An Unofficial FAQ for microsoft.public.money
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Introduction
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This unofficial FAQ for the microsoft.public.money newsgroup is offered as a
public service in hopes that newsgroup readers will quickly find answers to
the most commonly asked questions in the newsgroup.
The FAQ is hosted on the web at http://umpmfaq.info .
Text and HTML
versions are available at the FAQ web site . As an
alternative, I endeavor to post a pointer to the web-hosted FAQ in the
newsgroup weekly. Frequent readers of the newsgroup are encouraged to post
links to the FAQ in replies to other posters who may find it helpful. Specific
questions can be linked to, using key numbers for the questions which can be
identified from the URL of any hyperlink to a question in the question
listings or in the HTML version, in one of two ways (replace xxx with the
question key number):
(in traditional full FAQ page): http://umpmfaq.info/faq#Qxxx
(in new single entry page): http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=xxx
Note that http://www.umpmfaq.info redirects to http://umpmfaq.info.
While I have tested the site reasonably thoroughly, visitors may still see
problems. If you do, please report them.
Corrections and submittals are welcome
, but I reserve absolute right to edit
and/or ignore these submittals for whatever reason including judgments about
the question's status as a FAQ. I will give credit where appropriate and
expect no less in return if you feel compelled to quote the FAQ. In addition,
suggestions and submittals of new pages dedicated to specific topics and
additional reference links are solicited. (Some things that come to mind
include a "Just for Beginners" page and a "401k" page.)
Of necessity, the scope of the FAQ is limited. Issues unique to non-US
localized versions are generally not treated, nor are some Money features
covered as well as others. In particular, I do not use any of the network bill
pay and statement features and am relatively unfamiliar with features for
stock options and have treated few related issues here out of ignorance. I
also don't use the frequent flier features and will skip the grocery coupon
tracker feature if and when it's added to Microsoft Money. Also, I haven't
treated any issues peculiar to the Essential (hereafter MEss) and Home &
Business versions since I've never used either for more than five minutes,
don't follow postings about them, and cannot judge good FAQs and answers for
them from bad ones. The M05 major rewrite (applicable to M05 through 7) added
Essential modes (apparently Microsoft's Money team likes Essential stuff) and
I'm not at all familiar with those, either. By all means, post questions that
are not treated in the FAQ to the newsgroup. Other regular posters there are
more familiar with lots of this stuff than I am.
In this edition: There are some minor Q&A updates. But there is also my
attempt to document the situation, issues, and options associated with
Microsoft's abandonment of Money . (13
June 2009)
Generated from database Sunday, 12 July 2009.
How to do things in Money
-------------------------
Q) Are there any recommendations for assuring short- and long-term
"survivability" of my Money data?
A) There are a number of Q&A that deal with specific backup issues. (E.g.,
"You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error reading. What do I
do?", "Can a new version of Money open my old version data file/backup
file/backup diskette(s)?", "I just reinstalled M98--it can't read my data
backup floppies. Now what?", and "How do I backup to CD-RW? CD-R?") None of
these treat the subject in a general way. So, here goes:
The following general practices always apply:
Always test backups to be sure they really are.
Never depend on just one backup or form of backup as your only backup.
Always have multiple generations of backup in case you backed up a problem and
didn't know it.
Never trust any media to provide "archival storage". Cheap media are worse.
Trying to save on backup media is not wise. Even if the media lasts, the
devices that can read this media may not.
Storing a backup across multiple media (e.g., spanning multiple floppies)
reduces the availability of a good copy.
Depending on what risk you are trying to protect against, an offsite backup
storage location may be a good idea.
Within these, some specific advice for Money:
The Money backup routine is not foolproof. Backing up the data file outside of
Money seems slightly more reliable.
Removing password protection before making your backup is probably a good
idea. This is true for two reasons: 1) you may forget what your password was
when you made the backup--particularly if you follow "best practices" about
changing your password periodically--but see also "Help! I've lost my
password. Now what do I do?" 2) there is no assurance that Microsoft will
perpetually support a given online authentication format or stored credential
data format. (This is applicable to those using Passport/WindowsLive
ID/whatever they call it into the future.) If you don't remove the password
before taking your backup copy, at least record what the password was at the
time and store it with the backup. The importance of removing/tracking your
password is in direct proportion to the length of time you contemplate your
backup is protecting you into the future.
Keep track of what version of Money wrote the data file/backup you are
storing. Money has generally been pretty good about opening/restoring files
made with older versions--and doing the necessary upgrade, but there is no
guarantee that this will always be so. Indeed, there have already been breaks
where getting from Money version A to C requires an intermediate upgrade to
the Money version B data format using Money version B. Money has *never*
provided a file format for data or backups that an older version of Money
could read, so if you save, say, a Money 2007 file format but at some point in
the future only have a copy of Money 2006, you will be out of luck. This issue
is also more important the longer you want a backup to be good for and the
number of versions back the file was written with.
A corollary to the previous item is that you may want to consider keeping/or
need to keep copies of the original application installation medium. (This
means your Money application installation CD or a copy of the installation
image if you bought online. Note that OEM versions tend to be tied to specific
hardware. Because of this, saving, say, Money04 for Dell Model XYZ may prove
useless at that point into the future when you need it and your Dell XYZ has
long since been shredded into little nuggets and recycled.) Note that this
also assumes that you will have a system that supports installing and running
this application at whatever point into the future you need to look at your
backup data. Depending on the time horizon you are considering, it's not all
that hard to imagine that, say, WindowsDominator x128 MegaUltimate edition
won't actually run Money97.
(Note that there are also caveats to even this last recommendation: 1) Money
files won't cross localization/language barriers. If the file was written with
M05 for UK, past performance indicates it is highly unlikely that M10 US will
read it, no matter what. Present trends suggest that the future of Money holds
fewer localized versions than they've had in the past so if you are using a
non-US version you must take this into account. 2) Keeping the installation CD
alone may prove insufficient. One case where this is true is M05: the first
and only mega-service update broke file compatibility with the CD version of
the application. This might not be so bad if you could just, say, go and
download the update file and store it yourself and install it yourself. But
you can't because Microsoft's service delivery strategy for Money precludes
it--the only way to update Money is to use its Internet Updates feature. Worse
still, their present policy of terminating Internet Update service and
removing data associated with End-of-Life versions means that a file written
with M05.1 will likely be so many useless semi-random numbers in 2010 if all
you have is the M05 installation CD.)
Which brings us to the final recommendation: At some point, accessing the
information in your data may prove more important than how you do it and not
all of the information may be equally important. Given the last several
considerations, it may be prudent to periodically save a subset of the
information in your Money data file to independent, non-Money-specific file
formats. There are quite a number of ways to tackle this including MoneyLink
and QIF exports, none of which gets all of the information Money stores, but
the best way seems to be using customized reports and then exporting these
reports to some portable format like .CSV or XML. Here are some report
recommendations along those lines:
"Account balances With details" customized:
Rows & Columns: select all except Abbreviation
Account: all including closed accounts
"Investment transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all, Group by: none
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Investment: select all
Activity: select all
Details status: reconciled & unreconciled
"Loan amortization" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all except interest amount, paid from account,
other fees amount, principal balance; Subototal by: none; Include transactions
from: account register; Show splits; omit (or include, your choice) opening
balance
Chart: View as report
Date range: all
Account: (one report/output file per Loan Account)
"Scheduled bills" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Include transactions: all; Show splits
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Payee: all; include transactions with no payee
Currency-specific versions of "Account transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Subtotal by: none; Running balance: none;
Show splits
Date range: all
Account: (one report/data file per each currency; select all accounts in that
currency including closed accounts)
Category: all; Show sub categories; Include unassigned income; Include
unassigned expense
Payee: all; include transactions with no payee
Details type: all; status: reconciled & unreconciled
(classifications): select all; show subclassifications
Note that even this will leave lots of information behind including, but not
limited to, Account/Category/(classification)/Payee/Investment details, Budget
and DRP details, bill information beyond the next item in a bill series like
end date/number and any edited series members beyond the first one, paycheck
tab assignments, tax year assignment, transaction flags, and "attached" files.
If there is any of this that you really want to protect, you will have to
identify other means of doing so. Granted these methods are much less than
ideal. But they also might prove a whole lot better than nothing at some point
in the future.
Q) Can I do this, that, or the other with Money? Can the latest version of
Money do this, that, or the other?
A) Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes these posts are general enough to get good
answers from people who have attempted what you want to do. Other times, the
requirement is so specific that nobody knows or nobody really understands what
you want to do. In these cases, the best thing to do is download the trial
version that is available and find out for yourself.
Two caveats about the trial version:
1) Read and heed the messages it brings up about what it will do to upgrade
your data file from the previous version, if you have one.
2) If you like the trial version you will need to buy the real licensed
version online and install it. If you do this, please read and heed "Can I do
this, that, or the other with Money? Can the latest version of Money do this,
that, or the other?".
References:
Microsoft Money Trial (US version)
Q) Help! I've lost my password. Now what do I do?
A) Passwords are there for a reason. When you forget them, you've discovered
the reason. It's to make it harder for people who don't know the password to
get at your data. That is why you used a password in the first place, isn't
it?
If you use Passport authentication to control access to your Money file, just
use the Passport lost password tools at the Passport site. (This is probably
the best reason for integration of Passport authentication with Money.)
If you just used a file password, there are services and a number of software
tools that do password recovery.
See also "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more
information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport and file passwords as
access authentication schemes for Money.
References:
Money password recovery
Passport lost password help n/a
Q) How can I prevent getting duplicate entries of Transfer transactions when
importing accounts via .QIF?
A) When importing multiple related accounts that have transfers amongst the
accounts via .QIF, it is imperative to select and import all the exported
account files at the same time. To do this, hold down the CTRL key and select
each file to be imported.
Q) How do I categorize multiple items all deposited at once? What about
several paychecks?
A) For things besides paychecks, the category part is easy. You use the split.
But the tougher part is if you want to list all of the payees. A Money
transaction allows one Payee, no matter how many splits. This makes it hard to
list ten payees for ten checks in one split transaction.
Some choices:
1a) Ignore the payees and put all the deposited items in one split
transaction.
1b) Put the payees in the memo(s) and make the Payee something like (various).
2) "Deposit" all the checks in separate transactions to some Money account
that is not the real-world Bank account. If you have a pocket change account,
for instance, this is a good place to do it. Then do a single transfer of the
total amount to the actual Money account where these are deposited.
3) Ignore the fact that you deposited them in one deposit and create multiple
Money transactions. This makes it slightly more difficult to reconcile vs. the
bank statement since you have to remember that all of these small deposits in
Money add up to that large deposit on the statement.
Re. #1, since a Money Paycheck is a special type of split, if one of the items
deposited is a paycheck and you do full accounting in a Paycheck transaction,
adding other checks to this deposits probably causes more confusion than it is
worth. But you could do it. Just add them to the after tax tab. You can
combine multiple paychecks in one paycheck transaction, but there are various
reasons you probably don’t want to do this: First, it will be hard to
reconcile all of the paycheck information from your stubs with one paycheck
transaction. Second, the Money Tax Estimator assigns meaning to the first
entry on the wages tab--this is the amount from which the “Before Tax” amounts
are deducted--and you should watch Tax Estimator very carefully to make sure
its results are sane if you are trying to combine paychecks into one
transaction.
#3 causes grief for those who download transaction data.
Q) How do I find out about the free credit reports/bill pay/financial
consultation/tax filing?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Once you have purchased and installed an applicable version, go to the task
based home page. (There's a link in the left column--below the "So and So's
Money Home Page" tripe--of the view oriented "Main Home Page" home pages.)
Once there, select the "Tell me more" link in the Financial Services section
at the top.
An alternate, probably easier, way is to go to Help|Financial Services.
M05 moved this kind of stuff all around. In M05 one way (there may be others)
is [Windows menu:] Tools|Financial Services.
Q) How do I make Money work for other WinNT/Win2k/XP Pro users?
A) Money does not deal well with the NT multi-user security model. It has to
be reinstalled for each account and each account has to run as a member of
Administrators group. (Per Cal Learner, this latter limitation is removed in
M02.) There is an MSKB entry on the subject. There are some partial
workarounds and there was a registry hack that solved some of the issues for
non-Administrator users. I won't quote the registry hack here--if you are good
enough to be mucking in the registry, you can certainly find it in
groups.google.com.
References:
groups.google.com
MSKB: Q273815 Money does not work and play well with NT/2K/XP security
Q) I just got married/divorced/re-married. How do I change the names that show
up on the Money home page?
A) Go to Accounts & Bills|Account Setup|Update personal information. Granted,
it does seem odd that setting up all of Money doesn't really seem like a
subset of setting up an account, but this is where these settings are hidden.
M05 eliminated the personalization from the home page and the path to enter
the personal information. Good riddance!
Q) I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed to, now
I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?
A) Depending on version, go to File|Password Manager or File|Login Lockbox and
remove the Passport.
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more
information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication
scheme for Money.
Q) I'm using Windows XP and want to have two users access the same Money file.
What's the easiest way to do this?
A) Open "My Documents" under Windows Explorer. Find your Money file and drag
it to "Shared Documents" under My Computer. Now all users can access the same
money file in the "Shared Documents."
M05 refers to a feature they call "file sharing." It isn't. It's just a way of
adding multiple Passports to allow access to the subset of data that is copied
from the local file to MSN web servers and made available via the web
interface.
Thanks to Chris for the original answer.
Q) Is there a way to mark several hundred old transactions as reconciled in
one step?
A) There is no one step way to do this. The best way to do this is to set the
view to show only unreconciled transactions sorted by date, select the
earliest transaction you want to mark, hold down Ctrl+Shift. Hit M. You can
hit M repeatedly or just hold it down to auto-repeat. Transactions will
disappear--to reconciled status--pretty quickly, limited only by Money's
performance on your computer.
Q) Money opens with my old email address. How do I tell it about my new one?
A) This indicates that your Money data file is set to authenticate access via
Passport. So, what’s wrong here is that you need to update your Passport
account and then update the Passport used with your Money data file.
First, login to your data file using the old email address. (If you've already
changed the name at Passport and not in Money, you may have to login using the
offline mode.)
If you go into File|Password Manager (File|Login Lockbox on versions before
M04), on the File Password Settings tab, you should see Passport sign-in is
enabled for… and Change… Click on Change…Select Disable Money's Passport
features. Click on Next. Click on the Disable this Passport for use in Money
check box. Click Finish. Click OK to have no passwords at all.
Exit Money.
Now, you have to change your Passport by browsing to the Passport web site.
Select View or Edit your profile, sign in, under the old email address that is
the Passport account name, click the link "I need to change this." Follow
along from there.
Restart Money.
You should get this really annoying screen about setting up sign in security.
At this point, consider whether you need a Passport associated with your Money
data file at all. See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with
Money?" for more information on why you might or might not want to do this. If
you conclude you don’t need it, just say no to the sign in security screen. If
you feel you must associate your file with a Passport, continue on.
Select Yes; Yes, I want to use a Passport; Use an existing Passport. Click
Next. Enter the new email address/Passport sign-in name and its password.
Click Next.
Q) What if I don't want to use Money with Passport authentication?
A) When you install Money or create a new data file in versions prior to M05,
you can "just say no" when it asks you to sign up for Passport. If you do this
the first several times you start the application or open the file, it will
give up asking.
M05 stopped trying to nag you into adding Passport authentication to your
file. If you are determined to Just Say No, you won't get nagged. On the other
hand, if you are new to Money and setting up a file for the first time, the
new process would make you believe that not authenticating access to your
Money file with a Passport (or a file password at least) is unnatural and
immoral. It's neither.
Here's how to avoid the Passport/file password "requirement" in M05:
After File|New:
- Page: Thank you for using… (click Next)
- Page: Help protect your online Privacy and Security. (It says this in BIG
TYPE--and who could argue with that? If you don't use a Passport, your data
will be public and unsecured it seems to imply.) Passport has all kinds of
issues not the least of which is we ship your data off to our servers. (It
says this in little type in a scroll box that doesn't mention the problems you
can have accessing your own data if Microsoft has a problem with the Money
Passport servers) (click Decline)
- Dialog Box: Are you sure you really want to do such a stupid thing (click
Yes)
- Page: A file password is a good thing (BIG TYPE again) don't forget it
(little type) (click the I don't want check box, then Next)
- Page: To setup accounts you'll need the name of your primary bank and your
online sign-in information from your bank (here you can click Skip Account
Setup unless you want more of the hand-holding) (By the way, this isn't true,
either. You can just select "not in list" as the financial institution and
nothing bad will happen and Money will be highly functional and will work the
way some of us have happily used it for a decade.)
If you already setup to use Passport authentication and have now changed your
mind, see "I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed
to, now I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?"
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more
information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication
scheme for Money.
Q) What is the -s option? What is the Super Salvage utility?
A) These (and the File|Money File Repair menu choice added by M04) are the
file repair tools.
See "I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?"
for more information on these tools.
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
How to do things in Money: Accounts/Categories/Payees
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Q) How can I note that, say, Automobile : Gasoline expenses applied to a
specific car?
A) Sometimes Money users want to be able to differentiate like income or
expenses between different objectives. Examples include determining how much
is spent on which of your automobiles and what rental income is associated
with which rental properties.
Some people think that expanding the categories list is the obvious way to do
this. E.g., Automobile : '05 Accord Gasoline. The problem with this approach
is that it doesn't scale well. Add another car? Double up the categories by
adding Automobile : '06 SL550 Gasoline. Want to track insurance and taxes? Add
Insurance : '05 Accord Auto and Taxes : '05 Accord Personal Property. It just
gets worse…
Luckily, Money provides an alternate approach called "classification". A
classification is a set of two-level tagging just like, but parallel to,
Category, with its own name like "Class" or "Tax Applicability". Money allows
two degrees of classification. Thus, a given expense can be Category
Automobile : Gasoline, and Class My Autos : '05 Accord, and Tax Applicability
Tax Year 2006 : Reimbursable Job Expense, all at the same time. This allows
you to dice and slice the data readily into all Automobile : Gasoline expenses
or all My Autos : '05 Accord expenses or any intersecting set (Automobile :
Gasoline for just My Autos : '05 Accord). You can also do things like classify
Insurance : Automobile or Taxes : License Plate Ad Valorem Tax to a My Autos :
'06 SL550. Most Money reports allow the report to select specific
classifications just like they allow selecting specific categories.
What are the downsides? It's more data to collect, but you needn't classify
every transaction, just those you'd like to be able to select this way. The
classification isn't supported by things like the "guessing" of categories by
Payee name when downloading or hand entering transactions. You can't schedule
classification of the elements of a Loan Payment, though you can edit a Loan
Payment transaction--or fix it when you select Enter in Register--to include
classification in the elements. (See "Why can't I schedule a Loan Payment with
pre-assigned classification?" for more.) Classification isn't supported in
Find and Replace. (Still. How hard could it be, Money team?) It make the
two-line register view a three- or four-line proposition. You can't get
classification data out to Excel via MoneyLink.
How to get started with Classification? It varies slightly by version and the
Help pages should provide definitive advice. In general, find your way to a
Categories & Payees screen. In the View section, you will see choices
Classification 1 and Classification 2, assuming you haven't setup
Classification already. Click on the first one and it will let you name and
Enable the first classification set. Once enabled, each transaction entry form
or register entry will let you enter the two levels of your classification 1
just as you do with Categories.
You might also want to use classification for things like Vacation : Hawaii
2004, Cell Phone : (888)555-1212, Computer : Desktop IV, Other : Daughter gets
married, Property : 123 Republican Circle and so forth.
Q) How do I setup a money market account as a checking account?
A) If you aren't downloading the information from your investment company into
Money, you can set it up and manage it as a checking account.
If you are downloading the information, Money will likely insist that the
money market account is an investment in an investment account. This will make
it harder to manage like a checking account. There is no good solution.
Q) I've entered charges in my credit card account, when I pay the bill aren't
I spending twice? Is my card a category or account?
A) These, and many other fundamentally related questions, are frequently asked
by people new to personal finance software and formalized accounting methods.
