Hi Frank. I used quicken for about 5 years up to Quicken 2002. I
recently switched this year to Money 2003. The interface is much
nicer and seems a bit more intuitive. My wife who is not a computer
geek likes it much more than Quicken too so that certainly helps
keeping more accurate records.

Having said that, the budgeting feature of Money 2003 sucks. It is
not easy to manipulate numbers in each category from month to month
and there is no good annual view of the budget not even through
reports. Granted, Quicken's budgeting feature was pretty weak but
Money's is weaker in my opinion to the extent of useless. Although it
does try to provide carry over and adjusting month to month
capabilities, it is very time consuming figuring the thing out. Once
you think you have it down, the next month something else is off.
After a few months of this, I stopped use the budgeting feature all
together.

"Frank Rocco" <farocco[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<OHMWIg#lDHA.964[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl> ...
- quote -

Can you elaborate on what lead you to this conclusion?


"Jack Dolan" <jdolan[at]netlane.com> wrote in message
news:c528cbe0.0310271820.1aac0422[at]posting.google.com...
- quote -

"Frank Rocco" <farocco[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<eOMC4GAmDHA.2528[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl> ...
- quote -


Frank - i have six years of data in Money, even recently upgrading to
M04. Money continues to be plagued by major functional issues,
especially in regard to the integration between the debt planner,
budget, and cash flow. In fact, MSFT has acknowledged one major issue
with M04 and no idea when it'll be fixed: that your debt payments from
your debt plan don't show up in your budget and therefore aren't
reflected in any of your cash flow. Whoops! What kind of usability
testing went on here? Compounding the issue is that MSFT seems to
have abandoned the product.

I waited and waited for a solve on this issue and finally decided to
switch over to Quicken (even though it's not a simple task -
conversion is difficult to impossible.)

If you're starting fresh, and especially concerned about solid cash
flow/debt/budget integration, I'd start with Quicken.

good luck!

Thanks,

I would also be interested in other opinions from experience.

Regards,

Frank

There is a free time limited demo of Money 2004 available at
http://www.microsoft.com/money. It should be able to convert your Q03 file
to an M04 file, though there are many people who have reported mixed success
and issues with the quality of the converted data and resulting Money data
file.

Then you could play around with it and answer your own question.

"Frank Rocco" <farocco[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OHMWIg#lDHA.964[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Money cannot export a closed account to a QIF file.
Reopen any closed account you

want to export before you attempt to export it. After you
import the account

into the new Money file, you can close the account again.



Money cannot export a loan account to a QIF file. If you
want to move information

about a loan account to a different version of Money, you
must re-create the

loan account in the new Money file. You may want to print
your loan information,

and then use the printed information to re-create the
loan account in the new

Money file. To do this, create and print a Loan Terms and
Loan Transactions

report.



<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <


What you lose when you Export/ Import



-custom reports
-the Bills and Deposits list
-the budget
-the cash flow and spending thermometers
-loan accounts
-any business information such as inventory, invoices
(accounts receivable),
mileage, customers, products
-addresses entered into the payees
-epay confirmation information
-online setup info, passwords, etc
-home inventory and personal records
-lifetime planner info
-debt planner info
-watch accounts
-category groups for custom categories
-ticker symbols for stocks and funds
-voided transactions in investment accounts
-manually entered prices for securities that cannot be
updated electronically


















- quote -

Hello,

I have Quicken 2003 and am thinking of upgrading to Money 2004.

Is the Budget/Debt better in Money?

thanks

Frank