back to article Microsoft abolishes Money

Microsoft is pulling the plug on Money - its personal finance and small business software package. The software will no longer be available to buy after 30 June and anyone who has bought MS Money needs to activate it before 31 January 2011. Microsoft Money was sold in four versions from $19.99 to $69.99. Microsoft will …

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  1. Nigel Wright

    Money

    It seems odd that this is one of those products that is genuinely useful in helping to manage one's finances, yet few people seem to use it. I use it loads, sync it with my Palm and carry up to date balanaces and financials with me all the time...it makes life much easier for me with a multitude of accounts and invetsments. I probably use it more than any other package bar Firefox and Outlook.

  2. Jimmy Floyd
    Thumb Up

    Good but bad

    Early versions of Money were brilliant but it all went downhill circa 2002 / 2003 when they tried (badly) to integrate it into the web with .NET passport and poor rendered web pages (which rendered the software virtually unusable when they went off-line).

    No wonder it doesn't sell - I went back to and still use Money '99! Anyone know a decent, modern alternative?

  3. Glyn Simpson
    Unhappy

    Inevitable

    Inevitable decision which I heard about yesterday. Money had been withdrawn from sale in all countries apart from the US and Japan, and they didn't release a version to the US last year which was quite telling at the time.

    17 years of the product, I'm trying to decide where to go next, perhaps downgrading myself to one of the versions I know and love the best (95, 97 or 99).

    In the UK, there is little choice on what to do next. In the US, Quicken has always been the market leader and that will be the migration path for most over there, should they wish to continue to use a PFM.

  4. Karim Bourouba

    A shame

    I have used this package quite a lot, I am pretty bad at managing my personal finaces and this has been a great help.

    As another person commented, Money is genuienly useful. Even stranger is that MS would can this app during a period of economic turmoil. Strange or possbily just ironic.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Curses!

    I have 12 years of personal finances in Money 2002 (UK).

    I wonder when it's going to stop working? Spose I'll have to check the whole reinstall/reactivate process, for when I eventually move off XP to Windows 7. Sigh.

    And almost simultaneously: http://www.businesscloud9.com/news_analysis/intuit-expands-cloud-contracts-its-workforce.

    But I don't want my personal finances in the cloud, thank you very much.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Shame

    I use MS Money nearly every day but I've never used any of the online integration.

    I'll be a bit lost when my version (I think I'm on 2005) becomes incompatible with whatever OS I may use in the future.

  7. Geoff Mackenzie
    Linux

    Decent, modern Money alternative

    @Jimmy Floyd; I would suggest GnuCash - I've used this a bit and while it'll take a bit of effort to move over, I don't think you'll regret it. kMyMoney (for KDE people) and jGnash might also be worth a look, but I've only heard of these, not used them.

    Alternatively, if you don't mind the slightly foul smell of proprietary software, I've heard a few (vague) good things about MoneyDance.

    One of the nastiest things about Microsoft is the way they kill technologies like this. What a waste of mental effort it is, learning to use their stuff; just when you're comfortable they flush it and the knowledge you've built up through years of experience is worthless. Obviously I know the answer to this, but why can't they just do one final release of major tools they're end-of-lifing like this under the GPL and let them become community projects?

    I put significant effort into learning VB6 (at an employer's request) and now I have to face the fact that the skills and knowledge I acquired are worth nothing, because MS would rather kill a project stone dead than see it escape into the community and compete with their cash cows. I know I could use my VB experience to learn VB.NET but my employer has no interest in that (preferring, like most sane people, to go with C#) and I'm in no mood for investing any of my own money and effort in VB.NET just to see those skills flushed as well a couple of years down the line.

    Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent so I'll stop there. :)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    @Nigel Wright

    Exactly! My missus is going to go mental! She has the complete family accounts, 5 years worth, held in Money running under a WindowsXP VM on her Mac.