There are two ways to approach this whole issue. Let's describe the more
useful, and generally preferred, way first: You setup Accounts, not
Categories, for the tools you use to spend money. I.e., setup accounts for
your checking account and your credit card account(s).
When you spend on the cards, you record transactions in the credit card
account for WHY you spent the money. E.g., $50 to MCI WorldCom for
category:subcategory "Utilities:Long Distance."
When you pay the credit card bills, you "Transfer" money from, say, your
Checking Account to your Visa Account. Paying a bill like this is not an
expense. It's just taking money you have and applying it to expenses (i.e.,
liabilities) you already incurred--hence the transfer. The special category
"Credit Card Payment" is just a less confusing (but less insightful) way to
say "Transfer" and it behaves exactly the same except you can't create a
scheduled "Credit Card Payment" but you can create a scheduled "Transfer" and
it works exactly the same. M05 came along and added a new Expense Category
"Credit Card Payments/Transfer" just to mess with anybody who is just starting
to understand this stuff. As Cal Learner--MVP recommended, the best thing to
do is probably to delete this category. It just causes confusion.
The second way, if you are not ready to dive in just yet, is to categorize the
entire payment to the credit card as "Miscellaneous" and not worry about what,
in turn, the credit card charges were for. In this scenario you don't even
have to setup the credit card as a separate Account. If you really want to use
Money to understand where the money comes from and goes to, don't do it this
way; it masks what you are really spending the money for.
Money provides an intermediate path that can be simple to start while you are
getting up and running and can easily morph into the recommended method. When
you create the account, tell it you want to "AutoBalance" the account. (This
is the same as the radio buttons "Account tracking: I want to track individual
charges/Just track the amount I owe" on the Account Details page.) When
AutoBalance is enabled, a "Credit Card Payment:[credit card account]" or the
more normative "Transfer:[credit card account]" will popup a dialog box to
balance the account. It will also do automagically what was outlined above as
a manual task: it will enter an account adjustment transaction to expense the
entire balance as "Miscellaneous."
There is much more on this in Help, the Help videos, Audio Help, and the book
that came with Money. Also look at the sample file. The key hurdles for many
people to cross are that: 1) Accounts are HOW you spend/receive money and are
where individual expense and income transactions are recorded. 2) Categories
and Subcategories are WHY you spend/receive money and are recorded as
transactions in accounts. 3) Transfer is how you move Money from one account
(say a cash account of which checking is one type) to another (say a liability
account of which credit card is one type).
Q) My Credit Card Payments don't show up in Spending Reports--how come?
A) See the answer to the question "I've entered charges in my credit card
account, when I pay the bill aren't I spending twice? Is my card a category or
account?"
Q) When should I create an Account instead of a Payee? Aren't Payees just
Accounts? Or is my Payee really a Category?
A) An Account in Money allows recording of transactions with credits and
debits to a balance carried forward. Accounts are places to group transactions
that frequently reflect some of your real world accounts like checking,
savings, and revolving credit card accounts.
Payees are people or institutions you interact with financially. The simplest
example is the name you put in a Pay To on a check. That's always a payee.
Your employer who pays you is technically a Payer, but Money always calls
Payers Payees. A Payee in Money is a name with optional attributes like
address information, phone numbers and account numbers. Payees are typically
used to record information about people and businesses you regularly pay or
receive money from. Examples might include a grocery store, a utility company,
an ISP and so on.
Not all Payees you enter transactions for need to be Payees explicitly listed
on the Payees page. (Accounts & Bills|Categories & Payees|Payees in M02.) See
answer to question "Why do I have to create an entry in the Payees every time
I spend money somewhere new?" for more information.
Sometimes you have accounts that are associated with a Payee and maybe this is
also an Account in Money, but by no means always. The determining factor tends
to be whether the account you have with a Payee involves its own transactions
and a standing balance from month to month. Credit cards are almost always
best treated as Money Accounts. Accounts like the account your plumber has for
you and the accounts you have with your utility companies rarely need their
own Money Accounts.
The name of a Payee and an Account in Money are occasionally the same.
Categories are ways to assign income and expense to, for lack of a better
word, reasons for the income or expense. Categories could include Wage &
Salary:Bonus, Food:Groceries, Utilities:Garbage Pickup.
Examples:
I charge $55.00 for Category "Food:Groceries" to my Discover credit card
account. I enter a transaction for $55.00 for Food:Groceries in my Money
"Discover" Account, which is a Money Account of type "Credit Card." I pay the
Payee "Discover" $1,234.56 for the Food:Groceries, among other things, by
entering another, separate, transaction in my "Checking" Account in Money
using the Special Category "Transfer:Discover" which moves money from one
Account to the other.
I pay my Payee "Xcel Energy" for $123.45 of Category "Utilities:Gas" and
$65.43 of Category "Utilities Electricity" by entering a split transaction in
my Money "Checking" Account. I include my account number for my Xcel Energy
account (which is not a Money Account) in the Memo field of the check.
Q) Why don't my car Loan Payments show up as an expense in monthly expense
reports?
A) The short answer is that the loan payments really aren't expenses--only the
interest portion is an expense. The expense happened when you bought the car.
The expense continues to happen as you pay the interest each month for the
money you are still borrowing to pay for the car.
If you really want the payment to look like an expense every month, then do
not setup a loan account in Money and use an expense category like
Automobile:Payments. You may have to create this category.
Money (per standard accounting and personal finance management practice) tries
to manage cash flow (like the principal component of your loan payments) as a
separate issue from income and expense (like buying the car and paying rent on
the money you borrowed to buy the car). It takes some getting used to but it
is a much better approach to managing your money since it recognizes expenses
when they occur and doesn't let simple cash flow mask where you are really
spending money.
See also the answer to "My Credit Card Payments don't show up in Spending
Reports--how come?"
How to do things in Money: Data/File Management
-----------------------------------------------
Q) Can a new version of Money open my old version data file/backup file/backup
diskette(s)?
A) The newest version of Money is designed to open and upgrade older version
Money data files, backup files, and backup diskettes for all older versions of
Money, with caveats as noted below.
1) Upgrades are not supported across different localizations of Money. E.g.,
M99 for UK will not upgrade to M04 US. For more information, see "Why do I get
the 'incompatible versions' message when upgrading my data file?".
2) Beginning with M03, a significant number of users have had problems with
the upgrade process. For more information, see "I thought Money files were
supposed to be upward compatible. How come Money[new] crashes when upgrading
my Money[old] data file?".
3) Be sure you have a good backup file/set of backup diskettes. For more
information, see "You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error
reading. What do I do?".
Q) Can I access my file on my desktop over my home network from my laptop?
A) It works fine IF you assure that only one machine has the file open at a
time. This includes subtle things like MoneySide and MoneyExpress. My only
file corruption in the last three of four years came from inadvertently
opening Money and working in the data file on the WiFi laptop when the desktop
machine also had the file open. Whatever else, have a backup strategy.
Setting up a network and opening/accessing file shares is beyond the scope of
this newsgroup. You might want to consult one of the operating system specific
newsgroups if that is the kind of help you are looking for.
M05 refers to a feature they call "file sharing". It isn't. It's just a way of
adding multiple Passports to allow access to the subset of data that is copied
from the local file to MSN web servers and made available via the web
interface
Q) How do I backup to CD-RW? CD-R?
A) First, remember that a CD-R, CD-RW, or any of the various forms of writable
DVD is not a general purpose random access storage device and needs software
to begin to pretend to be.
(Such software is referred to as "packet writing" software and includes things
like DirectCD or Drag-to-Disc from Easy Media (Coaster) Creator by Roxio and
InCD from Nero. That having been said, the poor reliability many people
experience with packet writing software in general and DirectCD in specific
suggests it is a very poor choice for backing up critical data like your Money
file. At less than a dime per media in quantities of 100, burning a CD-R with
a copy of your Money data file seems like a better choice.)
Like any file, your .MNY data file can be stored on writable optical media the
same way you put other files on them. For instance, if you use WinXP, you can
backup to the hard disk mirror created by WinXP and then burn a CD after
you've exited Money. If you like Nero, go ahead and burn a CD with your Money
data file and don't drag Money into the problem at all. Etc.
Second, don't expect the "backup to floppy" choice to offer up your writeable
CD. Is the writeable CD a floppy? No, it is not. Why would Money think it is?
Newer versions (M04?) say "Removable." But they still don't recognize devices
that do not have normal FAT/NTFS file systems--i.e., CD/DVD writeable.
When a WinXP follow-on product supports the Mt. Rainier technology, and when
you have hardware that also supports Mt. Rainier, then maybe Money will be a
little savvier about writable CDs.
Read the referenced MSKB for information about using the backup methods in
Money to backup to writeable CDs.
M06 updated the backup tools--the first time in many versions that backup
functionality has been improved--and provided direct access to writable
optical devices that the operating system knows how to deal with. Perhaps this
was because they broke the floppy disk backups so severely in M05?
Reference courtesy of Glyn Simpson, Microsoft MVP - Money
References:
MSKB: Q265130 backup to writeable CDs
Q) How do I move accounts from one Money file to another?
A) The only way to do this is File|Export and Import via QIF files. Beware
that duplicate account names ("Checking") in the exporting and importing
account will cause problems and one or the other account should be renamed
before you do the export/import. Also beware that transfers between accounts
to be moved will necessitate importing all interlinked QIF files
simultaneously. Finally, QIF export/import will NOT move things like bills
associated with the account or account detail information.
Because of all of these limitations, make sure to work in copies of the target
file before you get this all tuned to produce acceptable results.
Q) How do I start over with a new data file?
A) There are two ways to do this. File|New… is an old favorite. You can also
delete, rename, or move your data file so that Money cannot find it when you
start Money--Money will then offer to create a new file. Answer derived from
one posted by Cal Learner, MVP.
Q) How do I un-archive?
A) You don't. The only ways to undo the effects of archiving are to go to the
archive file and enter/import newer transactions or to export the transactions
from the archive file and import them into your current file. Both involve
going through the .QIF export/import process. Neither is trouble-free. See the
MSKB for Microsoft's approach.
Archiving will shrink your file size somewhat. There have been some reports
that archiving helps performance problems. That's about all it does. On the
down side, in addition to not providing any way to put the archived data back
in the ongoing data file, archiving will not remove old investment account
activity and related transfer transactions. In some versions, archiving seems
to have many problems adjusting the account beginning balance for removed
transactions.
For these reasons, many of us do not recommend archiving and do not do it
ourselves. If you start recording all kinds of interesting memo data (like
serial numbers for your toys, warranty lengths, the genus and species of
plants you bought for your garden and so on) you, too, will not want to
archive.
If you archived recently enough, you can use the archive file you created in
place of the file that Archive removed transactions from. It has all of the
transactions in your entire Money file as of the date you archived, not just
ones before the archive date. This is another result of the rather odd design
for archiving.
References:
MSKB: 133485 How to un-archive
Q) I just archived. But there are many transactions left from before the
archive date. Why?
A) The more you know about archiving; the less likely you are to do it. All
pain. Precious little gain. I do not recommend archiving. YMMV.
First, there is little reason to archive--as you've found out, by design the
impact is limited--and some reasons not to--primarily that you can't go back
at all easily once you've archived and your archive file will overlap the file
you use going forward since it's just a backup prior to removing transactions.
If, like many of us, you record all manner of useful data like the serial
numbers of your toys and when you bought a battery for the car last, taking
this data out of your main data file is not something you'll want to do.
Second, archiving does not remove all transactions. Transactions related to
investment buys/sells and, hence, capital gains, for instance, are not
archived.
Third, there is little evidence that archiving has a significant impact on
performance, especially given the limitations on what data it actually
removes.
Fourth, hard disks are selling for less then $0.75/GB and the smallest 2.5"
laptop drives being manufactured today are typically 10GB in size. Very few
people have data files bigger than, say, 50 MB. That makes 200 extremely large
Money data files you can store on the smallest hard disk being manufactured
today. (Capacities and costs as of 11/24/2004. The trend of larger disks
costing less money will no doubt continue. This answer may or may not be
updated accordingly.)
There are a number of MSKB articles on the subject of limitations of
archiving. On-line help even describes it pretty well. Also, see the question
"How do I un-archive?"
References:
MSKB: 191537 How archiving really works II
MSKB: 306825 How archiving really works III
MSKB: 77462 How archiving really works
Q) I just bought a new computer with the current Money pre-installed. How do I
transfer my data from the old version/old machine?
A) Go find your Money data file and copy it to the new machine. Your file will
be named *.mny, so if you do not know where it is, you can search for it.
Likewise, going into File|Open should enable you to see where the current file
is located.
The best ways to move the file are to burn a CD, use something like a network
or laplink, use some diskette copy or backup/restore routine that can span
multiple diskettes, or consider this an excuse to buy one of those neato new
USB memory keys. Second best is to use the Money backup to floppy capability
to backup on the old version/old machine and restore on the new version/new
machine. BUT BE SURE NOT TO TRASH THE OLD COPY 'TIL YOU HAVE THE NEW COPY
RUNNING! Sometimes data errors and so forth occur--you'd be surprised how many
people get here when their ONLY backup copy is trashed and want to know how to
recover.
When you first open the data file from the old version, Money will rename your
existing file and create a new file from the data in the old one except
upgraded to the current file format.
When you start the new version of Money on the new machine, be sure to tell it
to skip Passport. If you find you need it later, you can go add it.
If you use Money backup/restore, you might just want to first go open the
sample data file, so it will skip lots of non-pertinent steps like the
interview. Then you can restore the old copy from floppies using the Money
File|Restore menu choice.
Also, be sure to copy your Tools|Options settings by hand since many of them
are NOT stored in the data file. You will also have to redo printer setups.
This discussion assumes that the old system and new system both use the same
region settings and both old and new versions of Money are the same
localization (e.g., Money US or Money UK.) If either of these assumptions is
violated, it may not be possible to do what you want.
Q) I just reinstalled M98--it can't read my data backup floppies. Now what?
[Relevant to Money98 (v.6)]
A) Money98 originally didn't know how to do a multi-diskette backup. (This was
bizarre since M98 was the first version where data file size grew by an order
of magnitude.) If you made a Money98 diskette-spanning backup using Money98,
you must have installed the patch that provided this functionality and now the
patch is lost. (The outcry over the lack of spanning backup and the suddenly
huge data files--small by the standards of current versions--led to release of
the patch.) You will need to get it and reinstall it to read your
diskette-spanning backup. Once installed, you will need to look not under the
File menu but under Tools|Multi-disk backup. You can also see the MSKB item
for more information.
Possibly a better course would be to consider migrating to a newer version of
Money. The never version will know how to read the format written by the M98
diskette-spanning backup patch.
Thanks to Bonnie Synhorst for this answer; the MSKB link was provided by
Kimberly Renna-Griego, MVP.
References:
Money98 diskette-spanning backup patch (get file mdbr1.exe)
MSKB: Q179397 M98 Diskette-spanning backup/restore
Q) What is this .LRD file with the same name as my Money data file? Should I
worry about it?
A) It's a record-locking file used for internal purposes by the database
engine Money uses. It opens when you open a Money file and disappears when you
close it normally. You may see one left around if Money "abnormally ends" or
ABENDs. (That's IBM talk for "crashes.") It means nothing to the user. You can
safely ignore it.
It will also be there when Money Express is open in the background.
If you sign-in to Money with "Use Money's online features that require .NET
Passport," then 2 or 3 (depending upon version) Money background processes are
spawned. These background processes, mis.exe, misuser.exe (Money 2003-4 only)
and mnyschdl.exe, are spawned and continue to run even after closing your
Money file and exiting Money itself (msmoney.exe), whether or not Money
Express is enabled. If you have enabled Background Banking as well, one or
more of these background processes will be periodically locking your primary
Money file. The list changes slightly for M05, but the basic issue is still
the same: depending on what you enable in Money, your Money data file may
still be in use, and the .LRD file still relevant, when you are not actually
using Money.
Additional information about situations that will create the lock file
borrowed from an answer by Brent Neville who has also provided updates.
Q) What should I do to close the year in my data file? Should I archive?
A) Lots of people want to do something to "close" out a year's worth of data
in Money. There isn't really any need to do anything. Money will happily carry
on from here. Any need to look at data by year is best accomplished with
customized reports. But you may also want to make a "snapshot" of the data to
file with your taxes or similar records for the year. Lots of people think,
reasonably enough, that Money's Archive or Backup functions are somehow useful
for this. Perhaps not.
Understand that:
A Backup is supposed to be a file that enables you to Restore a file exactly
as your data file was at the point in time where the backup was performed.
Money's backup cannot always achieve this.
An Archive is a copy of your entire data file at a given point in time but
just before the *archiving function destructively and irreversibly removes a
bunch of data from, and modifies other data in,* the main data file you intend
to use going forward. I do not recommend archiving. All pain. No gain.
If you want to have a high-probability-of-recoverability of your Money data as
far into the future as my crystal ball can see, there are two things I
recommend:
1) Make a copy (not a Money File|Backup, just a Windows Explorer File Copy) of
the .MNY file as it now exists, and burn it onto a CD-R or two. Use the
quality media for this. (The $0.02 per disc white label media may be great for
your MP3s, but this is serious data we are talking about here.) Turn off all
of the esoteric burning format options. (The system that you need to read this
on may not have been invented yet so it is best to stay mainstream.) Test the
CD-R(s) in at least one, if not several, other machines to make sure you can
read the file back correctly. (The burner that burned the CD may be the only
drive in the world that can actually read it.) Label the CD-R(s) with the
exact version of Money that wrote the file, as displayed in Help|About. (This
will be something like 14.0.115.1105.) File at least one of the CD-Rs in your
safe deposit box or other off-site location. This will be usable as long as
you can run the noted Money version or a future Money version that supports
that file format. Money File|Backup should provide a 100% path back to the
original data file. For all too many people it does not seem to do this.
2) Create two favorite reports. One is Account Transactions for all accounts
and the other is Investment Transactions for all accounts including closed
accounts. Customize them to the date range for all of the year you want to
capture and set all of the flags for every column to appear. Clear any other
customization that filters out data. Spot check the resulting reports to
confirm that you haven't accidentally left anything out. Then do one or more
of the following: a) print to paper, b) print to .PDF or Microsoft Office
Imaging files, c) "Export to Excel" .CSV (comma separated value) format files.
(.CSV files can be read by Excel but they can also be read with Notepad or any
other text editor and are easy for even savvy 12 year olds to write programs
to parse back into more usable forms.) If you make the files, follow guidance
above for what to do with them. If you print the reports, save a copy with,
say, your tax returns and associated data. These will be usable for access to
the data--but not by Money--in the event some point in the future arrives and
there is no Money version that can read the data file from #1. It will not get
all of the data (quotes, payee addresses, loan terms, account details like
account numbers, comments, and credit limit are all lost this way) but it's
about as good as Money will let you get.
Q) When I archive, Money complains that my floppy disk is full. How can this
possibly be?
A) The archive file is a copy of your entire data file made before any
transactions are removed. Archiving knows nothing about compressing data files
nor does it know about spanning multiple floppies with large files. (Just
because Money backup to floppy knows how to do both of these things, don't
think that archive does. It doesn't.) Given these facts and the fact that
virtually every data file created by Money is larger than 1.44MB, it should be
obvious that unless you have that rare data file that will fit on a floppy,
the message you are getting is just Money telling you a fact of life.
Q) Where is Money hiding my data from me? In the registry? In the ether?
A) This question comes up over and over again in many disguised forms.
Examples include "How do I just start completely over?," "I want to move my
data to a new computer but can’t figure out where it is on the old one, what
do I do?," and the ever popular "How do I backup my Money data to a CD-R
instead of a floppy?"
Money is a file-oriented program. It stores your data in .MNY data files just
like Word uses .DOC files, Excel uses .XLS files, Notepad uses .TXT files, and
Access uses .MDB files. These files are all just data files that can be moved,
copied, deleted, renamed, shared over the network, or burned to CDs, no matter
what application originally created them. Perhaps part of the problem here is
that Money users generally use the same single data file for months or years
at a time--and Money always opens the last file they used--so they may not
even remember that their data is in a file named what they told Money to name
it and stored where they told Money to store it. Take note: there is a
File|Open choice in Money, just like in Word. Money also has a File|New
choice, just like Word.
