Mon 6/2/03 -- As capable cyber-accountants and virtual finance experts, there's not much the latest personal finance programs can't do. Microsoft's latest annual offering, Money 2003 Deluxe ($45 before $20 mail-in rebate), retains everything that was good in the prior version and adds some incremental improvements. There are no new "gotta haves," but some may like the free access to key online services.
At its core, Money continues to offer great Web integration and excellent setup and planning tools, which keep it in the race against Intuit's Quicken. But those who own Money 2002 will find little reason to upgrade.
What's New?
To start, Microsoft is offering free financial services with Money 2003 Deluxe. You get a year of free bill-paying via MSN Bill Pay; online tax preparation and filing from H&R Block; credit monitoring and a credit report from Equifax; and consultation with an American Express financial planner. All are worthwhile services.
The biggest software improvements are related to investment management. Money's Equity and Index Options tool makes it easier to monitor and optimize investments, and the program helps create and track options and exercise existing ones. The Portfolio Manager has been enhanced to display and save additional, customized views, while a Portfolio Highlights tool offers a quick visual snapshot of investment data. Finally, the new Quote Manager identifies inactive stock symbols and removes them from a user's Money file, which can trim file download times.
To help you understand your investments, there's online access to a CNBC/MSN Online Investing Research Center for researching quotes, accessing market news and summaries, and more. A Capital Gains Estimator calculates capital gains taxes and lets you create and compare scenarios to find the best approach to selling investments. A new Comparison Report helps analyze your spending habits and how they change in the course of a year.
Money 2003 is also designed to make it easier to manage finances and pay bills. The program lets you prepare and store bills when offline, then submit multiple payments at once. An Auto Balancing feature tracks account balances; as you download monthly statements from your financial institution, Money adds the transactions and balances to the account register. A new Bill Estimator forecasts upcoming bill amounts based on previous payments.
As in past versions, Money does a great job of managing and balancing checkbooks, monitoring investments, creating and tracking budgets, and developing financial plans. To help first-time users, Money offers a first-rate setup routine that asks questions about finances and priorities -- a definite strength.
Money's intuitive, Web-site-style interface logically arranges tools and features into categories; novices will appreciate the option to organize the page by topics. Money continues to offer excellent financial planning tools, taking the time to ask key questions and flexibly accommodating changes to plans.
To make banking easier, the program automatically connects with financial institutions and downloads your latest account data, even when you're not working with Money. Microsoft has arrangements with some 1,000 financial institutions to update accounts, stock quotes, and more.
Minding the Business
Like Quicken, Money is available in a beefed-up business version -- Microsoft Money 2003 Deluxe & Business ($65 before $20 mail-in rebate) -- that handles invoices and accounts receivable and assists with payroll and inventory management. These limited extras can serve some of the smallest businesses, but simply can't take the place of a true accounting package like Peachtree Accounting 2003, M.Y.O.B., or QuickBooks.
Money 2003 Deluxe & Business' inventory-tracking feature removes items from inventory when you make sales, but asks you to manually enter new purchases. The program handles estimates and can convert them into invoices when you make sales, as well as handling basic shipping terms and accounts receivable. Entrepreneurs can also e-mail customer invoices, manage business cash flow, and use reminders and to-do lists to keep track of tax deadlines. The program automatically tracks taxable expenses and links them to Schedule C reports.
The impressive Payroll for Money by PayCycle feature performs calculations, prints paychecks, and fills out tax forms (additional fees apply). An improved Invoice Designer helps create custom invoices that feature your company's logo, colors, and layout, as well as importing contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express.
While the Deluxe & Business edition is more of an extension to the personal product for solo operators who are just starting a business, Microsoft Money 2003 remains an outstanding personal-finance manager that's well-suited for novices as well as sophisticated users. As with Quicken, the 2003 package doesn't give current users any irresistible reason to upgrade, but for those who are new to tracking their finances on a PC, Money is a splendid choice.