    ( If I was in charge of the funds, we would be eating Pizza 3 times a day, 31 days a month and the house would be full of gadgets, bought on a whim! )

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    @Glyn Simpson: Gnucash?

    Have you considered Gnucash? It will run under Windows, it will communicate with financial entities that follow the OFX standards, it does proper multi-entry bookkeeping, with transaction logs, it can generate numerous reports, and should you ever wish to move away from Windows, it is available under any *nix OS

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Was good now Useless

    I agree with the others, it used to be the one useful piece of software Microsoft wrote (and I think I may have even bought a genuine copy of it!) but the later versions were just bloated pieces of turd.

    I use a freebie called MoneyManagerEX, works just like the old versions of Money. (Think you can get it from Source Forge).

  11. Kevin Bailey

    Another alternative...

    Check out GnuCash.

    I used Quicken for a few years - then I found GnuCash which is equally as good and is free.

  12. Simon Westerby 1
    Joke

    Money money Money

    So, in order to make Money, MS have to spend money, but they currently need to save money, so they won't save Money and will stop making Money so they can finally make money....

    ouch my head hurts

  13. Emo
    Thumb Down

    Shame

    It's probably one of the most useful packages MS has ever made :(

  14. Tzael

    Time to upgrade

    Office Accounting has taken over from Money, seems a bit daft to have Money hanging around when Microsoft already offer a viable upgrade path. Furthermore Office Accounting Express is free and is more than adequate for small business needs. If something beefier is required then there is Office Accounting Professional which offers a 60 day fully-feature trial.

  15. Nigel Wright

    Money 2004 works for me..

    No problems with it at all and it works with my Palm Treo 680 brilliantly. I ignore all that web integration rubbish.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Actually...

    "Money" is being replaced with "Zune Points" so from now on you can tell the IRS exactly how many Zune Points you owe them.

  17. Colm Walls
    Thumb Up

    Moneydance

    I spent ages trying to find something that would work on both a Mac (home) and a PC (work). I've been using Moneydance for 6 months and it's pretty good. Works under Linux too (and I think even OS/2!!). Costs $40 but worth it I think.

  18. Rob

    Supersceded

    I presume it's because MS Office Accounting has taken over, this even as a free Express version for the average Joe, although I would like to see a bit more integration with Mobile device, handy for the 1 man band self employed person.

  19. Andy Hall

    Alternative

    I used to use Money, but now I use Gnu Cash. It took me a little while to get used to, and I don't do anything overly complicated - just the mortgage and various accounts and cards. The reporting is a little basic but it works for me, and I would receommend it. After all, it doesn't cost anything to try.

  20. Doug Glass
    Go

    So? What's Your Point?

    Been using MS Money 2004 since, well, 2004. No activation, never upgraded it, never downloaded any updates and never used any product related web service. Still works just fine and does all the things I needed that sort of low-brow package to do.

    It's just funny how software continues to work for you when you bought what you needed and didn't succumb to the endless BS about needing a newer product. But then I still use XP and wont be abandoning it either. Why argue with personnel, ongoing, success that meets MY needs?

  21. Daniel 39
    Unhappy

    Shame

    It's a bit of a shame really as the UK has woeful provision for financial management software.

    In the US Mint.com has a pretty decent market share and seems like a really decent tool to use, however they don't seem to have any plans to branch out their operations from the states.

  22. Lewis Mettler
    Stop

    possibly an illegal agreement being played out?

    Yes, it might be that Microsoft is just closing out a losing product line.

    Or, it could be that Microsoft and Intuit have entered into an illegal agreement.

    Back when Microsoft wanted Intuit to drop support for the Netscape browser and go exclusively with IE, an illegal agreement between Microsoft and Intuit was very likely. Microsoft defers from possibly bundling Money with the OS and Intuit agrees not to support Netscape.

    Today the agreement is likely to be Microsoft dropping Money altogether (or supporting it so poorly that it might as well drop it) and Intuit agreeing to limit or refuse to offer client software for Linux.