There are some additional considerations:
1) While Money stores all of your account and transaction data in the data
file you designated when you first setup the file, it stores your
Tools|Options settings in the registry. The Tools|Options settings are the
only thing that you ever put into Money that is not stored in a .MNY data
file. This can be an issue when you reload your system or move your data file
to a new system but the Tools|Options settings get lost. Particularly painful
is when printer alignment settings for printing checks get lost. Write them
down before replacing your system or reinstalling the application.
2) It is generally considered a "best practice" to store your .MNY files in
the My Documents folder tree, not somewhere in the Program Files folder tree.
All of the reasons for this are beyond the scope of the FAQ, but think of it
this way: it's like throwing your coat in the back seat of the car vs. under
the hood. The back seat is your space--under the hood isn't. This advice is
particularly import for Windows Vista users since, for standard user accounts,
Vista will "pretend" to update files stored in Program Files but will promptly
revert them to their original contents when you exit Money.
3) Money can have your file open for access--and so can MoneyExpress and
MoneySide. You should always avoid doing anything to the data file (like
copying it to a CD-R as a backup or opening it over the network or from a
different user profile) when the file is already opened since this can cause
data file corruption problems. An .LRD file in the same folder with the same
name is usually an indication that something has the data file open.
4) Starting the Money application directly--as opposed to opening a .MNY file
from the Windows file explorer--results in Money trying to open the last .MNY
file you used from the exact same location. If, say, you've moved your data
file, this will result in a "file not found" type of error. This message does
not mean that Money lost your data--it means that you've hidden your data from
Money. Go find your data file using the Windows file explorer and r-click Open
it or double click on it. After doing this, Money will now know where your
file is located.
5) Because your Money file is just a file, you can burn it to CD or whatever
else you want to do with it, just like any other data file. Money really
doesn't care. Likewise, whatever you do with the file is at your risk, not
Money's.
6) If you don't remember where you told Money to put your file or what you
told Money to name it, here are some ways to find out:
- Search your system's disks for files of type Microsoft Money File (files
using the extension .MNY).
- The Money title bar shows the name of your file, as in "MyDataFileNameIsHere
– Microsoft Money" when you are using Money.
- The Most Recently Used choices numbered 1 through 4 at the bottom of Money's
file menu are the four most recently opened Money data files
- If, with your file open, you go to Money's File|Open dialog it will show you
the directory (folder, if you prefer) where your data file is located as this
is the place it will start looking. If there is any doubt where this is, pull
down the little arrow next to the "Look In" pull-down.
7) Because your Money data file is your data file, you are responsible for
protecting it as you would any other file with important data in it: this
means backing it up, keeping copies before reloading your machine, and so on.
8) Money File|Backup creates files that are not identical copies of the
original file. For reasons unknown, occasionally this difference is relevant.
If you really have to be sure you have your data--like when migrating to a new
system or reformatting your present hard disk--it's a very good idea to have
both the Money backup .MBF file and the real .MNY data file both copied onto,
say, a writable CD or, better, several writable CDs, which you have tested in
alternate machines from the one that wrote the CD, before destroying the
original. The best method, if possible, is to get the new installation working
before destroying the original.
How to do things in Money: Downloaded transaction data
------------------------------------------------------
Q) I imported a statement to the wrong account. Now Money wants to keep
repeating this mistake. How do I undo this?
A) The basic approach is to delete the financial institution associated with
the account and then specify the financial institution for the account a
second time. For more details, there are several MSKB items that may help. The
links are courtesy of Mark and Cal Learner--MVP.
References:
MSKB: 327241 Statement imported to wrong account
MSKB: 822390 OFX statements downloaded to wrong account
Q) If downloaded data is so much trouble, why even use Money? Or, why use
Money if you have type in all of the transaction data?
A) Many recent posters in the newsgroup seem to view downloading transaction
data as the only value-add Money provides or as fundamental to any use of the
product. This is unfortunate. Perhaps they don't understand that transaction
data actually can be entered by hand?
IF all you use Money for is to keep a register, THEN it seems true that
downloading data will save a lot of labor--assuming it goes trouble free and
the downloading never fails and your payees always match and so on. But if all
you use Money for is to keep a register that matches, by definition, the data
you download from your bank--or your bank's website if Yodlee is involved,
what's the point? Why not just log into your bank's web site, look at the
data, and press on? What value did Money really add?
IF, on the other hand, you use Money to manage a budget, forecast cash flow,
track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track
property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc. costs, estimate taxes and so forth, THEN a)
the quality and consistency of transaction data matters and dependence on
downloaded data may not be entirely compatible with this objective, and b) the
amount of time and effort spent doing manual transaction entry is a small
fraction of total time spent using Money at worst and is no more and maybe
less than the time spent keeping the download thing working and making up for
all of the things it can't do at best or screws up at worst. Examples of
things the best downloaded data just can't do are split a paycheck deposit
into its constituent parts, classify transactions for vehicle or property or
similar, or enter the splits for things like an expense at the grocery being
part Food:Groceries, part Miscellaneous:Supplies, and part Transfer:Pocket
Change. As for the "at worst" side of transaction download, just read the
newsgroup for a week. Many weeks more than half the posts or more have
something to do with problems with downloaded transaction data. Imagine if
half of the posts in the Word newsgroup had to do with typing text into the
thing.
Some posters even say thing like "[if you don't download data,] what's the
purpose of using Money instead of, say, Excel? [Excel] actually may be a
[better] solution considering all the Money limitations with transaction
reconciliation, online updates, and so on." This suggests in some circular way
that downloaded transaction data is the singular way to make Money work and
the limitations with downloaded transaction data reduce Money to the level of
Excel in terms of solving the problems at hand. It's like saying if the heated
seat in the car isn't working well, just walk instead.
The problems with downloaded transaction data are just that. There is NO
function in Money (e.g., manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset
value, manage investments, track asset values, track
property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc costs, estimate taxes) that is one iota
easier, or better, or more capable, or enabled uniquely by downloaded
transaction data except for downloading transaction data itself. In fact, all
of those other functions are TRANSPARENT to how the transaction data actually
gets there. Worse, many of them are only as good as the data they process. If
you enter the data, you get it right; if you let your bank and Yodlee manage
this data, you get what you get.
Maybe what we really need is two Money product lines: Money View, an AOL-like
web-only service. Make it just M05 Essential *. The user of this product just
wants a passive approach that provides value by aggregating data ala Yodlee,
delivering relevant info--aka targeted ads, and sparing effort and typing. The
second, Money Management, is the traditional Money product where the users are
actually expecting to put some effort into the whole thing and wants to use
the data to perform analysis and planning and so forth. Sadly, the first user
seems to be the Money "target market."
Q) Money says my PIN for getting my account activity must be six digits. It’s
four and works fine on their web site. What gives?
A) The Money online statement PIN/password for a given bank is frequently
different than the ATM PIN/web site password for the exact same bank. Money is
likely just quoting/enforcing the restrictions that the bank has told it to in
the online protocols. Contact the bank's customer service to find out for
sure.
Q) My bank offers several formats of file for download and import. Which
should I pick?
A) First, your two choices are QIF and OFX. Everything else requires some
amount of conversion to one of these before Money will import it. See "How do
I import from Excel (or .CSV or etc.)?" for more information on importing
other formats.
If both QIF and OFX are offered, OFX is preferable. This is because OFX
includes unique identifiers assigned by the bank to the account and the
transactions. Money uses the unique identifiers in two ways that make OFX
import better than QIF. First, once Money has associated the account
identifier with a specific Account in Money, it will always import future
files to the correct account. QIF asks every time and is very problematic if
you accidentally give it the wrong answer. Second, Money stores the
transaction identifiers with the imported transactions. Because it does this,
future imports of a file that has the same transactions won't duplicate the
transactions. Importing QIF files that overlap requires Money and the user to
attempt to identify any transactions that appear to be duplicates. This isn't
always as easy as it seems and is prone to error and requires extra user
effort. QIF is the last choice of import format for these reasons.
Question nominated to the FAQ by Mark Horn; answer derived from postings by
Mark Horn and Chris Cowles.
Q) When I download account data, my scheduled transfer from Checking to [Visa]
gets duplicated in the respective accounts. Why?
A) The secret is to make sure the first one you download is set as a
Transfer:[name of second acct] and the second one you download is flagged as a
match for the other half of the transfer created out of the first one
downloaded.
Now that you've got them, you probably have to do something like void the
second one downloaded and not turned into a transfer.
I say "probably" because I really don't know--I skip all of this downloaded
transaction data stuff and all of these headaches that come as part of the
set.
Cal Learner--MVP, who does download transactions, offered up this:
There is more than one good way to download your credit card data and have
also the payment downloaded from a checking account. Here are three ways I
like:
1. When you process the first transaction of the credit card payment, set the
category as a Transfer to the other (credit card or bank account), or use the
equivalent SPECIAL "Credit Card Payment" category. When you process the second
transaction, Money should match it. Be careful to not just Accept if Money did
not find the match on its own for some reason. Click Change and match it to
the transfer you already made if Money did not match it for you. I would
consider this the classic of the ways I like. Note that for this you would
*not* use the Money 2005 EXPENSE category "Credit Card Payments/Transfer".
Instead you should consider deleting that EXPENSE "Credit Card
Payments/Transfer" to avoid confusion. See also "We had Transfer and Credit
Card Payment in M04. What's with Credit Card Payments/Transfer added in M05?"
2. In method 2, don't handle credit card payments as transfers or the
pre-defined "Credit Card Payment". Instead create one category of "CC payment"
or some such. If you define the category as an expense category, expect a
warning when you use it to represent the payment within the credit card
account -- if you have the warning enabled. Just click Yes in response to the
warning. The category should net at zero in reports across accounts, and you
can still customize to ignore the category if you like. (This is Bonnie
Synhorst's favorite method.) For this method you *could* use the M05 "Credit
Card Payments/Transfer".
3. Create a suspense account. I have one I call In Transit, and I called it a
"cash or other" account. Change each of the downloaded transactions into
transfer to/from that account. That account will normally have a zero balance
except while funds are in transit. Make your credit card payments as transfers
to and from that account.
Q) When I download data from my bank, Money grabs the file. How do I make it
stop?
A) As many applications do, Money tells Windows to associate certain file
types with Money and assign certain things to do when files of that type are
downloaded or opened. If you have Quicken installed, it tries to do the exact
same thing. Barring your intervention, the last application installed will win
this battle. You can use this fact to all Quicken to get the files by simply
reinstalling it.
But you can also take matters into your own hands. If you want to see or
change file associations yourself, you can
Start|Settings|Control Panel|Folder Options|File Types
Select OFX-- Open Financial Exchange File or QIF or whatever.
Click Advanced. Check Confirm Open After Download unless you would not like
the pop-up box. That pop-up box may be of use in that it lets you save the
file to the disk and open it with either or both programs later.
See that the "Actions" box contains "Open" in bold. If it is not bold, you can
select Open as the default action by clicking the Set Default button.
Click Edit.
When you click edit, the application used to perform action for Money would be
similar to the following line:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Money\System\mnyimprt.exe" %1
with both the quotes and the %1 after the quote. The path will differ based on
your installation. Modify it for your setup. There would be a similar string
if Quicken is handling that file type.
Answer courtesy of Cal Learner--MVP
Q) Why are my credit card charges showing as credits not debits?
A) There is more than one possibility here.
If downloaded transaction data is involved, there could be a problem in the
download file.
Another thing that sometimes happens is that a user entered an account
beginning balance as a negative number. So Money thinks the account has a
credit balance (the bank owes you) rather than a debit balance (you owe the
bank). Entering purchases makes this negative "you owe" balance decline since
the bank now "owes you" less money. Unless the bank owed you when you setup
the account, the account beginning balance should be a positive number.
Finally, some people just get confused by how liability accounts, of which
Credit Card is one example, are depicted in Money. In the account register for
a Credit Card account, the amount you owe is positive. At the bottom of the
register it normally says something like "You owe: $123.45". If it said "You
owe: ($123.45)", you would be running a credit balance.
Note that in the numbers on the Account List and Favorite Account balances on
the home page and so on, the amount you owe is shown as negative, and a credit
balance would be shown as positive. In the account register, things are the
other way around.
Answer derived from one provided by Cal Learner--MVP.
How to do things in Money: Financial Situations
-----------------------------------------------
Q) How can I transfer money (to / from) the loan I (made / borrowed)?
A) Money doesn't provide any way in the Loan Account Setup genie to account
for money transferred into a loan you are making or from a loan you are
taking. Since one typically is funding a loan from another account when you
are lending money or transferring the money into some account or transaction
(a car purchase, say), this seems a fairly fundamental omission.
If you can live with this, the easiest thing to do is just enter an expense or
income transaction with some unique category ("Other Income : Loan Proceeds
Received") or no category at all. You can enter a memo in this transaction
making clear what you were doing and why and referencing the Loan Accounts
involved.
An alternate way to account for the principal received follows a more
elaborate technique outlined by Chris Cowles: setup a loan account with no
balance but using the appropriate information for all else and letting Money
calculate the ($0) payment. Then you enter a "Principal Transfer" of the
balance in the loan account register to the settlement account. (You will have
to type "principal transfer" as the drop-/pull-downs will not offer it.)
Tomorrow (or roll the clock forward by a day for a moment--Money refuses to
let you do this any other way), you can go to the loan Details and select
Change Loan Terms and go in and set the balance. This will cause the account
details to show the amount as $0, but the balance will be correct after the
transfer. The interest charged may be off by a day's worth; I have not checked
this.
Q) How do I 'mark' money in an account for future use so I don't spend it
now?
A) Lots of people want to do this with some mechanism like the
accounts-within-an-account "subaccounts" mechanism that Quicken provides.
Money provides no similar mechanism. Money, instead, provides tools to manage
budget--what you plan to spend when for what--separately from cash
flow--managing the amount of cash available to execute the budget. Many of us
prefer the latter approach since it leaves behavior modification--not spending
money just because you have a positive balance--up to us rather than resorting
to subterfuge to "fake ourselves out" by "cookie jar accounting." YMMV.
When a poster said that he was looking for a "cookie jar" mechanism since lack
of one meant the money "has to show in the checking account because it is
there, but I don't want to think the money is mine by seeing it in the
balance," David Brownridge put it very well:
"The way I deal with that is to leave the money in the cheque acct, and in
Bills & Deposits create a Bill (with frequency Only Once) and the appropriate
future date. Until that "bill" is paid the money will show in the balance of
the account; but if you look at the forecast for the account you'll see where
it gets withdrawn.
"The important point is that in terms of 'think what money is mine' I never
just look at the balances in the accounts list; rather I check out the
cashflow forecasts."
Q) How do I budget an expected wage increase without changing my scheduled
paycheck?
A) Go into the Budget Planner, Edit the budget, go to the category in
question, Edit the "Other income for [category in question]" line and tell
Budget Planner about the amounts it isn't figuring out from history/scheduled
transactions. Here you'd just want to add the difference amounts since the
basic amount should get picked up from your scheduled paycheck transaction.
Q) How do I create different payee information for two accounts with the same
payee?
A) You can create two different versions of the same Payee by putting
qualifiers after the name in curly braces. E.g., "Mondo Bank {his}" and "Mondo
Bank {hers}". The information in the braces and the braces themselves will not
print on checks or matter much of anywhere else except where it counts--you
can enter transactions to the same payee and have different underlying Payee
information in Money.
You can also use curly braces around information in memo fields if you don't
want certain information in your memo to print on your checks. Cool, eh?
Q) How do I handle employer reimbursable expenses?
A) There are a few ways to treat employer reimbursables. Some people prefer
creating a cash account (entitled "Reimbursed Expenses" or similar). Treat
expenses to be reimbursed as transfers in from the account used to pay for the
expense, and treat reimbursements as transfers from this account to the
account destined to receive the reimbursement.
Another way would be to use an expense category (entitled "Job-Related
Expenses:Reimbursable" or similar). Treat expenses to be reimbursed as debits
against the category, and treat reimbursements as credits against the
category. Depending on your Tools|Options setting, Money may complain about
using an expense category for what is an income transaction, You can tell
Money this is what you intend. In addition, if your taxing authority allows
for the deduction/treatment of unreimbursed employee expenses (as in the
United States), be sure to associate the expense category to the proper tax
form/line. This way, any monies not reimbursed will appear as an outstanding
balance in tax-related reports/calculations.
Thanks to Derrick Cole for this answer.
Q) How do I treat my income tax refund/bill for the prior year?
A) There are several different ways to treat this.
Probably the "best" way to handle this with the least side effects is one
suggested by Chris Cowles: If you don't already have one, create a "bank"
account (it doesn't have to be associated with any bank) for money owed to
you. Flag it as a 'budget' account on the details page. Record a transaction
increasing (or decreasing) the balance on that account, categorized to your
income tax expense category, dated 12/31/[tax year in question]. That adjusts
your income tax expenses to reflect reality. When you get the refund, record
the deposit as a transfer to checking from the asset account. Alternately,
when you pay the bill, record this as a transfer from checking to the asset
account, payable to the taxman or woman, as you prefer. Either way, this
transaction is budget-neutral.
You can also use/create categories for this that are flagged to not be
included in tax reporting (federal prior year due or refunded) or are flagged
to be included (state prior year due or refunded). These would be categories
like Taxes:Federal Income Tax (prior year) or Taxes:State Income Tax (prior
year). This has the downside of artificially reducing or increasing your tax
expenses in the tax year in question. This can have budget planner
complications.
Q) How do I treat taxable fringe benefits (imputed income)?
A) Imputed income is the tax accountants' term for income (typically in the
form of an employer paid benefit) that the tax law says you owe tax on even
though you never got any money. (This stuff gets reported in box 12 of form
W-2. The cost of life insurance over $50k is reported as code C.)
Here's how I handle this income in Money--it seems to work and doesn't
bollocks up the tax estimator:
On the wages tab of my paycheck:
Wages & Salary:Imputed Income $x (I created this category)
On the deductions after taxes tab:
Insurance:Life $x
Q) How do other users account for ATM withdrawals?
A) Many users setup a dedicated cash account, I call mine "Pocket Change".
Transfer the money to the cash account, enter cash transactions in the cash
account, and balance it occasionally against the amount of cash you have on
hand, entering either an adjustment income (Other Income:Found Money) or
expense (Miscellaneous:[unassigned]) transaction to get back in sync vs. the
amount of money in your pocket. You don't have to record everything. Just
record the things you remember or care about or have receipts for or whatever.
If the amount you are writing off seems to be getting out of hand, you can
track more closely. If it's getting to be a pain, track less closely and write
off more.
If this is too much of a hassle or if your cash spending is sufficiently
small/rare as to not be worth worrying about, you can just use splits to
account for it. Say you get $50 from the ATM, spend $40 of tickets to the ball
game and pocket the $10 to spend over the next week or two. You can split a
withdrawal of $50 into $40 for Leisure:Sporting Events and $10 for
Miscellaneous:[unassigned].
Q) I don't want to send the whole amount of my phone bill this month, but how
do I categorize the whole expense?
A) (This question suggests a new FAQ section: Credit Counseling.)
Assuming that an Account for this payee is not appropriate (see "When should I
create an Account instead of a Payee? Aren't Payees just Accounts? Or is my
Payee really a Category?"), one way to treat this is to enter a split
transaction with the total amount of what you are going to pay them and splits
with the entire expense categorized and then some negative number against some
Income category like "Other Income:Screw 'em, they'll get it later" or similar
for the amount you aren't paying. When they catch up with you and you pay them
this amount, do another split in the total amount you are going to pay them
and the splits are the expense of the amount you are paying them that hasn't
been expensed before, and the next split entry is a positive amount against
the Income category "Other Income:Screw 'em, they'll get it later" in the
amount you are going to cough up. Money will complain that you are entering an
expense against an income category--tell it to get over it. Once they get all
their money from you, the total income against "Other Income:Screw 'em,
they'll get it later" will fall to $0.
