The flexibility offered by My Portfolio is mostly on the balance side. Yes,
you can get your balances from a huge number of credit cards, airlines, and
other account types and shines in net worth calculations. But transaction
info is usually BofA or a few companies with which they have made other
arrangements. USAA, Smith Barney, and Fidelity are available, but American
Express, Discover, and Sam's Club seemingly do not for me. To get that
info, you click on the link and go directly to firm's web site. It's a
great tool, particularly for visual understanding. But it's not as powerful
as Money for hard core number crunching.

"Jeremy" <Jeremy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:33D9164B-A1A0-4B24-9495-A697DBD6D08F[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Yeah, I prefer Direct Services but Yodlee seems to work ok though I have to use my LiveID to get it and it gets transfered to MSN Money too. That doesn't bother me too much. But one ends up with two kinds of Downloadable accounts and the Direct Services aren't in your MSN Money online files. What I would like to do is use Yodlee but have the option of not synchronizing with MSN Money. But I haven't found a way to do that.

"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in message news:elRinjGrIHA.5096[at]TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
First, you need to understand how this stuff works.

The first way is that a financial institution (FI) elects to support the OFX
interface to outside applications. If they do, Money can directly connect to
them and interchange data using a pre-defined protocol. (These seem to be
the most reliable connections for many people.) Most FIs either do not want
to be bothered to do this because they see no business case to justify the
meager investment or consider doing it a threat to their business model that
involves attracting your eyeballs to their website (and their ads and
offers) instead of letting Microsoft Money or Intuit Quicken capture your
eyeballs instead. If you want this kind of connection, your first stop is
with the FI, not Microsoft--and especially not fellow Money users here in
the newsgroup.

The second way these connections are implemented is via a third party
"screen scraper" like Yodlee. Money connects to Yodlee. You pass your user
name and password for the FIs web site through Money to Yodlee. Yodlee has
built software that know, for some FIs, how to log into the FIs web
site--impersonating you--and navigates through the same pages you'd see when
you login and "scraping" the appropriate information off of these pages. For
obvious reasons, this is pretty fragile--the FI changes the pages and the
scraper breaks. Lots of FIs use software built by a BIG somebody else (HP,
Oracle, whoever) that they configure with their logo and ads and you think
it's unique but it's not really under the covers. Yodlee probably knows all
of these sites by smell. But for ones that roll their own or modify heavily,
Yodlee probably has to start from scratch. It also depends at some level on
the tacit cooperation of the FIs--since they can make minor changes
continually if/when they get tired of being scraped and losing access to
your eyeballs for their ads and offers. Yodlee's computers don't care about
the ads and offers. And some FIs are understandably resistant to paying for
developing and serving up pages of data to a screen scraper who ignores the
ads and offers that were why they thought they were investing in their web
site in the first place. (Spoiler warning: they didn't put up that web site
because they thought the customers might like it.) Finally, it only makes
sense for Yodlee to develop a scraper for a large FI with lots of customers
demanding access, via Yodlee, and someone willing to pay for that access.
(Microsoft pays Yodlee. Fidelity pays Yodlee. And so on.) Because of the
distant relationship you have to Yodlee in this case, your odds of getting
any interest in adding an FI to this list are pretty slim.

I don't download transaction data. In 15 years of using Money, I have never
downloaded transaction one into it. (And that's 40,000 transactions or so
and growing.) And I survive just fine. Indeed, I get the data entered the
way I want it, with the extra value (memos, splits, classification, paystub
breakout, etc) that will NEVER come via the downloads. I also don't have to
mess with keeping Money trained as to all of the various user ids and
passwords nor do I have to put up with the all too frequent service
outages/can't connects, etc. YMMV.

"Jeremy" <Jeremy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0F7BF0F6-32B1-4D90-BEE5-35F6D3DBCCED[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

I decided about 5 years ago that I just don't do business with Banks and Credit Card companies that don't support Money and I tell them so. Consumers dictate this stuff. I had a BA card and it didn't work (my Alumni Card) so I discontinued it. This year I realized it would now work so I called them and told them to reactivate it. They did and I told them why I was reactivating. We get the service we demand. I figure if they don't want to serve me, then to Hell with them. They make money off of us and they don't serve us out of the goodness of their hearts. Which is fine; profits is the name of the game. And we mutually contract for our own benefit.

"Jeremy" <Jeremy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:33D9164B-A1A0-4B24-9495-A697DBD6D08F[at]microsoft.com...
I just want to comment because I think everyone misunderstood my information
about Bank Of America. BoA actually works fine with MS Money.

What I meant is that Bank of America offers something on their web page
which is almost exactly like MS Money/Quicken.

Their "online portfolio" allows you to add CreditCards/Loans/Investments,
and even Frequent Flier accounts from 3rd parties and have them always
up-to-date from inside your BoA Account. You can even categorize each
transaction. The only thing it's really missing is good reporting.

What bothers me about it is that the BoA website actually support MORE 3rd
parties than MS Money does. My Nationwide 401k and Honda loans are
supported. So it's rather annoying because BoA is free with my account, and
I have to PAY for MS Money.