    Why do I suggest such an illegal agreement between Microsoft and Intuit?

    Hey, if I can think of it, clearly Microsoft and Intuit can too and most likely have. They are not dummies. And clearly both Intuit and Microsoft would like to have certain markets to themselves and not have to compete.

    Of course such an agreement between Microsoft and Intuit would be illegal. But, Microsoft knows that illegal agreements are the best kind. It is those agreements that preclude competition the best. That is why they are illegal. And that is why they are often not written down either. Just sort of an (illegal) understanding.

    We will see how quickly or slowly Intuit puts all of their client software on Linux for desktop, laptops, netbooks, smartbooks and nettops. Every day that those Intuit products do not show up suggests an illegal agreement between Intuit and Microsoft.

    Or, maybe Microsoft just does not know how to compete?

    Maybe Microsoft should leave the search marketplace too? It is doing lousy there as well. Of course, there is not another company in search that it could use to put together an illegal agreement.

    Why always suspect Microsoft of illegal conduct?

    Microsoft is always involved in illegal conduct. Microsoft continues to commingle the code between the OS and IE even though the US appellate courts found such practices to be illegal. And, yes, Microsoft appealled that specific illegality to the US Supreme Court and they refused to hear that specific issue. So each of the Microsoft lawyers know for a fact that they are continuing illegal conduct. They can not be so stupid to claim otherwise. With that knowledge a secret illegal agreement with Intuit is easy to sleep with.

    Hey, you can not figure this out?

  23. Glyn Simpson

    @David D. Hagood

    Yeah, aware of that one. I've been a Microsoft MVP for Money for many years, hence still have some love of the product in its various versions. My pain is that Ihave 20 years worth of data (although I suspect I could bin at least half of that), and I continue to run a website on Money which is showing a little bit of extra traffic at present :), so am not quite ready to abandon it yet :-)

  24. Nigel Wright

    The alternatives are fine, but...

    ...the killer for me is keeping it synchronised with a portable copy on my Treo phone.

    @Douglas Glass: I know this and I suspect others. But what happens if other system upgrades break it or a security flaw is found. Or, heaven forbid, you upgrade your o/s? I can see me eventually moving my Windows installation over to an unconnected VM when XP finally goes end of life without support.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ahh, Money...

    ...I was cleaning up a store-bought Vista box last year, and grabbed this:

    http://www.perisoft.org/money.jpg

    Oh, and @Lewis Mettler... ODFO. Isn't there some contrail website you should be writing for?

  26. blem wit

    Re: Good but Bad

    Quicken.

    When I went shopping for a financial manager, I tried Money and was disgusted by it, so I turned to Quicken and use it daily. It really is an awesome app.

  27. Tyson Boellstorff

    I use kmymoney

    Got sick of intuit changing the user interface and forcing upgrades to a product that still worked. It is a little clunky, but it does the job good enough, and I don't need to re-learn it at someone else's whim.

  28. Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

    Must check out some of these alternatives...

    I still use Excel 97.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    gnucash? seriously?

    I'd take MS Money over that, if it ran on Linux.

    ># apt-get install gnucash

    [...]

    2 upgraded, 169 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.

    Need to get 242.3MB of archives.

    After this operation, 1142MB of additional disk space will be used.

    No thanks! It's bad when it's the MSFT software that looks trim and svelte.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Geoff Mackenzie - It's not that bad

    Hello Geoff,

    I agree that investing time and effort into learning any programming language, only to see it fall by the wayside is an annoying experience.

    But, learning is one of the aspects being a programmer is about. The hardware does not stand still and nor do the programming languages. With business programming, programs need to be easy to maintain and easy to understand. Personally, I have gone from VB3-6 to VB.Net then to C#. The process can be painful, but from experience I made it more painful because of my preconceptions and my stubbornness. But I’m learing…

    And I’m still learning. For example I needed a method that took two collections as input and returned a collection that contained only those items that were in both collections. I used a nested for loop to check each element and them put it into a third collection before returning it. I recently discovered that the Linq extensions in .Net allow you to use a method called Intersect, which does the same thing in one line of code.