If you need to do this with several payees simultaneously and want to keep
track of the separate unpaid balances due, probably the only good choice is to
temporarily create liability accounts for each unpaid balance. The basic steps
here would be to create the liability account(s), record the expenses and the
addition to the liability in a split transaction when you pay the partial
amount, and then pay down the liability with transfers. Example transactions
with a newly created liability account--created with $0 starting
balance--named "Unpaid Phone Co Balance":
First transaction total $10 (paid amount), split #1: $45 Utilities:Telephone,
split #2: ($35) Transfer:Unpaid Phone Co Balance
Nth transaction (paying it off): total $65 (paid amount, split #1: $45
Utilities Telephone, split #2 $20 Transfer:Unpaid Phone Co Balance
When you get the liability account balance back down to $0, you can just close
the liability account.
Q) I entered a transaction for something I bought. Now I returned the thing
for credit. How do I enter that?
A) This question also comes up in other contexts like "I bought lunch for a
friend on my credit card last week; he paid me in cash today. How do I deal
with that?" The concern in these cases is generally that the amount of
spending in the original category may get distorted for reporting and budget
purposes.
The best way to treat this is to put in another transaction against the same
expense category you used originally but make it a deposit or a credit amount,
as appropriate to the account type. Depending on the setting of
Tools|Options|Categories|Require the correct type of category for each
transaction, Money may issue a warning about using an expense category for an
income. You can tell it that you know what you are doing and it will let you
do it. (This setting is at Tools|Settings in M05.)
Some reports, e.g., Spending by Category, may require customization to include
both debits and credits against the expense category for this to show up.
Thanks to John Buschman for pointing out that this FAQ should be in the UFAQ.
Q) I get a pay advance on the 15th and a full paycheck less the advance at the
end of the month. How do I track this in Money?
A) The best bet here is to use a paycheck on the 15th that just has one entry
on the after tax tab of "negative" after tax expenses in the amount of the
check, expensed against some category like Other Income:Advance Pay. Then, on
the alternate paycheck, after taxes tab, have an exactly equal but positive
amount against the same category. Thus, these two net to $0. Money tracks
everything else off the entries on the end-of-month complete stub. The after
tax tab is to keep Money Tax Estimator happy. When entering an expense against
an income item, Money may complain depending on your Tools|Options settings.
Tell it to get over it.
An alternate method that should work, pointed out by Artie, is to put the
advance in as a positive Wage & Salary:Gross Pay (or similar) on the Wages tab
and then reduce the amount of the same category on the final paycheck
transaction by the advance amount. This may be the best approach depending on
how the stubs depict all of this and how much math/lookup you want to do by
hand. You have to be very careful what you do with the first entry on the
Wages tab of a paycheck as it holds special significance to Tax Estimator.
However you set it up; if you use Tex Estimator, check to make sure that the
results you are getting are sane.
Q) I paid the phone bill, but my roommate owes me half of it. How do I track
that in Money?
A) There are two basic approaches to this. Which you pick depends on how
frequent this requirement is and how carefully you want to track this
obligation--i.e., is the roommate really all that trustworthy.
The first approach: Pay the Utilities:Phone bill. Then record some
Utilities:Phone income when your roommate reimburses his share. Depending on
your settings, Money will whine about an income categorized as an expense.
Tell it that this is really what you want to do.
The second approach: Create a cash account to track your roommate's balance.
Pay the Utilities:Phone bill. Add a second transaction for the same category
depositing half the amount into your roommate's balance account. (This is a
receivable--an asset--so it is a deposit here. Using the same category
effectively reduces your spending in this category.) When your roommate pays
her share, transfer the amount from the roommate's balance account to whatever
account you deposit it in. Whatever the positive balance of that account is
what she still owes you.
Q) I'm distributing my 401(k)/withdrawing from my IRA--how do I categorize the
transfer as income?
A) The question frames the issue. This transfer from a tax-deferred Investment
account to a Cash Account is not Income in the accounting sense. It's already
your money. You didn't get richer by moving it from the tax-deferred account
to the cash account. Thus, in the accounting sense favored by Money, Transfer
is correct and categorizing it as Income isn't correct. But the problem is
that the IRS treats money coming out of the tax-deferred accounts as taxable
earned income. (Even that is a muddled picture. If the principal includes
after-tax contributions, then not all of the distribution/withdrawal is
treated for tax purposes as taxable earned income.)
While the Tax Estimator in Money is smart enough to ignore various earnings in
the accounts set as tax-deferred, it isn't smart enough to deal with
distributions/withdrawals from these accounts. (The before/after tax
contributions problem may be one of the reasons they've elected to "not go
there.")
So how do you get Tax Estimator and the tax reporting to deal with your
distribution/withdrawal?
There are a number of possible ways, each of them imperfect. Possibilities
include:
You can use some tool besides Money to manage the tax estimating. Excel is
frequently a handy tool to have around to solve things Money can't.
You can enter the income in Tax Estimator by hand. You can do this buy going
into Tax Estimator, on the Income page. click on the Wages income link, and
then use the option to add additional income that's not in your Money file.
If you do not have an Investment Cash Account associated with the Investment
Account that you are selling down, your choice is probably limited to the "two
transaction" method posted by Cal Learner--MVP. This is doing the Sell
transaction with no Transfer To account for the proceeds in one transaction
and doing an Income transaction, for the same amount, in the cash account
receiving the funds. One downside to this is that the transactions are not
joined in any logical way in Money, only in your head.
You can use the "unassigned split" option posted by Michael Gordon. Here you
to have the Transfer from the Investment Cash Account be part of a split with
a similar amount categorized as some Income Category that is set to work and
play well with the Tax Estimator, etc. The split is unbalanced--the elements
don't add up to the transaction net--to keep from "creating" money. Say the
transferred amount is $2,000; the split would have the $2,000 transfer and
$2,000 of income--adding up to $4,000, not the $2,000 desired total for the
transaction. You'd tell Money you know there is unassigned income in the split
and you really want to do it that way when it complains.
If the unassigned split offends your sense of precision, a variant of this is
to add a separate expense to balance the transaction against some made-up
expense category, say Miscellaneous : Tax-Deferred Income Offset.
Jeff M suggested an interesting alternative to these last two: use a Paycheck
transaction. In this case, you'd probably have to enter the Paycheck in the
account that you are transferring the money to. (The umpmfaq has not tested
this to see which works best with Tax Estimator.) The Paycheck would have some
income on the wages tab, the after-tax tab would have a Transfer from--in a
negative amount--the Investment Cash Account. You could either save the
transaction with unassigned income or have the bogus offsetting expense
category. This method might also prove valuable for 401(k) distributions,
since these distributions are typically required to have taxes withheld. This
tax withholding could be entered directly in the Paycheck transaction.
Likewise, using a Paycheck would provide a ready model for separating the
before taxed income portion of a distribution and the after-tax, i.e., already
taxed, portion.
Q) I've been lazy and haven't balanced in months. How do I catch up?
A) If you wish to start fresh and declare an account balanced, you can mark
all entries balanced. Select the register view to show only unreconciled
transactions, sort by date, and go to the oldest transaction. Hold down
Cntl+Shift+M and let auto-repeat work through the transactions until none are
left showing. Then balance, making the starting and ending balance match the
known balance. Choose the balance date to be the day after your last
transaction. This is not the normal procedure; it just starts you with an
amnesty for former balancing.
Thereafter, follow the normal procedure. Look at the balancing movie clip from
your Money disk.
Answer courtesy of Cal Learner--MVP.
Q) Money won't let me make a Loan Payment from my Paycheck. Why not? What do I
do?
A) A paycheck is a specialized instance of the generalized form of split
transaction. A loan payment is a specialized instance of the generalized form
of split transaction. In Money, a transaction that is a split of another
transaction cannot itself be split. Thus, a loan payment cannot be made from a
paycheck.
The general way to accomplish this is in two transactions via a holding
account. E.g., transfer the payment amount to the associated Asset Account in
the Paycheck and then schedule the Loan Payment to be made from the Asset
Account. Yes, it creates a bunch of silly looking paired +x Transfer, -x Loan
Payment Transactions in the Asset Account. But there is no other way to record
it in Money.
There is an MSKB article with more detail on doing this; the reference is
courtesy of Kimberly Renna, Microsoft MVP - Consumer Products.
References:
MSKB: Q148280 Loan payments from paycheck
Q) My wife and I have two accounts at the same bank with different passwords.
How do I enter two passwords in Money?
A) This answer used to point to an MSKB item that has since been "disappeared"
from the Microsoft Support site. (Thanks to Jon Anderson for pointing this
out.) The old method was to define a new FI with a slightly different name
("First Galactic Bank of the Milky Way {his}" and "First Galactic Bank of the
Milky Way {hers}") so that you can still have one user name/password
associated with each FI. Now that Money tries to make you use FIs they define,
so that the whole Yodlee thing will work, this probably doesn't work. What
does work is still an open question. If anybody figures it out, let me know
and I'll update this answer.
Q) Why don't my transfers to savings show up under some category in my
budget?
A) Transfers do not have an income or expense category because they are net
worth neutral. Expenses make you poorer, Income makes you richer; Transfers do
neither.
For this reason, Transfers between accounts that are included in the Budget
Planner (see the account details for information) will NOT show up in your
budget. Only by excluding the savings account from the Budget Planner will you
see the scheduled transfer (and then only grouped under the "Transfers out of
budget accounts" Budget Group.
Answer derived from one provided by Derrick Cole
How to do things in Money: Investments
--------------------------------------
Q) How can I adjust the asset allocation of my investments?
A) Money has only limited asset allocation capability and some features just
plain don't work. (This much improved in Money 2007 so if this is important to
you, then consider upgrading.) First, we'll review available Investment Types
and Asset Classes, and then we'll look at what you can and cannot with asset
allocation in various versions of Money.
Investment Type
When you first tell Money about an investment, you must assign it to one of
these Investment Types:
1. Bond
2. CD or US Savings Bond
3. Equity or Index Option
4. Money Market
5. Mutual Fund
6. Stock
7. Employee Stock Option
This is a pretty comprehensive list, but if you have investments types that
are not here, then the Money reports that use these types won't be very useful
to you. You cannot create your own Investment Types.
Asset Class
In order to get an asset allocation report in Money, each investment must be
assigned to an Asset Class. The available Asset Classes are:
1. Money-Market/Cash
2. Bond
3. Small-Cap
4. Mid-Cap
5. Large-Cap
6. Other
Again, this is a pretty good list, but if you have an investment that doesn't
fit into one of these classes, you are out of luck. You can't create your own
Asset Class, and every investment has to fit into a single Asset Class. Things
like lifecycle funds obviously don't fit well in this scheme.
Assigning Asset Classes
Money assigns Asset Classes for everything except Stocks and Mutual Funds when
the investment is created. For example, Money always assigns the "Bond" Asset
Class to the "Bond" Investment Type. For stocks and mutual funds, however,
there are several possible Asset Classes, so you or Money need to make a
choice. Here's how it works.
Stock Asset Classes
For stocks that are listed and have a symbol, Money will automatically assign
an Asset Class every time you do an online update of investment prices. You
can go into the Investment Details screen and change the Asset Class, but
Money will change it back at the next online update. If the stock is not
listed, then online updates have no effect, and money will use whatever Asset
Class you put in the Investment Details screen.
Mutual Fund Asset Classes
This is where things get weird. For mutual funds that have investments that
fit into a single Asset Class, things work pretty much as you would expect.
However, for mutual funds that have investments in multiple Asset Classes,
things don't work at all.
Mutual Funds with a Single Asset Class
For mutual funds that are listed and you have entered a symbol, Money will
automatically assign an Asset Class the first time you do an online update of
investment prices. This Asset Class cannot be changed and the only way to see
it is to run an asset allocation report and see where the investment shows up.
Note that you cannot see this Asset Class in the investment details screen.
(See below.) You can beat Money to the punch by assigning an Asset Class
manually before doing an online update.
If the mutual fund is not listed or if you want to assign an Asset Class
manually, then you can do so. Unlike stocks, you do not do this in the
Investment Details screen. Instead, what you need to do is go to Investing |
Asset Allocation and click thru the "Learn about Asset Allocation" to see the
portfolio's asset allocation. The new investment will be highlighted as one
without an Asset Class. If you click on it, you will be able to assign any of
the allowed Asset Classes for mutual funds.
You can also use the manual process to assign an Asset Class to a listed
mutual fund. To do this, you must do the manual assignment before you do an
online update. Once you have assigned the Asset Class manually, it will not
subsequently change when you "Update Prices Online". And, as noted above, you
can't view it or change it manually either. This is different from stocks,
where any manual changes will be overridden by the next Online Update.
Mutual Funds with More than One Asset Class
If you have any mutual funds that have investments in more that one Asset
Class, the asset allocation features and reports will not be useful. Money
will either assign a single Asset Class at the first online update or will
force you to assign a single Asset Class manually. This is not immediately
obvious, because the Investment Details screen for mutual funds appears to
allow you to assign a mutual fund investment to a percentage over the
following Asset Classes:
1. Cash
2. Bond
3. Small-Cap
4. Mid-Cap
5. Large-Cap
6. Other
This would seem to be just what is needed for "blended" or "target date"
("lifecycle") mutual funds. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. You can enter
the data but:
- Money doesn't use this information in the asset allocation screens or in
any reports
- You can only view the data in the data entry screen
- When you update prices online, Money will change the values you entered to
other values. Frequently, these other values will bear no relation to reality
and will not even add up to 100%.
As noted above, Money 2007 fixed this problem. It does allow mutual funds to
be split using the Investment Details screen and the asset allocation report
works properly.
Answer provided by Bill Becker. Bill also graciously provided a document with
some supplemental information.
References:
umpmfaq.info: Asset Allocation
Q) How come Money whines about a symbol used on a deleted investment? Why are
deleted investments not really?
A) Create a dividend in some investment account for the security in question.
This will resurrect the "deleted" investment. Then you can go into its details
and delete the symbol. Then you can delete the dividend transaction. Then you
can go in and "delete" the investment again, if this is your wish. Nobody here
knows exactly why Money remembers "deleted" investments.
Q) How come my bond fund investment is off by a factor of 100?
A) Bond funds are not bonds. They are mutual funds. Bonds in real life and in
Money are priced as a percentage of total face (par) value, as they are in
quotes from brokers. The price of a bond bought at a 10% discount from face
value would be 90.0. Prices over 100 would be bonds bought at a premium.
Mutual funds, like bond funds, are priced in Money by the price per share.
(Thanks to Cal Learner -- MVP for an important rewrite to this question.) See
also "I bought a $1,000 bond for $850--Money tells me it cost $85. What
gives?" for the corollary question about the pricing of real bond investments.
Q) How do I download/import historical quotes?
A) Money won't download any quotes besides current. There is no easy way to
import historic quotes, either.
Q) How do I fix bad investment names in the Buy Investment/CD pull-down?
A) The entries in the pull-downs come straight from the table of investments
you have created in Money. Go to Portfolio|Work With Investments|Choose a
specific investment and select investments to rename, etc, on their individual
detail pages. Go to Portfolio|Work With Investments|Delete an investment to
delete investments. You cannot delete any investments you have any
transactions for, so you may also have to do some account register
maintenance.
Cal Learner suggested another technique to delete an investment that avoids
some problems others have experienced if a symbol ever needs to be reused. Go
to the investment details page. Clear the field for symbol. If no transactions
have been entered for this investment, there will be a delete choice listed
under common tasks. Click it.
Q) How do I handle a mutual fund merger?
A) There are two methods that work. You can pick one depending on whether you
previously held both of the funds involved in the merger or not.
The technique suggested by Cal Learner for the case where you didn't hold both
funds previously:
- enter a split for the share ratio involved (you can use the NAVs at the
exchange times 100)
- go into the Investment Details and change the name and symbol
- record the event in the investment comments.
If you previously held both funds, there is no solution without side effects.
Kevin suggested what is probably the least bad solution:
- sell the retired fund for your exact cost basis
- buy the correct number of shares in the surviving fund for the total amount
of the old cost basis. Let Money figure the share price.
The side effect of this is that it will create a one-time unrealized capital
gain to match the entire gain you were carrying for the retired fund on the
date you set for the transaction. This will likely cause inaccurate
performance reporting and may propagate to things like long-term/short term
capital gains reporting.
Q) How do I rename an Investment Cash Account?
A) Go to the Investment Account Settings (or Details in versions prior to
M05). There's a text box there for Cash Portion Account Name. You can change
it there directly (M05?, M06) or by clicking on the Rename… button (M05?, M04
and previous back to ???). It seems obvious that an Investment Cash Account
should have an Account Settings (Details) Page of its own like all other
accounts. It doesn't.
Q) How do I setup a 401(k) loan?
A) There's no magic method (i.e., no "401k loan wizard.") Here's how I do it:
1) In 401k investment account, sell investments as required by the plan
mechanics to 401k cash account to make funds available.
2) In 401k cash account, "buy" a new "loan" money market investment in amount
of loan amount.
3) Create a new "loan" account with amount and terms of 401k loan.
4) Schedule a periodic loan payment from 401k cash account to pay off the
loan. This is like any other loan in Money.
5) Revise periodic scheduled paycheck deposit to add an after-tax split item
to transfer the loan repayment payment amount to 401k cash account.
6) Revise periodic scheduled investment from 401k cash account to 401k
investment account/investment options as required by the plan mechanics to
reinvest the loan payment amount.
7) At each loan payment to the 401k cash account also enter an interest paid
from the "loan" investment in the 401k investment account to the 401k cash
account and a "sell" of "loan" from the loan investment in the 401k investment
account to the 401k cash account. This is the worst thing since there is no
way to automate it and you have to get the principal and interest appropriate
to each period from either the "loan" account payment entries or a separate
amortization table. (Mine's in Excel.)
The loan balance amortizes from the modified paycheck transfer via the 401k
cash loan payment account. The holdings in the money market "loan" investment
decline and earn interest via the manually entered interest and sell
transactions. The funds get reinvested via the revised periodic investment
transaction.
It's just a lot of work and a lot of transaction entries.
There are "lighter" schemes depending on how much detail you go into tracking
your 401k investments. The scheme outlined above is the manic geek case for
personal accounting anal-retentives. One light weight scheme is listed in the
MSKB.
Thanks to Richard M. Bollar - MVP Microsoft Money for this method.
References:
MSKB: 223174 401(k) loans the MSKB way
Q) How do I track savings bonds in Money? Tracking them as a CD doesn't seem
to provide a way to track their value.
A) Money doesn't handle savings bonds particularly well. They suggest entering
them as CDs and this seems like the least bad way to do so.
Many of us use the Savings Bond Wizard to know the current value of our bonds.
You can transfer, by hand, interest information from the Savings Bond Wizard
to Money but you will have to enter it as reinvested interest, which has other
side effects including creating taxable investment income. This may be what
you want--depending on your tax plans for the bond interest. If you elect to
defer paying interest until maturity, you should set the tax deferred setting
for the investment account holding the bond investment.
In order to keep track of individual bonds, you should create separate
investments for each series/denomination/issue date of bond you hold. (E.g.,
"$100 EE 2002-03" could be an investment name.) Then enter the purchase price
for the total number of like bonds you bought as a Buy Investment. (Say you
buy 5 $100 bonds--investment name, say, "US $100 EE Bond - 2005-08"--at their
$50 purchase price, you enter 250 as both quantity and value.) You might also
consider storing the serial number(s) in the memo field of the buy
transaction.
Thanks to Michael Gordon for an important correction to this answer.
References:
Savings Bond Wizard
Q) How do you change a mutual fund investment to money market investment?
A) It is not trivial, but not as hard as it first appears. A few minutes
should do it.
In the details, remove the existing symbol, and rename the existing "mutual
fund" to something you will never use. Let's suppose you choose zzzz.
Create a new money fund with the correct name and symbol.
Go back to investment zzzz and choose View: Investment Details.
Change each transaction to the fund using the drop-down list. You may have a
problem if you have sells intermingled with buys--it may try to sell more
shares than you have at some point. If so, at some date before the first
transaction, enter a LARGE buy--larger than your maximum share holdings of
this investment at any point--with no source for the investment funds. This
will assure that you always have enough shares to cover all sells. Don't move
the large buy transaction. Just delete it when you are done.
