes, it's reliable. If you want to
assume every transaction downloaded is 100% accurate, reconciled
automatically, and the downloaded bank balance snapshot always equals
your register balance, no, it's not. I don't think anything could be.

I've always been an early adopter of electronic banking in some form,
starting with telephone bill pay at University Savings Bank in Houston
in 1985. I started downloading transactions from my bank onto my
computer as soon as it was practical. MS Money has been my PFS of
choice since NationsBank abandoned Managing Your Money in 1997.

I chose it over Quicken because online banking with Money was cheaper
at that time, and other advantages and disadvantages seemed to be a
wash. Money has always been cheaper than Quicken to buy, and telephone
tech support is free. Quicken telephone tech support is definitely
not.

I've been happy with my choice since that time. Money has aggravating
bugs and limitations, but they're probably not worse than Quicken.
Software of this nature is neither perfect nor effortless.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

I have used Money for years and it is fairly reliable. Why don't you download the trial and setup your bank accounts and use it a while to see if you are happy with it. Usually when there is a problem, it is because of the Internet or because the bank is not updating.

http://www.microsoft.com/money/freetrial_info.mspx


<fletchb[at]gmail.com> wrote in message news:9c40671d-d4fe-473b-a385-66f1efeea3fa[at]j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
I would appreciate some feedback on how reliable MS Money is in
regards to online banking? I currently have Quicken 2008 and it has
never been reliable in that regard. It was a pain to setup, but after
correctly initial balance errors all was well for maybe a week. Then
it had problems downloading transactions with bank #1 After fixing
that a few times bank #1 seems to be stable Bank #2 starting bombing
out shortly there after and has never worked more than a day at the
most since. Sometimes the error would say it was on quicken's end and
they would fix withing 48 hours yet a month later and I am still
waiting. I bought the software to save time not waste it and It's not
worth the hassle to remove/reinstall every time I need to download new
transactions . How does money compare as far as online stability is
concerned?

Thanks,
Fletch

I would appreciate some feedback on how reliable MS Money is in
regards to online banking? I currently have Quicken 2008 and it has
never been reliable in that regard. It was a pain to setup, but after
correctly initial balance errors all was well for maybe a week. Then
it had problems downloading transactions with bank #1 After fixing
that a few times bank #1 seems to be stable Bank #2 starting bombing
out shortly there after and has never worked more than a day at the
most since. Sometimes the error would say it was on quicken's end and
they would fix withing 48 hours yet a month later and I am still
waiting. I bought the software to save time not waste it and It's not
worth the hassle to remove/reinstall every time I need to download new
transactions . How does money compare as far as online stability is
concerned?

Thanks,
Fletch