I really like Money more than the BoA web page, but I'm really about to
switch just because BoA makes the whole thing more simple.

"JasJ" wrote:

- quote -

I just want to comment because I think everyone misunderstood my information
about Bank Of America. BoA actually works fine with MS Money.

What I meant is that Bank of America offers something on their web page
which is almost exactly like MS Money/Quicken.

Their "online portfolio" allows you to add CreditCards/Loans/Investments,
and even Frequent Flier accounts from 3rd parties and have them always
up-to-date from inside your BoA Account. You can even categorize each
transaction. The only thing it's really missing is good reporting.

What bothers me about it is that the BoA website actually support MORE 3rd
parties than MS Money does. My Nationwide 401k and Honda loans are
supported. So it's rather annoying because BoA is free with my account, and
I have to PAY for MS Money.

I really like Money more than the BoA web page, but I'm really about to
switch just because BoA makes the whole thing more simple.

"JasJ" wrote:

- quote -

I for one like the electronic downloading of transactions. I have used money
for years and it is one of the features I like the most. It is why I keep
upgrading money, so I do not loose the online 'bonus'.

I would not have any problem with talking to customer service at BOA and
letting know your disappointment. Sure, one person may not make a
difference, but if they hear from many customers, priorities change. Yes,
they want you to go to their web site, but more importantly they want you to
use their credit card so they can make to 2-5% fee off each transaction. I
would switch credit card companies just for this feature. Chase and Citi
both are available in money and they each have about a million differently
branded cards available.

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

First, you need to understand how this stuff works.

The first way is that a financial institution (FI) elects to support the OFX
interface to outside applications. If they do, Money can directly connect to
them and interchange data using a pre-defined protocol. (These seem to be
the most reliable connections for many people.) Most FIs either do not want
to be bothered to do this because they see no business case to justify the
meager investment or consider doing it a threat to their business model that
involves attracting your eyeballs to their website (and their ads and
offers) instead of letting Microsoft Money or Intuit Quicken capture your
eyeballs instead. If you want this kind of connection, your first stop is
with the FI, not Microsoft--and especially not fellow Money users here in
the newsgroup.

The second way these connections are implemented is via a third party
"screen scraper" like Yodlee. Money connects to Yodlee. You pass your user
name and password for the FIs web site through Money to Yodlee. Yodlee has
built software that know, for some FIs, how to log into the FIs web
site--impersonating you--and navigates through the same pages you'd see when
you login and "scraping" the appropriate information off of these pages. For
obvious reasons, this is pretty fragile--the FI changes the pages and the
scraper breaks. Lots of FIs use software built by a BIG somebody else (HP,
Oracle, whoever) that they configure with their logo and ads and you think
it's unique but it's not really under the covers. Yodlee probably knows all
of these sites by smell. But for ones that roll their own or modify heavily,
Yodlee probably has to start from scratch. It also depends at some level on
the tacit cooperation of the FIs--since they can make minor changes
continually if/when they get tired of being scraped and losing access to
your eyeballs for their ads and offers. Yodlee's computers don't care about
the ads and offers. And some FIs are understandably resistant to paying for
developing and serving up pages of data to a screen scraper who ignores the
ads and offers that were why they thought they were investing in their web
site in the first place. (Spoiler warning: they didn't put up that web site
because they thought the customers might like it.) Finally, it only makes
sense for Yodlee to develop a scraper for a large FI with lots of customers
demanding access, via Yodlee, and someone willing to pay for that access.
(Microsoft pays Yodlee. Fidelity pays Yodlee. And so on.) Because of the
distant relationship you have to Yodlee in this case, your odds of getting
any interest in adding an FI to this list are pretty slim.

I don't download transaction data. In 15 years of using Money, I have never
downloaded transaction one into it. (And that's 40,000 transactions or so
and growing.) And I survive just fine. Indeed, I get the data entered the
way I want it, with the extra value (memos, splits, classification, paystub
breakout, etc) that will NEVER come via the downloads. I also don't have to
mess with keeping Money trained as to all of the various user ids and
passwords nor do I have to put up with the all too frequent service
outages/can't connects, etc. YMMV.

"Jeremy" <Jeremy[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0F7BF0F6-32B1-4D90-BEE5-35F6D3DBCCED[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Jeremy wrote:

- quote -

In the case of credit cards, there are many who do a fine job of
providing their own OFX servers and working really well. Credit
cards are easy to migrate for most people.

BofA is a special case having had some mergers that put them into an
evolving state.

- quote -

I just started using Money in January and I'm pretty disappointed with the
online accounts that are available....or more specifically NOT available.

For instance we have 2 car loans with Honda Finance, and Money doesnt
support that. We also have 3 credit cards that arent supported.

Overall I might just write it off as the loan provider not offering this
service. HOWEVER, I use Bank of America and their "Online Portfolio"
supports ALL of these accounts except for 2 gas card.

How often are new services added? Is there any way to petition for one?