In any case, keep going until there are no more zzzz transactions remaining
except for the large buy to assure sufficient shares for any sell. Once all of
the real transactions are changed to the new investment, you can delete the
temporary buy and "delete" investment zzzz. Answer derived from one originally
posted by Cal Learner--MVP.
Q) I bought a $1,000 bond for $850--Money tells me it cost $85. What gives?
A) Bonds are not priced by the amount of the bond. They are priced as a
percentage of total face (par) value, as they are in quotes from brokers. The
price of a bond bought at a 10% discount from face value would be 90.0. Prices
over 100 would be bonds bought at a premium. A bond, of any value, bought for
a price of 88.5 was "bought at a discount" and cost 88.5% of its face value. A
bond bought at a price of 105 was "bought at a premium" and cost 105% of its
face value.
There is a reference in the MSKB that describes this correctly except that the
sentence that starts "If the current value of the bond exceeds the par value
..." is wrong. The example that follows that sentence is correct.
The Bond Market Association has a really good site explaining bond investing.
Clicking glossary in the left hand column, then looking up "price" gives a
good description of how this works as well.
Thanks for this answer go to Cal Learner -- MVP.
See also "How come my bond fund investment is off by a factor of 100?" for the
corollary question about the pricing of bond mutual fund investments.
References:
Bond Market Association's page on bond investing
MSKB: 121903 How bond investments are priced in Money
Q) I don't hold investments anymore but they still show on the investments
page. Why?
A) To prevent an investment from appearing on the Money Home page, go to the
"Details" page of the investment and use "Delete this Investment". Don't be
alarmed; this only deletes the specified investment from the list of
investments. Any transactions for the specified investment will remain in the
closed account(s). Later, if you attempt to use this investment again, Money
will simply ask if you wish to add the investment back to the list of
investments.
Answer provided by Brent Neville.
Q) I hold the same investment in two accounts. But when I try to enter the
same symbol again Money complains. Why?
A) You only define an Investment once. The symbol is an attribute of the
Investment, not the Account holding of the Investment. When you want to Buy
the same Investment for another Investment Account, choose the Investment from
the drop-down list instead of trying to define the Investment again. An
"Investment" is just a name and a symbol and some price history. The
Investment Account keeps track of holdings of a given Investment. Answer
derived from one by Doug Wilson.
Q) My 401(k) cash account is going negative. How do I enter employer
contributions?
A) There are several ways to accomplish this. Which one you should choose
depends on whether you want to track the cash in association with your
paycheck or not. Probably the easiest way is to schedule a deposit to your
401(k) contributions/cash account in the Bills & Deposits section, the amount
and date of which correspond to the match. Use an income category setup to be
excluded from tax reports like "Gross Pay:Employer Matching," so these funds
aren't factored in to tax reports and Tax Planner calculations.
The disadvantage to this method is that it decouples the match money from your
paychecks, which, depending on your plan, may cause problems for things like
matching money associated with overtime income.
The more elaborate way that gets the contributions tied to your
paycheck--assuming that your plan matches on a pay period basis--but doesn't
hose up the Tax Planner--is to enter an income entry on the After Taxes tab
(use a negative number--trust me on this) against the "Gross Pay:Employer
Matching" or similar, tax-neutral, category. Then do a Transfer of the same
amount to the 401(k) contributions account on the next line of the split.
Thanks for Derrick Cole for contributions to this answer.
How to do things in Money: Mortgages and stuff
----------------------------------------------
Q) How do I record additional principal paid with my house payment?
A) Add an extra entry in the details of the Loan Payments and/or scheduled
Loan Payments. This extra entry should be the amount of extra principal you
want to pay. Use category Principal Transfer for this entry; the loan account
for the payment will be the recipient of this transfer.
Q) How should I handle my mortgage escrow account?
A) Let's assume you already have a loan account and scheduled payment setup
for the mortgage. If you haven't already setup the loan, you can setup the
account described below and then specify the transfer as an "Other Fees" item
to the create loan wizard.
Next, setup a cash account for the escrow. You can call it Escrow (Mortgage).
In your Loan Payment scheduled transaction, add a split element for
Transfer:Escrow for the total amount of escrow collected with each payment.
Enter transactions to pay the taxes (category Taxes:Property Tax or similar)
and insurance (category Insurance:Homeowner's or similar) from the Money
escrow account, as your mortgage processor actually does, when they tell you
what the amounts paid are.
You can balance the escrow account to the statements of escrow activity.
Microsoft has added an MSKB item to answer the same question. The link was
posted in the newsgroup by Himanshu Gohel.
References:
MSKB: 899623 escrow account How-To
Q) I just made an extra principal payment to a loan. Why can't I just use
Transfer to show this in Money?
A) It seems like many versions ago you could. Then we could use just a
Principal Transfer. Somewhere along the way even this became too simple. The
way to do it now is to use the Special Category named 'Loan Payment'. Money
(at least recent versions) will then ask if you want to include both principal
and interest. You have to say yes, even if that's not what you want to do. The
next panel will ask you to pick a loan or enter a new loan account name. Pick
the name of the loan you want to transfer principal to. Then you can go into
the split where you will find a Principal Transfer, an interest expense item
and possibly other items depending on how you defined your loan payment; you
can delete every element but the Principal Transfer. Note that Money may be a
little testy about changing your amount to the appropriate amount for the next
regular payment, your memo to the account number, and your payee to the
pre-defined payee. You can fix all of this to the way you want it if you are
persistent. You can add or change other elements of the payment for things
like service charges or whatever. But if you need to do this, now's the time
to do so as noted next.
If you reduce the Loan Payment to just the one Principal Transfer element,
when you enter it in the register, it will be displayed in the future as just
a Principal Transfer and it cannot be split back into a Loan Payment. Seems
like a long way to go to get to the Principal Transfer you wanted when you
started.
Thanks to Chris Cowles for recommending this Q/A and providing a draft.
Q) I just refinanced my mortgage; how do I enter all of this into Money?
A) In some versions, there's a wizard of limited utility, you can navigate to
it by going to your current loan page, click Analyze Loan|Consider
Refinancing. This takes you to a page called Loan Worksheet. You can go
through the steps, or, if you have already decided on if/where to refinance,
skip to Comparison and at the bottom of the worksheet click on Refinance a
Loan button. Thanks to Aloke Prasad for these steps. Somewhere along the way
they removed even this wizard. Can't say exactly where, but it's missing from
M07.
The wizard doesn't attempt to deal with all of the things like closing costs
and escrow exchanges; one that did would be hard to devise given the number of
different ways this could go down and the number of different ways this could
be recorded in Money. This basic outline applies no matter whether you are
ending in cash in or cash out--enter the splits off of the settlement sheet
and all should work out.
To do this by hand, remember: the split is your friend. You can enter the
whole thing in two transactions that mirror the information provided on the
settlement sheet at your closing.
For an example (and there are certainly other ways it could be done) here are
related transactions from the last time I refinanced. These are in MoneyLink
format. It may be easier to read if you get the whole thing into Excel as
.CSV.
Acct,Payee,Reconciled,Amt,Cat:SubCat,Comment
1st transaction:
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,xxx,000.00,Other Income:Loan
Principal Received,total refi {categorized as other income since M99 would not
allow direct transfer from here to old loan payoff}
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(300.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,administration fee to mortgage broker
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(362.50),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,escrow waiver fee to new payee
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(zzz.94),Interest Expense:Mortgage
Interest,prepaid interest on new loan
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(150.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,settlement fee to title company
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(430.00),Insurance:Title,title
company
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(20.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,tax certificates to title company
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(30.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,express mail charges for payoff
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(50.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,"endorsement/100 & 8.1" to title company
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(61.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,recording fees
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(6.00),Miscellaneous:Service
Charges/Fees,"assignment fee"
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(aaa.96),Interest Expense:Mortgage
Interest,interest portion of payoff
"[temp account, pick one]",[new payee],R,(yyy,694.64),Transfer:[money market
account],{this was a cash out balance}
2nd transaction (a Loan Payment with one split element):
"[temp account, pick one]",[old payee],R,(yyy,190.96),Principal Transfer:[old
mortgage loan account],payoff amount of old loan
Note that only one new account, the new loan, was setup and that some of the
categories may not be standard. For the temp account, I used my pocket change
account, but see below for more information.
Note also that I had no escrow for insurance/taxes on either side of this
deal. If you have an existing escrow account setup and plan on setting up a
new one for the new mortgage, you can do the same basic thing: transfer the
existing escrow balance into the first transaction and/or transfer funds as
required from the first transaction to the new account.
It doesn't matter which account you put the transaction in, but if you are
writing a check at closing or getting a payout, you may want to include this
in that account just to make things clearer. The sum of the first transaction
and the second transaction should be zero unless you want to have the non-zero
net of the two transactions represent cash in or out at closing.
The only reason this needs to be done as two transactions is that the payoff
principal payment to the old loan becomes a principal transfer in that account
which Money treats like a split--and a split cannot be part of another split.
Similarly, bear in mind that the only way to transfer principal to a loan
account, at least in recent versions of Money, is to start with a Loan Payment
and use the Principal Transfer portion of the split it proposes. You can
delete the interest expense component if you want, but the Principal Transfer
component of a Loan Payment is treated as sacred by Money.
You original loan may show some minor debit or credit balance after the payoff
transfer due to differences in how Money and the lender have computed interest
over time. (Mine was $0.43.) You can just write this difference off with an
Account Adjustment income or expense transaction entered at the end of the old
loan before you close the account.
Money provides no direct way to account for loan proceeds received. So, I just
entered this by hand as noted. The category had to be created and was defined
to not show up on tax reports. If you are an accounting maven and are
concerned that this really isn't accounting income, then you can leave the
category unassigned. Alternately, see "How can I transfer money (to / from)
the loan I (made / borrowed)?" for the workaround.
Q) I just took out an interest only mortgage; how do I setup such a loan in
Money?
A) Set it up like any other mortgage loan except set a balloon payment equal
to the borrowed amount. If you know the payment amount, leave the interest
rate blank and Money will calculate it for you. It may differ slightly from
the quoted rate for lots of reasons that aren't worth losing sleep over. If it
differs by a lot, more investigation is probably in order. Answer derived from
one provided by Cal Learner -- MVP.
"ltrox43" pointed out that there is now an MSKB item on this subject. They
take a lot more words to say what's above.
References:
MSKB: 893719 interest only mortgage
Q) We just sold our house--how do we account for this in Money?
A) See the answer to "I just refinanced my mortgage; how do I enter all of
this into Money?" for the basic technique. In the case of a sale, just add
into the transaction a transfer in of the balance of your asset account, if
any, and a split element to account for the "gain" income, if any, required to
get to the right payout value.
Q) We just wrote an earnest money check to buy a house. How do we deal with
all of this in Money?
A) Buying and owning a house creates the most complex set of Money
transactions and accounts of any activity most of us engage in. But it's
really fairly simple and easily managed by breaking down the activities. Many
of these activities are treated in other places in the FAQ. This answer will
refer to those and provide an overview to the whole process.
Buying a house involves transactions before purchase, transactions when the
purchase closes, new liability for paying the mortgage--unless you paid cash
for the entire purchase, a new asset added to your net worth, new bills to pay
every month, and quite likely a new account holding some of your money in
escrow for your mortgagor to pay some recurring expenses like insurance and
property taxes.
The first thing to deal with is the earnest money deposit and any pre-purchase
expenses. The pre-purchase expenses (a property inspection or a credit report
or similar) are just expenses you can account for like any other expense. Some
category like Miscellaneous:Fees and Service Charges might be appropriate. The
earnest money deposit is another matter. You can think of this as contributing
to your equity in the house, and eventually you should do this, but that's
something you may want to defer since things may happen between now and
closing and maybe now is not the best time to set all of that up. So, the best
bet now is to expense it against some category like Miscellaneous:Deposit,
Credit to Follow. (You may need to create a category like this.) When you
enter the transactions for the closing, you can put in a split element to
reverse the amount of this transaction against this category (use a negative
number against the original category, Miscellaneous:Deposit, Credit to Follow
if you are following the example,) then add this amount to the amount you
transfer to the Asset account.
When you close the purchase, you will receive a settlement sheet itemizes all
of the debits and credits on your half of the transaction. Debits include
things like your payment to purchase the house and various buyer-paid fees.
Your credits include things like the proceeds of the loan you accepted and the
earnest money deposit. With several exceptions, this activity is similar to
and can be handled the same way as a mortgage refinance. See "I just
refinanced my mortgage; how do I enter all of this into Money?" for more
information. Since buying a house typically doesn't involve an existing loan
payoff on your behalf, you should be able to enter the closing transaction in
Money with one Money transaction. The splits of this transaction should total
the amount of money you take to the closing.
As the refinance FAQ notes, follow the settlement sheet, and remember the
split is your friend. The exceptions to the refinance FAQ are handling the
earnest money deposit, adding the asset to your net worth, and handling setup
of escrow accounts. Treating the earnest money deposit was covered above.
Treatment of the asset and escrow accounts is covered below.
Mortgage loan accounts are easily created in Money. Setup a new loan account
(you can specify Loan or Mortgage as the kind of account) and follow the
prompts of the create loan wizard. Several notes are in order. First, there is
no good way to "transfer" the proceeds of the loan from the loan account to
the closing transaction. As noted above, techniques and a workaround can be
found in the refinance answer. Second, the loan wizard may not like the exact
principal, interest rate, payment, and term you enter. You can leave the
interest rate blank and it will compute the appropriate interest rate for you.
Note that the "additional fees" the Loan Account setup wizard mentions may
well be transfers to an escrow account that are treated below.
Buying the house adds to your net worth, even if most of this addition is
offset by the liability for the mortgage. A Money Asset Account provides a way
to account for this. It also provides a handy way to keep track of the cost
basis of the investment. Cost basis is something you may eventually need to
know for tax purposes. An Asset Account is not required, but for these
reasons, creating one is recommended.
When you create a mortgage loan, Money prompts you to create an Asset Account
or associate this loan with an existing asset account. You can set an Asset
Account up now or set it up separately later. If you set it up separately
later, Money will ask if you want to associate any loan accounts with this
asset account. You should specify the Money Loan Account you created for the
mortgage. The dialog for setting up an Asset Account asks for initial value of
the asset. We recommend $0. We'll establish its value in the next several
steps.
One of the "buying a house" exceptions cited above to the refinance FAQ is the
problem of accounting for the net worth impact of the new asset. Here it is:
you transfer the entire purchase price from the closing transaction to the
Asset Account with a split element, category Transfer:[name of asset acct], in
the closing transaction. This will be essential to making that transaction
balance.
Once this is done, you can account for additions to your cost basis (like
adding a swimming pool, but not like painting the place) by transferring the
increase in cost basis to the asset account rather than expensing it outright.
So, while you might call painting the house Housing:Maintenance, you can call
building the pool Transfer:[name of asset account]. You invested and made the
house worth more: this is how you can track it.
Many mortgage lenders require you to pre-pay expenses like insurance and
property taxes with your monthly payments and then they pay the bills on your
behalf. This arrangement is called an escrow account. "How should I handle my
mortgage escrow account?" discusses escrow accounts. Your escrow account may
need some transfer from the closing transactions for money retained at closing
to build up the initial balance of the escrow account if this is a buyer
expense. On the other hand, you may want to create the escrow account with a
starting balance if there is seller money transferred to your escrow account
to cover their portion of, say, taxes paid in arrears. Your settlement sheet
should explain all of this; if it's not clear, by all means ask the mortgage
company representative who presides over the closing to explain it to you.
One final thought: if you anticipate owning multiple houses or just want to
better understand why expenses occur, it may make sense to consider using what
Money calls Classification. Classification provides up to two additional
two-level attributes that can be assigned to transactions similar to Category.
For instance, you could define the first classification as Class with Classes
and Subclasses like Property:123 Elm St. Then you can use Class in addition to
Category to aggregate transactions for reporting and the like. As an example,
Taxes:Property Tax and Insurance:Homeowner’s expenses could both also be
associated with Property:123 Elm St. Read more about classification in on-line
help to learn more.
How to do things in Money: Option Settings
------------------------------------------
Q) How can I make this infernal MoneySide thing go away?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10), Money2003 (v.11)]
A) Click Help in MoneySide, then Settings. Under "Open MoneySide" select
"Never" and then "Done."
Answer provided by Bryan Escher.
Once you've gotten rid of MoneySide you will probably notice that Money has
also dropped an icon onto your IE toolbar. To remove it, select
View|Toolbar|Customize. Select MoneySide on the column on the right. Click
Remove.
This thing was so popular that when they eliminated it from M04 many months
went by before there was a single mention in the newsgroup that it had
disappeared.
Q) How do I stop Money from talking to me?
A) R-click on the speaker icon in the upper right corner of the Money home
page and select Turn all Audio Help off. Perhaps because they got too many
support calls asking just this question, Microsoft removed the audio help from
M05.
Q) How do I turn off the ads?
A) Tools|Options|General|Turn off sponsorship and shopping links is as good as
it gets. MSN ads will still be all over the thing. This also will not prevent
Microsoft from sending you ads in the form of Money Updates, though they have
only done this occasionally. M05 moved this to [Windows menu:]
Tools|Settings|Program Settings|General|Display|Turn off sponsorship and
shopping links. They also made added a much more pervasive and difficult to
avoid coupling of Money the application to MSN Money the web-based advertising
delivery engine. "Most users prefer" it this way, apparently.
Q) I keep changing my Tools|Options settings but they keep changing back.
Why?
A) A number of unconfirmed reports indicate that there are problems with
changing Tools|Options settings when Money Express is active and having the
changes be retained the next time Money is restarted. If you use Money Express
(Money in the System Tray at startup/login) and find that Tools|Options
settings are not being retained from one use of Money to the next, try this:
- Exit Money Express
- Make your Tools|Options settings change in Money
- Exit Money
- Restart Money Express (logout then login/reboot)
- Restart Money and see if your Tools|Options settings change has been
retained
Since M05 eliminated Money Express--perhaps because eliminating it was easier
than fixing this problem among others--this answer is probably not relevant if
you are having this problem in M05.
Q) I made the cash flow forecast and upcoming bills disappear from my
register. How do I get them back?
A) Try the settings in Tools|Options|Feedback|Personalized Feedback in the
Account Register and Portfolio|Options… M05 removed these settings and the
feedback pane. See "What happened to the register view spending thermometers
and forecast cash flow in M05?"
Q) What is the icon in my SysTray? How do I turn it off? How do I get it
back?
A) The icon in the System Tray is the Money Express icon, and is turned on by
default with a new Money installation. It has several functions when enabled.
It notifies you of upcoming bills and deposits, allows for quick transaction
entry without opening Money, and provides easy configuration of events and
alerts.
If you don't want to use it, you can turn it off using one of two methods. If
Money is open, click on Tools, Options, Bills and Deposits tab. Uncheck the
Use Money Express option. If Money is not open and you want this feature
disabled, right mouse click on the icon in the System Tray, choose Exit Money
Express, and then click the No option so that Money Express is disabled and
will no longer run on your system.
If you decide after turning it off that you want to use it again, simply open
Money and go to Tools, Options, Bills and Deposits tab. Check the Use Money
Express option and click OK. Your Money Express icon will return.
M05 eliminated this problem by eliminating the feature. See "What happened to
Money Express in M05?"
Answer courtesy of Kimberly Renna-Griego.
Q) Why do I have to create an entry in the Payees every time I spend money
somewhere new?
A) You don't. Set Tools|Options|Editing|Confirm new payees and, every time you
enter a Payee you've never entered before, Money will ask you if you want to
add the Payees to the explicit Payees list or not. M05 moved this to [Windows
menu:] Tools|Settings|Account settings (global)|Transaction confirmation
options|Confirm new payees. This was to make it easier to get to.
How to do things in Money: Printing and Reports
-----------------------------------------------
Q) How do I get Money to print my name and address and the MICR information on
my checks?