    Now before anyone chimes in with a sarcastic comment about how his or her language does it. The point I’m making is that I’m still learning and will continue to learn. That’s part and parcel of being a programmer, not which language is better OK?

    The choice is yours Geoff, I’m not going to tell you if your right or wrong as I don’t really think there is a right or wrong. There is still a huge amount of Cobol code out there and people who know it can command high salaries. I’m sure that VB coders will, in time also be in demand for their skills.

    Please don’t read this as being condescending, I did not mean it that way!

    Bye

  31. Mikey 1

    @Marvin - check out alternatives

    Could be an idea...

    though I've upgraded to Excel 2000 so I'm sorted for a while yet.

  32. PhishPhood
    Go

    Conversion from Microsoft Money

    You can convert from microsoft money into mth money, they accept microsoft files. Also works on Linux, Mac, etc

  33. Andrew Denton 1

    Re:MoneyDance

    IIRC, A flavour of MoneyDance is also available in your local Tesco for £10 under the guise of Tesco Personal Finance software.

  34. Colin Jepson
    Thumb Up

    Alternatives

    I have been using AceMoney for years. Very responsive developers and free upgrades for life. Runs on Linux under wine. A good $20 worth. Lite trial version available.

  35. Mark Dowling
    Gates Horns

    Why kill it?

    If I was an MS shareholder, looking at all that shareholder value flushed down the tubes I'd be asking why Microsoft didn't spin out these products into a subsidiary "Softmicro" without all the overhead and organisation cruft of Microsoft. After all, shouldn't ongoing maintenance of these products be simpler than designing them from scratch?

    They won't open them, they won't maintain them, they just dump them into the land of Abandonware. Idiots.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Die Microsoft Die!

    Die Microsoft Die...... for all the years of dumping shitty software onto the market and pissing me right off - every step of the way!

  37. RayF

    Still using Money 97

    I'm still using Money 97. It does all I want without the bloat of later versions.

    I've just installed it on Windows 7 RC and it seems to work fine.

    Money is one of the few reasons why I'm still using Windows. If I can find an alternative that suits me and runs on Linux, that's one less obstacle to my next OS being Ubuntu and not Windows

  38. justink
    Thumb Down

    Not a smart move...

    I have used Microsoft Money since 2001 and have enjoyed using it. I have tried Quicken and other tools but money was as easy and 'powerful' as Money. The UI was rich and the program (for most functions) was intuitive. It will be missed, and I now have to scramble to find an alternative (which I think there are none)... Might be back to spreadsheets.

    One interesting thing about this move is that it is the last 'Windows' only app I use. I still use Office, but don't really need to, and can switch easily to OpenOffice (which I use periodically already). I have one Apple Macbook, and for work I use Ubunutu and Windows (dual boot- mainly for Money/Office). So now I can totally move off Windows, and standardise on OSX/Ubunutu with cross-platform apps (i.e. Firefox/OpenOffice/Gimp/etc).

    I wonder if Microsoft has realised that this might be the case for others who were considering upgrading to Win 7 and no longer have compelling reason to.

  39. J-Wick

    Arse.

    I just got MS Money syncing with my phone again after I upgraded to Virtualbox 2.0. That's the real stumbling block - would like to use an app to manage my finances, and be able to enter transactions via my Windows Mobile phone. Am currently using Ultrasoft Money & MS Money. I suppose I'll just have to keep using MS Money even though it's unsupported - no reason why it shouldn't keep doing the business!

  40. Tom C
    Go

    Quicken UK

    I am using Quicken 2000 which was the last UK release. If MS has left the field, why wouldn't Intuit bring Quicken back for the UK market? It was and is a good product.

    Suggesting Office Accounting Express as an alternative for Money is not really addressing the issue. Software developed for business accounting is a different beast to personal financial management.

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