A) You don't. There are many sources for pre-printed checks that supply the
format expected by Money. On this stock, Money will print payee, payee
address, date, amount, memo, and accounting information on the stub. It will
not print your name and address, the bank's name and address, or the MICR
stripe across the bottom. There are also 3rd party solutions, including
VersaCheck and IDAutomation Check Printing Software for printing the
"pre-printed" information on blank check stock. (Thanks to Cal Learner for the
link to IDAutomation.) Also, see the answer to "Back to the check stock
question: Isn't it obvious that Money should print the MICR data?"
References:
IDAutomation
VersaCheck
Q) How do I get rid of all of these Monthly Reports? They must be why my file
is so big.
A) You don't and they aren't. The list of reports is generated when you enter
the Monthly Reports screen based on the first transaction date in your file.
The reports are generated dynamically from your data. There is no evidence
that the list of available Monthly Reports adds any size to Money data files.
M05 reduces the list to a year--probably solely to avoid this question on the
support lines--worse, they eliminated any possibility of looking at periods
older than that. Not that the old reports were terribly useful, but it cost
nothing to keep them and the Microsoft development team went out of their way
to eliminate them. Go figure.
Q) When I print several sheets of checks the check numbers get reversed.
Why?
A) Check the printer driver settings for a setting to reverse the page order.
(For instance, for an Epson inkjet on WinXP, this is located at printer
properties|General|Printing Preferences…|Layout|Page Order.) Many of the print
drivers have this now so that pages coming out face up come out correctly
collated by printing the last page first. Alternately, print one sheet or
partial sheet of checks at a time.
Q) Why can't Money do a Print Preview? What can I do to get around this?
A) This seems like an obvious feature for the Money team to add, but they
never have. The workaround a number of users use to save time and consumables
is to use one of the many freeware/shareware PDF-generating printer drivers.
Money prints to this "printer" just like to a real printer, but instead of
printing, they create .PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) files that can be
viewed with the Adobe (Acrobat) Reader. Search google.com for "PDF (freeware
OR shareware)" for lots of possible tools.
Q) Why doesn't Money have something like the Reconciliation Report in
Quicken?
A) Cal Learner pointed out an item in the MSKB that treats this.
References:
MSKB: 176329 "reconciliation report"
Issues
------
Q) Are there any other voodoo tricks that might solve my problem?
A) Voodoo describes seemingly quirky methods that work in strange and
unexplainable ways. A number of voodoo incantations for different symptoms
follow.
All kinds of odd problems in M03 and M04 have been reported fixed by running
the command "regsvr32 msxml3.dll" from the Start|Run box. Nobody seems to know
how registrations for this DLL get trashed, but when they do, bad things
happen.
A chestnut that works occasionally in recent versions of Money is going into
Internet Explorer Internet Options (from IE Tools or from the desktop Internet
Options or from the Internet Options control panel) and deleting all temporary
Internet files.
"vsv" was having Passport "sign-in unsuccessful" errors but found these were
resolved by going to "C:\Documents and Settings\\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\" and deleting the Money folder with all
its subfolders. The msxml3 fix, above, has also been reported to fix Passport
login problems.
Tommy Becker lobbied for inclusion of another classic piece of voodoo in the
FAQ by and it certainly seems to fit nicely in this answer and nowhere else.
Tommy was having problems with different account balances in different account
views, as was a predecessor, "bcmbde," who couldn't get account balances to
agree between the register and account list. In both cases several account
transactions had somehow gotten lost in the bowels of Money. They found this
method, originally contributed by Mark, and updated by Cal Learner and Tommy
Becker, helpful:
1. Make a copy of your Money data file.
2. Open that copy.
3. Delete ALL transactions in the problem account
4. Export that account as a QIF file
5. Examine the QIF file in Notepad.
6. If it is not empty and shows one or more transactions, then those are
likely the culprits.
7. Note the details of those transactions
8. Open up your original file
9. Import the QIF file
10. This should reveal the hidden transactions. So you can now do with them as
you wish (Delete, modify, etc).
To delete transactions in step 3, Clear the Tools|Options|Editing Confirmation
Options boxes. Sort the cash transactions register by increasing date. Select
the bottom transaction and click these keys in rotation: Delete, Enter,
. Listen for the audible sound. If the audible sound changes,
look at the screen.
It is possible that some shorter method exists. For example, rather than
deleting all of the transactions just delete the last few months. Then look at
the QIF file for newer entries.
If you have an idea what problem transactions you are going after, you may
find it easier to delete all of the other transactions in the .QIF file since
it can just be done in Notepad or WordPad much easier than deleting
potentially thousands of transactions in Money.
I haven't tried this, but it seems that this would have the potential to cause
real problems with unbalanced transfers. YMMV. Such is the joy of voodoo.
Q) How come my account keeps having the starting balance not match the
statement?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10)]
A) One possible source of this issue is if you use or ever did use M02 to add
a transaction that is marked as reconciled in a register to Bills and
Deposits. M02 retains that reconciled status in the scheduled item in error.
When you enter one of these transactions from the scheduled items to the
register, it enters "pre-reconciled." (If you look closely when entering it
into the register, you will also see that it shows as reconciled. This is the
only obvious clue that this is what is happening.) Since starting balance for
balancing is computed by adding up all of the reconciled transactions, this
will screw up starting balance--and it should also get in the way when you go
to balance since the statement will show this transaction and the
cleared/uncleared items in the Money account will not.
M03 and higher are fixed to not create bad scheduled items like M02, but they
won't find them and eliminate them either. The only way to fix a scheduled
item that is marked as reconciled is to delete it and reschedule it from an
item that is not marked cleared/reconciled.
Q) I can't download quotes since installing M03. What do I do?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11)]
A) There are quite a number of "fixes" for this that alone, or in unidentified
combinations, seem to fix this for most people--some of these may just be
unrelated incidental serendipity:
1) Uninstall/reinstall Money 2003.
1a) Getting Money Updates and nothing else immediately upon reinstallation
before trying to get quotes.
2) Go to the MSN Investor page and download/verify installation of the Deluxe
Portfolio Manager.
3) Go to the MoneyCentral page and download/verify installation of the MSN
Money Deluxe package.
4) Download the Investor 1.2 .CAB file, extract inv12.ocx, replace the version
in your Microsoft Money\System directory with the version in the .CAB file and
run "regsvr32 inv12.ocx" from the correct directory.
5) Verify that firewalls are not blocking Money -> moneycentral.msn.com. There
are way too many variations here to even hint at a procedure.
6) Opening IE security to allow moneycentral.msn.com to store cookies, etc. Do
this in IE, Tools|Internet Options|Privacy|Web Sites Edit, Allow
moneycentral.msn.com.
7) Assure the following registry hives and keys are present (these are also
reported to work for Money UK by Glyn Simpson, MVP):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Investor]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Investor\StockQuotes]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Investor\StockQuotes\QuoteServerURL]
"URL"="http://data.moneycentral.msn.com/Scripts/invisapi.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Investor\News]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Investor\News\NewsServerURL]
"URL"="http://moneycentral.msn.com/Scripts/neisapi.dll"
If you aren't used to mucking in the registry, don't go there. Mucking in the
registry incorrectly can result in your computer turning into your doorstop
and nobody will be able to help you and I will not accept any responsibility.
There is a .REG file with these keys that can be merged with the registry by
R-Click|Merge attached to a newsgroup thread on the subject. See
groups.google.com.
8) You might want to review the MSKB on removing/reinstalling MSN Investor
controls.
9) Try, try, try again. The quote server may be down or busy.
10) Try going into Portfolio|Update prices|Pick quotes to download and
methodically eliminating investments to see if one (or more) have symbols that
are causing problems.
11) Try opening ports 1052 and/or 1053 through firewalls, routers, or NAT
devices or just disable them entirely. Microsoft has acknowledged, without any
apparent remorse or shame, that quotes download has bad karma with firewalls.
(MSKB item first spotted by Jerry.)
12) Sprinkle eye of newt over computer. No, seriously, some of this may do
nothing, but lots of people have had lots of different things work. YMMV.
Maybe someday before M04 comes out, Microsoft will issue some less involved
and more foolproof remediation for this issue.
References:
groups.google.com quotes hosts .REG file
investor.cab controls download
MSKB: 312818 Quotes download is not firewall-friendly
MSKB: Q176841 Remove/Reinstall MSN Investor controls
MSN Deluxe Portfolio Manager control
MSN Money Deluxe Control
Q) I just installed M06, it refuses to upgrade my M98 [or 99 or ???] version
file. Why? What do I do?
[Relevant to Money2006 (v.15) and up]
A) M06 and beyond lack certain capabilities required to read M98/99 files.
There is a workaround detailed in the MSKB that involves an intermediate
upgrade to M05.
References:
MSKB: 913108 How to get from M98 to M > M04
Q) I just reinstalled Money/moved my file to a new machine. Now Money wants a
password to open my file. I've never used one. Why?
A) The most typical case here is that the Money file was being used by/was
backed up by a newer version than you are now trying to open/restore it with.
To find out, try downloading and installing the latest version Money Trial
version and use it to open your file. If successful, it may leave behind a
copy of the pre-upgrade file, renamed to have an extension of the form .MNn
where Nn is the Money version of the pre-upgrade file--N6=M98, N7=M99, N8=M2K,
N9=M01, 10=M02, 11=M03. If, for the M04 Trial version, it doesn't leave one
behind, then the version that created the file in question is M04. Once you’ve
resolved what version the file in question came from, you can uninstall the
trial version, re-install the correct version, rename the .MNn file to .MNY,
and open it with the correct version.
Another alternative, suggested by Cal Learner--MVP, may be appropriate for
people who don't keep their hard disk pruned or didn't just reformat. Search
your disk for files having an extension of the form .MNn, as defined above. If
you find any, the highest Nn number is likely the Money version you upgraded
your data file from most recently. Your .MNY file is likely to be only
readable by a higher version of Money.
Money files are not backward compatible to older versions of the
application--this message is Money's dumb way of trying to say so.
Q) I thought Money files were supposed to be upward compatible. How come
Money[new] crashes when upgrading my Money[old] data file?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Most users find the file upgrade process painless. Beginning with M03, a
significant number of users don't. For these users, a range of outcomes from
Money just crashing to misleading error messages about the file being
read-only to missing data in the upgrade file result instead. The exact
reasons for this are unclear, but it would appear that the upgrade code has
become much less tolerant to "damaged" files. (Here a "damaged" file means a
file that has somehow become inconsistent with itself or not conforming to the
"normal" structure. Here "somehow" generally seems to be by Money itself,
though things like End Task when the CPU shows 100% use by Money and the
application is reported as not responding "just because" Money is slow and
non-responsive may also be factors.)
The workarounds identified include:
- Many users have found success by running the msmoney -s repair technique on
the original data file from the original version then upgrading the repaired
file. For people who have nothing left of the original version besides a set
of backup floppies, this is not an option.
- Using the salv.exe repair tool from the newer version or from Microsoft
Support on the data file before upgrading then upgrading the repaired file. As
above, this method does not work with .MBF files or with .MBF files spread
across multiple floppy disks.
(For more information of the repair tools and file corruption in general, see
"I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?")
- Some users have found/and or been advised by Microsoft Support that an
intermediate upgrade through, say, M02, first solved the problem. Of course,
finding a CD of M02 can be difficult. In particular, for upgrade to M06, see
also
"I just installed M06, it refuses to upgrade my M98 [or 99 or ???] version
file. Why? What do I do?"
- Some users have ended up resorting to QIF Export/Import to get the data out
of the old version and into the new version as a better choice than losing all
of their data completely. This is a last resort.
- Some files that could not upgrade in M03 can upgrade in M04.
Note that several of these methods do not apply if all you have is backup
floppies or files. This is one reason that we always recommend upgrading by
moving the entire original .MNY data file rather than going through the
backup/restore process.
Finally, note that it is probably a good idea to confirm your installation of
the new version of Money is good before going down any of these paths. To do
this, open the Sample data file located in the Program Files\Microsoft Money
directory, or try to create a new file.
Q) Money appears to hang when I enter transactions. Why?
A) Many reports of "hanging" on entry have turned out to be reports of poor
performance. Money may spend minutes doing whatever it does after entering a
transaction. If you have waited a LONG time--this may be five minutes or more
depending on your environment--and Money is not doing anything and is not
using CPU (this is easy to tell on WinNT, 2000, and on XP) then you have a
different problem. See "Why is Money so slow?" for more information on
performance problems.
Q) Money crashes when I first start the application or open my regular data
file. How come? What next?
A) The first thing to try here is to open a different file than your regular
file or the most recently opened file that Money will try to open by default
if you don't tell it otherwise. Do this by using the Windows File Explorer to
navigate to a different .MNY file (if you have one) or just navigate to the
Sample.MNY file in the Program Files\Microsoft Money directory (or wherever
you installed it). Double-click or r-click Open the alternate data file. If
Money doesn't crash, you probably need to read "I think my file has been
corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?"
If Money does crash, you might try the all purpose voodoo at "Are there any
other voodoo tricks that might solve my problem?" or you might try
reinstalling the application. You might also want to start thinking about what
has changed on your system since the last time Money worked.
Q) The font size in Money is too small for me to read. How can I enlarge it?
A) Money doesn't provide very good accessibility support. Cal Learner provided
the basics of the following answer to this specific accessibility issue:
Three ways are available:
1. Buy a bigger monitor and run it at the same resolution. I know you are
going to find that a stupid suggestion, but think about it. You deserve it.
But do you have the space for a 21-inch CRT monitor, or the money for a
19-inch LCD?
2. Switch to a lower resolution if using a CRT monitor. I.e., if using 1280 x
1024, switch to 1024 x 768. This is generally the least satisfactory option
and is a particularly poor compromise with fixed resolution displays, i.e.,
LCDs. (Some LCDs won't even play along and will just show a smaller image of
the exact same pixel size.)
3. On a blank spot on the desktop, right-click and choose
Properties|Settings|Advanced; there change the DPI setting to a higher number.
This will have some downside too. You will have to experiment, and change back
if you find the downside outweighs the upside.
Q) Why do I get the 'incompatible versions' message when upgrading my data
file?
A) This problem arises from trying to convert a file from one localized
version (say Money UK) to another (say Money US).
The workaround it to export accounts using QIF and re-import them. The fix is
to obtain a newer localized version for the same country as your original data
file.
Answer courtesy of Glyn Simpson, Microsoft MVP - Money, and Cal Learner --
MVP.
References:
MSKB: 178830 Export/Import "repair" and conversion
MSKB: Q197668 incompatible versions
MSKB: Q304254 incompatible versions
Q) Why is Money so slow?
[Relevant to Money2001 (v.9) and up]
A) There have been a number of design changes in Money over the years and many
of them have had negative impacts on performance. M98 changed from a
purpose-built database and user interface to IE rendering the UI and Jet as
the underlying database. These changes freed the development team to add
features galore but they had negative impact on performance and file size.
Money 2001 and up have a number of features that run continuously and seem to
affect performance. Debt Reduction Planner and Budgeting seem to be offenders.
One way to improve performance in these versions is to turn off the
personalized register feedback. (This is at
Tools|Options|Feedback|Personalized Feedback Options|Do not display
personalized feedback.) Money 2005 eliminated the register feedback. It's not
clear whether this was to free up screen real estate for all of the new UI
clutter M05 added or so users who didn't figure out to turn it off didn't have
to suffer its performance impacts.
Poor performance in Money 2001 and up does not seem to affect everyone and, in
the worst cases, is clearly not a problem with resources. People have tried
any number of things:
1) salvaging the file; see the MSKB for details
2) deleting loan accounts (but then what's the point of using Money?)
3) [more work needed here]
There may be several components to this issue including slow performance as a
consequence of design choice (i.e., they didn't design it to be faster.) There
have been discussions that some of this issue is attributed to some lurking
bug.
The good news on this front is that M03 appears to be no slower in any case
than M02. Many users perceive it to be slightly faster in general and a lot
faster in certain areas like entering the Budget Planner. A few users report
perceiving it to be much faster overall. YMMV.
The FAQ used to say that "it is not clear that Microsoft views this as a bug
or an issue or a problem worth fixing." They complained and said they "do take
performance problems very seriously [and] devote time and energy to improving
performance." It is unclear whether they take performance more or less
seriously than, say, adding features like Frequent Flier Mileage tracking or
X-ing out parts of account numbers on the account list page. Clearly
performance is a much harder problem to solve; and the results from the time
and energy they spend on performance are here for us all to judge.
M07 added an interesting new "Repair Tool" that has done amazing things for
performance on some files that were slow, or even glacial under M06. For
details, see "Can you tell me more about the remarkable new Nuke-the-Bills
miracle repair method?" for details.
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Issues: "Corruption"
--------------------
Q) Can you tell me more about the remarkable new Nuke-the-Bills miracle repair
method?
[Relevant to Money2007 (v.16) and up]
A) Money 2007 introduced a new File|Repair option, File|Repair Money
File|Remove all Bills data. (Insiders have been referring to this as the Bills
Be Gone method. That seems too polite for the impact it has; Nuke-the-Bills is
our favorite term here at the umpmfaq.) This option has enabled dramatic
improvements in performance and significant reductions in files size for some
users. At least one user, the author, had serious "stability issues" (i.e., it
crashed *a lot*) under M06 that have not been seen in M07; this may be related
to fixes in M07 or it may be related to "corruption" in the file cleaned up by
Nuke-the-Bills.
(Addition of this feature was, apparently, a pathetic admission that the
developers of Money can't design the product such that it can keep the
scheduled bills data sane all by itself. There have been reports in the
newsgroup that the underlying issue is that every time a bill is created or
edited a new database schema is created and unbounded accumulation of these
schemas is what results in observed performance and stability problems. It is
difficult to understand why the design must be this way or why accumulation of
these schemas can’t be done in a way less debilitating to performance. Though
we frequently edit bills, the total number of bill variations that remain
relevant at any point in time does not grow continually for most users. So if
the number of these underlying structures does grow continually, this seems
like more of an internal garbage collection kind of problem than something
that needs to be there for functions and features that are exposed to the
user. But it is what it is and Microsoft seems unwilling or unable to fix it
by anything better than Nuke-The-Bills.)
We do not know what, exactly, this does internally. At least one user tested
whether the same effect could be achieved just be deleting, one-by-one, the
scheduled bills from the Money user interface. That did not have the same
effects, so we can reasonably conclude that Nuke-the-Bills deletes all manner
of stuff that we just cannot see from the Money user interface. We also know,
now that we’ve lived for a while with files that have had the bills nuked,
that whatever nuking does is not permanent. Sooner or later you will be faced
with deteriorating performance again and this whole ugly process will need to
be re-done. We could have hoped that Microsoft would re-design whatever
internals can't seem to keep the bills data sane by themselves before we got
to this point, but that no longer seems possible.
So, if you are experiencing performance or stability "issues" this may be a
"silver bullet". But it's not for everybody and it's not something you should
undertake lightly.
Why not?
You will have to re-enter ALL of your scheduled bills data. You will have to
go in and fix your Advanced Budget. Lifetime Planner, which may depend on
Advanced Budget if you set it up to do so, will likely be wrong until you get
your Advanced Budget sorted out. Further, Lifetime Planner will need to have
income re-associated with scheduled paychecks if you had it use them to define
your income. All the historic entries on your Bill Calendar will be lost as
well. Finally, you will have to delete all scheduled Apays and re-create them.
Still psyched?
Make a copy of your Money data file. Be sure it's a good copy. You might even
want to save an additional copy (or copies) to a CD or flash drive, just in
case.
When you select the menu option, Money will display a dialog box explaining
the process. It recommends printing a Scheduled Bills report as the path to
recover your bills after they are nuked. This is better than no advice at all,
but beware that **many** details associated with scheduled bills are **not**
displayed in this report. Examples of things you will need to re-create that
are not included in the report are settings for things like estimate varies,
number remaining, and paycheck tab assignment. Any "Buy Investment/CD"
transaction does not print out the investment involved. Also, any edited
occurrences beyond the next are not reported and, if the next occurrence has
been edited, the basic series information is not reported.
The best "better" choice is to have two computers, networked and capable of
running Remote Desktop, one with the original file and the other with the file
being repaired. Then you can have one file open in a remote desktop window and
the other file open on the local desktop and can copy all your bills data from
the pre-repair file to the repaired file, one bill at a time. The reason for
using Remote Desktop is that Money will not allow two instances to run
simultaneously on a given machine. (Or at least for a given user; not sure
I've ever tested the different simultaneous users case. Even if it worked,
there's probably no way to copy from one user and past to another and the time
it takes to "switch user" would prove prohibitive) You could probably have the
second Money instance running in a VM. If you know of these things, you will
understand; if not, it's probably not a good solution for you anyway.
You might also want to Export the "pre-nuke" Scheduled bills report to a file,
.CSV or otherwise. You could then edit this file with Notepad or WordPad or
even Excel to add the bills definition information the report doesn't
otherwise print. After nuking the bills, you can then use this file as a
reference to re-creating your bills. You can even copy/paste things like memos
and payee names from the capture file back to the Money new scheduled item
creation dialog.
Another way to aid the process is to systematically enter all your bills in
registers before nuking them. You might want to put in a special memo or some
such. After nuking the bills, you can then go through the registers and select
the "bills" entries and r-click, Add to bills. After you've defined the new
bill, you can delete the temporarily entered register transaction.
When you think you are done, you might want to consider cross-checking the
before and after cash flow forecasts and scheduled bills reports to make sure
you haven't missed anything.
Disclaimer: Because of the amount of work, the unknown prospect that it will
prove worthwhile for any given file, the fact that it will deteriorate to
where you started at some point in the future, and the serious prospect that,
with less than very careful preparation and process, you could really make a
mess of your data, the umpmfaq does not recommend Nuke-the-Bills. Any choice
to go down this path is purely your own
Q) I see checks to be printed. Money says there aren't any. What gives?
A) Money keeps an internal counter of checks to be printed that can get out of
synchronization with reality in the registers. Most people have resolved this
by either the msmoney -s or salv.exe data file repair tools.
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Q) I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?
A) "Corruption" of user data files is a popular topic of the newsgroup. Sooner
or later, it seems, every Money user will experience this. But there has been
lots of confusion over what is and isn't corruption, and there have been
attempts to blame non-specific "corruption" for lots of things that probably
aren't "corruption" induced. Many problems blamed on corruption are not
corruption related at all and some that are may not be able to be solved with
the available file repair procedures and will require different techniques to
fix if they are even fixable. For the readers who haven't experienced
corruption yet and are getting bored and are about to skip the rest of this
answer, remember this one thing: the one sure way out of these problems is
having backups that really are and that have, in turn, their own backups.
Further, if you are still reading, remember that a corrupt file can generate a
corrupt backup--so be sure and have multiple generations of backups available.
In general, "corruption" refers to problems in the logical integrity of the
data file. Corruption does not mean the operating system reports data errors
reading your file. Though that is a form of corruption, it's not what we are
talking about here. The corruption we are talking about are cases where the
data in your file is read and written acceptably by the operating system but
doesn't make sense or isn't consistent to Money itself. In general, a Money
file that produces unexpected results or improper behavior of the application
which a) cannot be reproduced with a new Money file or the sample file, and b)
can be reproduced on different systems using the same Money file, is likely
corrupted.
With this in mind, your troubleshooting process should follow something like
this when you are facing possible file corruption.
1. Create a new file or open the Sample Money file.
2. Try to reproduce the issue.
3. If you can reproduce the issue, the problem is most likely not corruption.
It could be your Money installation, IE installation, or an OS/system problem.
So start with the easiest of these: Remove and re-install the Money
application to a new folder. Next, repair/remove/reinstall Internet Explorer.
(This will not be so easy on many of the newer operating systems--and it's
generally less likely to be an issue on the newer ones.) Always test after
every step.
4. If at all possible, test your Money file on a different system with the
same version and localization of Money installed.
5. If you cannot reproduce the issue in a new file, and especially if the
problem moved with your data file to a different system, you may be looking at
a corruption issue. Here are some indications and errors that suggest possible
corruption problems:
"Money cannot create a temporary file in C:\Windows\Temp"
"Money cannot locate '' or cannot open it, possibly
because it is a read-only file. You can change the read-only attribute in the
Windows Explorer. If you have chosen the correct file and it cannot be
accessed, you will need to open your most recent backup file."
"/ is corrupted or is not a Money data file. Make sure you
are opening a file with an .MNY extension. If you have chosen the correct file
and it could not be accessed, you will need to open your most recent backup
file to access your data."
If you attempt to convert a Money data file from an earlier version, and you
receive the following error message:
"There has been an error reading or writing to the disk."
If you attempt to create a new file, you receive several error messages,
beginning with the following error message:
"The new file '/' cannot be created. Please make sure that
the new file name does not contain any of the following characters: \/:*?"<>|.
Also, make sure the new file is being created on a disk that is not
write-protected and has sufficient room to store the new file." (This one is
normally not file corruption, though.)
When you click OK, you may receive the following message:
"Not enough memory is available. If you have several applications open at the
same time, you might need to close one of them before starting Money." (This
also is normally not corruption.)
When trying to enter or delete a transaction or go into a particular area of
Money, you receive the error (quite common--these are the "trinity" of
corruption indicators):
"This operation cannot be performed."
"This transaction cannot be entered."
"This transaction cannot be deleted."
Checks are available to print but there are no "Print checks" prompts. This is
common enough that it has its own FAQ and an MSKB reference to boot. See the
question "I see checks to be printed. Money says there aren't any. What
gives?"
Very whacko balances (the trillion dollar balance syndrome).
Balances disagree from one place to another in the app. These are frequently
pilot error and there was a bug that produced this, depending on
reconciled/unreconciled register view, back in M01, which was fixed with a
patch. But some of these cases have turned out to be corruption.
Cash flow fails to display in M02. This one also has its own FAQ entry. See
"How come my cash flow forecast refuses to display?"
Other indications of corruption have included sudden radical degradation in
performance, transactions that refuse to be edited or marked as
reconciled/cleared (usually you’ll get the "operation cannot be performed"
message), and application crashes at repeatable places and/or when doing
repeatable things with the data. Reports that refuse to display and/or crash
the application can be caused by corruption or can be caused by problems with,
say, printer or video drivers. Recreating your favorite report from the basic
report and/or playing around with the customization settings to see if there
are some data sets that work and others that cause the problem should isolate
problems with reports.
Cases that involve the application crashing upon starting may come down to a
problem with the application itself or with the most recently opened data
file--which is exactly the file Money will try to open if you just start the
application rather than opening a specific Money data file. See "Money crashes
when I first start the application or open my regular data file. How come?
What next?"
Finally, there are many things that are not corruption but are occasionally
blamed on corruption. Some examples follow. Reports that don't show what you
want may very well be customized incorrectly. Register views that are not in
the order you want may be sorted by something you don't recognize. When Money
is generally slow, it is likely just Money being generally slow. When Budget
Planner produces results you don’t understand, it’s likely just Budget
Planner’s way of reminding us that some future version of Money will be able
to claim improved budgeting among its features. Problems importing statements
or with the statement data itself are in all likelihood problems with the data
the bank provided. If you have any doubts about what is normal--if
undesirable--behavior and what may be "corruption," the newsgroup is probably
a better place to start than the repair tools.
So, if you are to the point where you've determined that your file is likely
corrupted and are ready to journey down the road of file repair, here are your
options and some recommendations for how to go about the process, sorted by
order of complexity and potential loss of data:
- There are two file repair tools provided by Microsoft for Money.
- Sometimes you can unwind what you were doing back to when you first saw the
problem and identify an associated transaction or scheduled bill that created
the problem and exhibits the signs of corruption. From here you can proceed
to:
- Binary search identification and elimination
- Revert to a backup
- Other voodoo
- Export/Import (the "start almost over" method)
Details on the repair tools:
File Salvage (the "msmoney -s" startup parameter or, beginning in M04,
File|Repair Money File|Quick File Repair (or Standard File Repair???)): This
repair utility checks the data integrity to make sure the data is
self-consistent. It does not check that the data is correct; it only checks
that the validation rules that are supposed to be applied on data entry are
indeed being applied.
Super Salvage (salv.exe): This repair will work with any version of Money but
will NOT work on backup files. It does low level checking for file integrity.
It checks the format and stability of the file itself. It does NO data
checking. Salv provides 2 different levels of checking; each just goes deeper
in its checking than the previous. (Some older versions supported three levels
of checking but level 3 has been removed, apparently because it caused more
harm than good for many users.)
Guidelines for use of the repair tools:
msmoney -s (or File|Repair Money File|Quick File Repair (or Standard File
Repair???) in recent versions)
When running Money 99 and above, always run File Salvage first. This usually
works if you go to Start, Run and type "msmoney -s" without quotes. Be sure
that the data file opens displaying the message "Repairing file…working" or
the repair is not being performed. For more information on running this
utility, see item # 182608 in the MSKB.
salv.exe
This tool works on versions 98 and later. Although it is available on the
Money CDs in the PSS folder in versions 2001 and later, you can download it
(and should to be sure that you are running the latest and greatest version of
the utility). See item # 274584 in the MSKB to download the current version
and get more information.
General information on file repair tool processes:
A good course of action to use when encountering a file corruption issue and
attempting repair with these tools is to:
0. Make copies of your file before you start mucking around. If any of this
makes your situation worse, you can always start over on one of the copies.
This is general good practice when things get sporty with any data file. Work
on the copies. If you solve your problem in a copy, delete the original and
rename the copy.
1. Stop the background Money tools so that they are not accessing your file.
These tools are Background Banking, MoneySide and MoneyExpress.
2. Run the file salvage (-s)
3. Check the file to verify that the issue is still present
4. Run a Level 1 of salv.exe
5. Check the new, salvaged file
6. Run a Level 2 of salv.exe on the new file from step 3
7. Check the new, salvaged file
8. If the salv.exe is unsuccessful at any point, run the file salvage (-s)
again on the last new successfully salvaged file from steps 3, 5, or 7
9. Archive the file to remove old transactions (not recommended) or just
archive without removing transactions.
If using versions of Money prior to 99, press CTRL + ALT + DEL and select Task
Manager (NT, Win2K, WinXP) or bring up the Close Program box directly (WinMe
and prior versions of "dirty Windows"). Highlight Microsoft Money and click
End Task to terminate the application and close your data file. When you
reopen the file, Money should tell you that the file was not closed properly
and that it needs to be repaired.
One important piece of advice regarding the file repair tools: don't assume
they actually repaired anything, no matter what messages they spit out. It is
very important in this context to find repeatable ways to manifest a symptom
of corruption so that you can test that you actually fixed something that
mattered before declaring victory and moving on, potentially to wind up back
in the same place in a matter of days or weeks. One poster to the newsgroup,
Bob Arge, struggled for over a year with what seemed to be a number of
separate and serial corruption incidents. When Bob finally gave up and moved
his data to Quicken, he had a problem with account imbalances. To make a very
long story short, a transfer from one account to another from almost two years
back was somehow lost in the Money ozone--there, but not showing up in the
registers. This kind of thing is a classic corruption symptom. All of Bob's
effort and repeated use of the repair tools never actually solved the root
corruption problem, apparently. What seemed like a series of isolated
corruption episodes was probably just one that never actually got rooted out
of the file.
Details on binary search identification and elimination:
Frequently, you can localize a problem because it only shows up on a specific
transaction, or a specific report or similar. Since many corruption problems
seem to be focused on a specific transaction or bill or similar, narrowing
your problem down to the specific item causing the problem can make it
possible to fix your problem without resorting to the repair tools--or if they
fail--or the more destructive methods.
There is no fixed procedure here. The general method is to try binary methods
to narrow down the focus of the problem and then delete, edit, or otherwise
eliminate the problem item and then you can re-create it.
For example, a problem report may work if you customize it to report either
the first half of the date range or the last. The half that doesn't work can
again be divided in halves, repetitively, until you narrow your problem down
to, say, one day's worth of transactions. For bills, you can delete (but
please read and heed step 0 under the repair tools for guidance to work in
copies of your data file) bills until the problem goes away.
For more general problems that may be located somewhere in your account
registers, the basic approach (this is NOT a procedure) is to make a copy of
your data file, and, in the copy, progressively delete things (accounts,
scheduled items, whatever) until happiness is restored. When you delete the
nth account (or whatever) and the operation in question starts working, go
back to the original file, make another copy, go into the copy, and repeat
just that last deletion. If the problem operation still presents itself, go
into yet another copy and try further narrowing. If, say, deleting one account
restores happiness then go at transactions in the account--delete, say, one
month's worth at a time or one half or the other. (The reason the latter
approach is called binary search is that when you get to the point where there
are lots of cases--like transactions to delete--it is frequently faster to
delete half at once and then, assuming your problem went away, you delete half
of the same half in the next copy of the original. This kind of search will
rapidly narrow down to a specific transaction—for example, 10,000 transactions
reduce to 1 in 14 tries.) Of course, there are cases where two or more problem
transactions (or accounts or bills or whatever) are in play--this makes it
harder, but the same general principles apply.
(One slight digression into Money technique is in order here: if you have to
delete transactions in an investment account you will frequently find yourself
in the situation where Money says you can't delete a buy because it will cause
a negative share balance. Add an Add Share transaction, older than any other
transaction in the account in question, for some outrageously large number of
shares in the investment in question. You can delete it later.)
When you narrow it down to a specific focus, you go back to the original data
file and try to figure out what to do about it. Can the transaction be edited?
Deleted and replaced? Change the payee, amount, split, account, etc? Can it be
moved to a temporary account and then delete the temporary account?
This can be very tedious but frequently can narrow down a problem to one
transaction or entry. Sometimes this one problem item cannot be deleted by
itself. Then you end up doing things like creating a temporary account, moving
every transaction but the problem one, deleting the problem transaction
account, renaming, etc., the temporary account to the old account's name, and
then re-enter the now missing problem transaction.
Details on restoring a backup:
If none of this has worked, hopefully you have a recent backup. (After this
experience you probably will the next time it happens.) Be sure and restore
your data file to a different name or location so as to preserve your original
file--if there are problems with your backup you may end up back there. It is
possible that you "backed up" this problem. In these cases, you may restore it
as well. Hopefully you have kept multiple versions of backup.
Other voodoo:
Sometimes there are multiple reports of odd voodoo that fixes a string of
seemingly unrelated issues. These items are captured at "Are there any other
voodoo tricks that might solve my problem?"
Details on export/import:
If all of this has failed you, the only choice left, and it is generally quite
a poor choice, is to try to preserve as much data as you can using QIF export
and then to start over in a new data file, restoring the exported data. MSKB
article # 1778830 addresses this approach.
Unless you have 5 accounts or less, you should work really hard to resolve the
issue without getting to export/import. This should be your last resort and
should only be your resort if you have exhausted every possibility that the
problem is not really corruption, not only because of the amount of effort
involved in the export/import process, but also because if the problem is not
corruption and you go through the whole process, it'll be extremely
frustrating to find out that the issue is still there. Export/import also only
brings over the information in transactions. This means that your bills,
budget, planner, etc., are gone and must be recreated. Loan accounts cannot be
exported either. The good news on this is that, if your corruption was in one
of these areas, it is left behind once you are in the new file.
If you only have a couple of accounts, by all means go the export/import route
rather than spending hours trying to dink around with repair (unless, of
course, you have a lot of data in the bills/budget/planner or loan accounts
that have transactions unaccompanied by Loan Payments in the accounts being
export/imported).
Now that we've discussed corruption to excess, some other information is in
order.
What causes corruption? Certainly none of us in the "outside world" are sure
what causes corruption. But it tends to happen at rates and in places that
tend to suggest that it's not because of cosmic rays. And it happens to people
who do not kill Money from task manager every time they see the hourglass and
100% CPU. My suggestion/suspicion is that there truly are lurking defects in
the Money code that get hit under the right circumstances and leave the
database in these unstable states. Even the MSKB item for the "damaged
scheduled item" in M02 makes it sound like demonic possession or some other
force beyond the developer's control--but of course they fixed that one in
M03, so there must have been a real root cause in the code. I wish I felt that
these cases were a priority for identification and elimination and did not
feel as though Microsoft considers the -s and salv and the QIF export/import
cycle as all they need to do--or maybe even more than we deserve--on these
issues.
For some other users, corruption happens in places none of the rest of us has
ever seen problems and it happens repeatedly. In these cases, an environmental
root cause seems much more likely than a problem that has a defect in Money as
root cause. Or there may be some user habit that Money just doesn't like. For
instance, some users apparently panic every time they see the hourglass for
more than a second or two or see 100% CPU usage by Money, like that's a bad
thing by definition, and terminate the application. These cases are much
harder for the newsgroup to help with. The environmental causes are even less
well understood. The causes likely include DLL conflicts, driver problems,
video settings, BIOS settings/problems, IE installation problems, and so
forth. Finding these types of problems can certainly be very difficult, but if
you are having recurring corruption problems you should pursue these issues
rather than just depending on the repair tools to save your data. They may not
always be able to do so.
Is Money unusually prone to corrupting its own data files? (Compared to what?)
Maybe. Who knows? Are later versions more prone to corrupting their own data
files than earlier versions? Generally, versions from M98 forward seem worse
than prior versions and versions since M98 seem to be improving, based solely
on postings in the newsgroup. But then each version also seems to introduce a
new problem like the "damaged scheduled items" in M02. Money may well be
unusually prone to environmental problems. It is a poster child for bleeding
edge Microsoft development techniques like COM, DHTML, XML, and so on.
Remember also that the workhorse tools in the whole house of cards are not
even developed by the Money group: MSISAM and IE. Money just bolts some
business logic and a UI on top of all of this. For this reason, it is likely
very exposed to all of the issues with object contamination by other
applications and DLL conflicts and so on. Even flushing Internet temporary
items from the IE cache has made strange Money problems disappear. Go figure.
It is amazing that, after all these years, Money still detects these problems
(that's where messages like "operation cannot be performed" are coming from)
but does nothing to resolve them. You'd think that the Money designers would
have figured out how to put code at the places where these messages are
generated to do something more helpful than just tell us what Money cannot do,
leaving us to figure out what it all means and what to do about it.
What should a user do about corruption problems going forward? Well,
recommendation #1 would be to make sure you have a backup strategy that
assures you have multiple generations of backup, are not depending on any one
type of backup media, and that your backups really are. Restoring from your
last weekly backup and re-entering three or four days of transactions is
probably easier than most any technique for repair described here.
Finally, some users who have been here, done this, decide to start regularly
using the repair tools as a prophylactic against future file corruption. There
is no evidence that this is an effective strategy. Worse, there is significant
anecdotal evidence that the repair tools can emit meaningless messages about
problems in your data file when there are absolutely no other indications of
any problem. Given how little we know about these tools and how little is
documented and how little we know about what they are designed to do/fix and
how rigorously they are tested and so on (why I refer to them as voodoo
tools), this fixation may be misplaced. Some people have reported more
problems after using these tools than before. There is no reason to believe
these tools are tested anywhere near as rigorously as the application is.
Using them "just in case" seems like a profoundly bad idea.
Thanks to Bonnie Synhorst for contributing the bulk of the answer here and the
inspiration for getting it in the FAQ. The good parts are hers--the bad parts
I probably edited in. The first person opinions are definitely mine.
References:
MSKB: 178830 Export/Import "repair" and conversion
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Q) Money says 'This operation cannot be completed.' What's up with that?
A) Money may also say "This operation cannot be performed." These messages are
most likely related to internal database problems and/or problems related to
specific scheduled transactions. For the former, your best bet is to pursue
the Money data file repair tools msmoney -s or salv.exe. (Also, see the
question "What is the -s option? What is the Super Salvage utility?") Read
more about these tools in the MSKB. Be sure you have backups that really are
before going down this path and/or work on a copy of your file. In the latter
case, try deleting and re-entering the scheduled transaction.
Thanks to Derrick Cole for this answer.
See also "I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do
then?"
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Q) Money says 'This transaction cannot be entered.' What's up with that?
A) Try the steps outlined in the MSKB identified by Cal Learner--MVP.
See also "I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do
then?"
References:
MSKB: Q288385 Transaction cannot be entered
Issues: "Known" "Bugs"
----------------------
Q) After I added MSN Bill Pay to online services, Money 2002 stops downloading
direct bank statements. Why?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10)]
A) Go to Online Services setup and click the Modify Services link for the
bank. Click "No, I wish to discontinue using online services for [bank]". Then
setup online services for the affected bank again.
Q/A courtesy of Doug Semler.
Q) How come my cash flow forecast refuses to display?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10)]
A) Usually one or more scheduled bills/deposits are, for reasons unknown,
causing this problem. The offending bill/deposit can be identified by trial
and error as follows:
1) make a copy of your Money data file
2) open the copy
3) delete scheduled bills/deposits one-by-one until cash flow happiness
returns; the last one deleted is your suspect, though there may be more than
one causing the problem
4) re-open your primary file and edit or delete/replace the problem
transaction
This has returned cash flow planner to its usual less-than-perfect self for
many of us.
Some users have reported that just editing every scheduled transaction
memo--not necessarily changing anything, just "touching" them--has restored
cash flow.
Microsoft has also admitted this can happen, of course without so much as
hinting that a problem in their code could be causing it. See the MSKB item
for the odd ways they propose you resolve this issue. MSKB link courtesy of
Laurence.
References:
MSKB: Q312814 "damaged" scheduled item
Q) Money Help keeps whining about script errors, unable to load topic, or
similar nonsense. Why? What can I do about it?
A) Nobody really knows what causes this. Most people have been able to resolve
this issue by going into IE Internet Options (from IE Tools or from the
desktop Internet Options or from the Internet Options control panel) and
deleting all temporary internet files. Go figure. MSKB link courtesy of Mark.
References:
MSKB: 812755 On-line help breaks for mysterious reasons
Q) My scheduled bill (deposit, transfer, etc.) just morphed from a normal
split into a Paycheck. What's up with that?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Who knows? This is a little present the Money developers left behind. If
you Cancel the first time you see this, it might be right the next time you
edit the series or a specified occurrence. If not, you will have no choice but
to delete the item and recreate it. Maybe this "feature" will be "improved" in
the next version?
Derived from an answer provided by Derrick Cole.
It is not clear if this was fixed in M06. For this reason, I've referenced
this answer to M06 until a we know for sure that it's been fixed. Since the
half life for defects like this in Money seems to be about three or four
releases, it's entirely possible it's still in there.
Q) When I go into Tax Estimator, the display is garbled. What can I do about
this?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11), Money2004 (v.12)]
A) This problem first showed up in M03. When M04 came out with the exact same
issue, it was obvious how many of the Money developers actually use the Money
Tax Estimator. The workaround is to go to the previous screen then go back to
the next screen. This usually resolves the problem.
Q) Why do I get a disk space error installing Money 2002? I have gigabytes of
free disk space.
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10)]
A) If you get a message like "Microsoft Money 2002 cannot be installed. Please
make sure you have 4,095Mb free on drive C: and try to install again" when
trying to install Money 2002, read the referenced MSKB--the error message is
misleading but there is a workaround.
Reference courtesy of Glyn Simpson, Microsoft MVP - Money
References:
MSKB: Q313999 diskspace errors on install of M02
Iconography
-----------
Q) What does the envelope with the lightning mean on a scheduled payment?
A) It means the transaction is setup as an Epay.
LisaLisa (the Money marketing manager) got a page put up to decode many Money
icons. Then Microsoft disappeared the page. Glyn Simpson replaced it. You
might want to refer to his icon reference page.
References:
Glyn Simpson's replacement for LisaLisa's reference page for icons
Q) What does the lightning bolt next to the account name mean?
A) It means that Money knows something about doing electronic data interchange
with the financial institution you named for this account.
Q) What is the 'bleeding envelope' icon in the register?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10) and up]
A) This icon indicates that Money thinks this transaction is a candidate for
being added as a recurring scheduled transaction. If you click (double click?)
on it, a dialog will pop-up allowing you to enter it as a recurring scheduled
transaction or you can tell Money to quit bugging you about it.
Check "potential recurring transactions" in Help.
Thanks to Cal Learner for the Help file topic reference.
It turns out the bleeding dagger is really a question mark. LisaLisa (the
Money marketing manager) got a page put up to decode many Money icons. Then
Microsoft disappeared the page. Glyn Simpson replaced it. You might want to
refer to his icon reference page.
References:
Glyn Simpson's replacement for LisaLisa's reference page for icons
Miscellaneous
-------------
Q) I can't find where to download Money updates on the Microsoft web site. Why
not?
A) Microsoft hasn't provided Money fixes on their web site for any version of
Money still supported. The updates that are available will be downloaded when
you do an "Internet Update." [What's in the updates, how do you tell if you've
got the most recent update, and similar questions all deserve answers that we
don't have.]
Q) Is Money better than Quicken?
A) Many of us here prefer Money to Quicken. Some of us started using Money
after having used Quicken. Your mileage may vary. M05 signals a quantum change
in the nature of Microsoft Money away from a standalone application for
self-directed personal financial management. More of us may be reconsidering
the Quicken vs. Money trade soon.
Q) Is there/when will there be a Mac version of Microsoft Money?
A) This is much less frequently asked than it used to be. It is not clear what
can be inferred from that.
Nobody here is aware of any Microsoft plans for Money for the Mac. If they
were, they couldn't say anyway.
Money has been on the Windows platform for more than ten years now. It seems
that Microsoft would have done Money for the Mac long ago if they thought they
could make a decent return by doing so. The barriers are pretty high given
Money's dependence on Microsoft core technologies like COM, IE, and MSISAM,
none of which exist in the same form or at all on the Mac. And it's not as if
Macs have become more popular or common over the years, "switchers" like Ellen
notwithstanding.
Q) What's the difference between the various Money packages? Between M03 and
previous versions? What's new in M03?
A) The Microsoft Money web site has a page that compares the features included
in the various packages. There is another page that highlights what has
changed with each version of Money from M99 through M02. Finally, there is one
that summarizes what's new in M02. Check them out.
Answers courtesy Richard Bollar - MVP Microsoft Money and Kim Renna, Microsoft
MVP - CSO Consumer
References:
Microsoft Money Package Comparison
Microsoft Money Version Change History
Microsoft Money What's new in M02
Q) When will the next version of Money release? What will it do?
A) Anybody reading the newsgroup that knows has likely signed a non-disclosure
agreement and cannot say.
If the past is any guide to the future, the next version of Money will be
available starting in August. Microsoft's press release announcing the product
will use the word "great" a dozen or more times. It will have some features
that will be really cool to some people. It will have some features that will
be minor improvements to lots of people. It will fix some of the worst issues
created with the last version. It will create some new issues of its own. It
will have many minor changes that are annoying and unnecessary to long time
users, added in the name of "ease of use" but mostly just serving to dumb the
product down further. It will have more hooks to other services that Microsoft
hopes we will use and that Microsoft hopes will produce ever more vigorish. It
will incorporate any really neat features Quicken incorporated last year if
those features generated much "buzz" amongst reviewers or by the Intuit
marketeers. Quicken will release a new version about the same time. Magazine
reviewers will like each product about equally. They will not mention any of
the major issues since they will not have used the product enough to find
them. A rebate will be available to all purchasers having the effect of
reducing the average sell price to less than some people will pay and more
than others would have paid at the cost of a hassle for those of us in the
latter category. If the past is any guide to the future, that is.
Conversion, Programmability, External interfaces
------------------------------------------------
Q) Can Money import my Quicken data? How about my current version Quicken
data?
A) Money has provided Quicken conversion tools in all recent versions of
Money. These converters have supported import of the "previous" version of
Quicken and older versions. Since Quicken changes their file format every year
and Microsoft and Intuit release about the same time each year, Microsoft
cannot provide a converter for the current version of Quicken in the box with
the current version of Money. They used to release a converter to get from the
current version of Quicken to the current version of Money in late spring, but
have not done this for several versions now. If they resume this practice in
the future, the Money web site will reveal this first.
References:
Microsoft Money web site
Q) How do I access the Money API (OLE, XML, ODBC, object model, Jet database,
MSISAM database, etc)?
A) Any external programmatic interfaces for Money are undocumented,
unsupported, and without any promise of retention in the future.
Certain ISVs (Ultrasoft and Kiplinger/H&R Block come to mind) have implemented
programmatic interfaces to Money, presumably with help from Microsoft. Try
contacting Microsoft directly. Let us know how this works.
Money does support OFC/OFX for interchange with financial institutions. (E.g.,
statement download, EPAY.) If this is what you want to do, refer to the
Microsoft Partner, Microsoft Active Statements Interface, and Open Financial
Exchange links.
Thanks to Cal Learner for the OFC/OFX interface info.
References:
Microsoft Active Statements Interface
Microsoft Money Partner
Open Financial Exchange
Q) How do I export to Excel (or .TXT, .XML, .CSV)?
A) There are several approaches to exporting data. None of them solve all
problems.
Money has always supported "export to QIF." QIF (Quicken Interchange Format)
is documented and an Excel macro exists to write to this format. You could
extrapolate from this macro how to go the other way.
Money reports can be copied to the clipboard. They can then be pasted as plain
text into Excel cells.
Money 2002 added some enhanced capabilities in this regard with a direct
"Export to Microsoft Excel" that writes .CSV files. (Obviously, there is
nothing unique to Excel about .CSV files.) They can also be exported to a
tab-delimited .TXT file from the "Export…" r-click menu on the report.
Money 2003 added a choice to export reports as "Send to Desktop." This writes
.CSV, .TXT, and .XML files to you desktop with the report data.
Finally, there is the MoneyLink Excel add-in. This add-in provides a number of
queries (e.g., account transactions for specified account for specified date
range) that can retrieve data from your Money data file into Excel. It's a
one-way trip only. Money-version-specific versions of the add-in are available
for Money 98 through Money 2003. MoneyLink does have some specific
limitations. For instance, it does not retrieve classification or the parent
of split transactions.
The MoneyLink add-in was a download for Money 98. Then it was included on the
CD with Money 99 and Money 2000. With Money 2001, Microsoft thought nobody
would notice if they removed it. After a great upheaval on the newsgroup and
on the support lines, they relented and made MoneyLink available on the web.
Beginning with Money 2002, they have left it off the CD. For Money 2002 and
beyond (through M06 at this writing), it is available, for free, from
Ultrasoft. What transfer of responsibility for this tool from Microsoft to
Ultrasoft means for its future, no one can say.
Thanks to Myrna Larson for the tab-delimited export method.
As of August 20, 2004, links for the M98 and M02 download are still (back?)
available. Thanks for this correction provided by Pete.
References:
Microsoft M98 and M01 MoneyLink download links page
Ultrasoft (MoneyLink)
Q) How do I import from Excel (or .CSV or etc.)?
A) Money can only import .QIF format data, entire Quicken files (into a new
Money file, with the restriction that it be from an older version of Quicken
than the version of Money doing the importing) and, in more recent Money
versions, OFX and OFC format data. OFC support was removed from M05.
(Incidentally, QIF support was removed from Q05.)
Once upon a time, Microsoft provided an Excel macro that wrote .QIF format
files from Excel. Unfortunately, that macro is an old XLM style macro and
Excel has not supported that type of macro for many versions now. Microsoft
has never seen fit to issue any new capability like this. As of this writing,
it appears that even the Knowledge Base article has been disappeared.
Having said that, it is worth noting that QIF is just a text file with a
format that is not, apparently, all that complex. It should be reasonably
straightforward for someone used to mucking around in VBA for Excel to write
code to generate passable QIF files. The QIF file format is an ad hoc standard
semi-documented by Quicken. The references, all identified from a search at
google, may help you get there. There were many more references that were not
included here and these references may not be good currently. If you create
some code for this, please report back here and offer it up to the community.
One reader, Didier Lachièze, has done just that. Several readers have reported
good results with Didier's macro. Didier has also developed a web page that
provides resource links to other similar tools.
Another reader, Ron Rosenfeld, reported on a shareware CSV to QIF converter
written by James Lavery of Monthtwo Systems. There has been no other feedback
on this tool.
(These things must be really popular lately.) There's another one written by a
guy named John. No user reports on it yet, either.
Chris Cowles reported yet another CSV to QIF converter--built to go with a
personal finance manager application for Palm, the web site for which provides
yet another spin on QIF documentation.
Colin Smales asked me to include a reference to his MT2OFX converter tool that
provides conversions of a number of different formats to OFX.
References:
Another attempt to document QIF
Colin Smale's MT2OFX format conversion tool
CSV to QIF revisited
Didier Lachièze's Excel to QIF macro
Didier Lachièze's QIF conversion resource page
google.com
John's XL to QIF
Monthtwo Systems' CSV to QIF shareware
MSKB: Q077220 Excel to .QIF macro
QIF Apple-centric documentation, but maybe still valid
QIF documented by the GnuCash folks
QIF documented maybe a little less well
QIF documented yet again and app for Palm
QIF documented
Q) I've decided to convert from Money to Quicken. How do I do this?
A) Since Quicken has so much market share and Money so little, Intuit hasn't
felt much need over the years to make it easy for Money users to switch to
Quicken. Per Russ Paul-Jones, Quicken offered a converter to import Money M98
data files to the Q99 format. A poster going by the moniker of "CIS" pointed a
new converter for M03 and earlier files to Q04. The Intuit notes on this tool
indicate that, among other limitations, it doesn't convert loan accounts. That
seems like a pretty serious limitation.
References:
Quicken Q04 Money file conversion utility
Support Issues
--------------
Q) How can I make my posts here more likely to get answers?
A) Remember that everybody who replies here is doing so voluntarily.
1) Make your subject meaningful. "Microsoft Money" isn't. Besides, it's
completely redundant in the microsoft.public.money newsgroup--what else would
you be posting about? "M02: how do I setup my stock options?" is. Somebody who
knows how to do the latter might read your post and answer. Many of us won't
even look at the former.
2) Don't whine. Oh, and DON'T SHOUT.
3) Provide sufficient environment information. As a minimum, this always
includes the version of Money. Many times this also includes the operating
system. If you are having problems printing, tell us the kind of printer.
4) Describe what you are trying to do, what is happening, and what you have
attempted to do about it.
5) Please use the same terminology for things that the help file and the
screens and the printed documentation use. Some questions don't get answered
because none of us can figure out what you are talking about.
6) Please state your question. "I want to track savings bonds." is a poor
question. "Should I enter my savings bonds in Money or just track them in
Savings Bond Wizard?" is better. "When I entered my savings bonds the way
Money told me to, it seems there is no good way to track their value. Is there
a better way than making them CDs?" is likely to get some meaningful
responses. All too often people post things like "Subject: Microsoft Money.
When I installed Money it crashes." and expect help. This will get nowhere.
It's not even a question and it provides insufficient information about
environment and an insufficient description of the problem.
7) Don't expect miracles. The newsgroup is very good for "how-to" and usage
case information. It is less useful, generally, for non-pervasive application
crashes, installation problems, and so forth. If your installation of Money v.
4 on your WindowsXP dual-Athlon system stopped working after you installed the
Mk. XVII VideoBlaster unless your modem is disconnected and you are
simultaneously running Laura Croft Chases World Terrorism, you are unlikely to
get help here. You likely have a unique configuration and problem that nobody
else in the world shares. The fact that nobody here replies means nobody has a
clue, not that nobody cares.
8) Don't post the same thing multiple times thinking it increases your chances
of getting a reply. It doesn't. Quite the opposite.
9) Spare us the "if you don't fix my problem, I'll just get Quicken"
histrionics. We are not a marketing arm of Microsoft. We really don't care.
And, frankly, if going to Quicken seems to you like a preferable alternative
to working through your problem, we'd by all means prefer you went that way.
Then you can pester people in their newsgroup about fixing your problem or
converting to Money.
10) Finally, remember why you posted and remember that Money is what it is.
When you want to rant about how a feature works or doesn't work for you, we
can suggest workarounds or offer alternative ways to solve your problem, but
we can't change the product. Ranting at us about why the product should be
changed and ignoring our suggested workarounds and solutions won't encourage
people to try and help you in the future.
References:
newsgroups: Quicken newsgroup on your default news server
Q) I've been using M95 on Win95 happily for years now. All of a sudden I have
a problem. Why can't anybody here help?
A) Unfortunately, the world and most of us here have moved on. While we'd like
to help, many of us here haven't used this combination (or others that may be
slightly newer like M98 on Win98) literally for years.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that personal computer hardware and software
technology has advanced very rapidly, one in lockstep with the other. While
you may find your environment just fine for your needs it is nonetheless as
functionally obsolete as a DC-3 or a 1932 Packard.
The good news is that new Money licenses are very inexpensive--watch the
sales; $40 or less, before rebate, is very common in the Sunday ads--and new
versions import the data files from all old Money versions for the same
locale, generally with a minimum of complications. Of course, the new version
of Money probably won't work on your old hardware. Again there's a bit of good
news among the bad: many inexpensive new PCs include OEM Money licenses.
See also the answer to "What's the worst thing that happens if I don't buy a
Money version upgrade?"
Q) What's the worst thing that happens if I don't buy a Money version
upgrade?
A) If you want to stick with an orphaned version of Money and pass on one or
several upgrades, there are some known issues as well as some speculative ones
you must consider:
The known issues:
- Support for older versions ends sooner.
- Services including transaction and quote download end sooner.
- Older versions will get "unsupported" sooner by FIs and so forth.
"Unsupported" may just mean "don't call us if something goes wrong" or it may
mean a change in interfaces that the old Money version can't deal with.
- Newly discovered issues will not get fixed. Not that they fixed old issues
when the version was still current, but as you continue to use an old version,
the odds of finding a new issue don't drop to 0.
- Changes in tax law will not get reflected in things like the Tax Estimator
and the categories available for Investment Activity.
The speculative issues:
- If an upgrade comes out that is compelling, data upgrades may be more
problematic depending on how far back-level your data is. Based on M05, the
odds for a compelling upgrade seem low unless something radically changes how
Microsoft views the product and the market. Indeed, M06/7 can't import M98
files directly. (See "I just installed M06, it refuses to upgrade my M98 [or
99 or ???] version file. Why? What do I do?" for more on this.)
- The "learning curve" for such an upgrade grows as a function of the number
of versions you are jumping.
- As the version in use becomes further back-level, the odds that an OS or
other application/driver upgrade irretrievably breaks it increase. Your copy
of M04 may not work on Windows2012 (or with IE 7, for that matter).
- You may not be able to re-install and update your old version with all the
patches on a new machine or in case of a hard disk reload or replacement. This
is one of the scariest issues in that there have been reports of problems
restoring Money data file from backups if a new installation of the same
version of Money doesn't have the same service fixes installed. This is
because Microsoft has a) only made updates for Money available via the Money
Internet Update integrated install--i.e., no patch file to download and store
away, and b) routinely disappeared updates for old versions. Microsoft's push
to sell Money as a download without CD and with most of the program downloaded
through some internal protocol only makes this worse--you may not even have a
way to install the basic application, much less the patches.
The implication of this latter issue is that there may be **no way** for a
user to install a usable/working/updated copy of your **fully-licensed** but
obsolete version of Money on a new machine or a reloaded hard disk after the
point where Microsoft withdraws support and disappears the Internet Updates.
In the case of, say, replacing a failed hard disk, there may be no way for you
to get to the point of being able to restore a working good backup of your
Money data short of buying a newer version of Money and hoping that it can
restore/upgrade this backup.
Microsoft really should provide the product updates some alternate way where
the patch file is downloadable from Microsoft Downloads just like patches for
normal Microsoft products. If Microsoft did that, the onus would still be on
the user to download and save the patch indefinitely--but that would be better
than today's case where there is nothing the user can do to protect against
this risk.
References:
Microsoft Downloads site
Q) Where else can I go for help?
A) First, use the resources Microsoft provides with the product. On-line help
has always been provided with Money and the amount and richness of this
information has improved with every version of Money. Money 2002 comes with
audio and video help, the traditional help file, the on-line Money user's
guide, links to Microsoft resources on the web, the "Managing Your Finances…"
book, and help for former Quicken users. Money 2003 omitted the book in favor
of a book of ads. (Not many people read the old book. It's hard to imagine the
ads will be more effective at reaching Money users.) Many of the "how-to"
questions posed in the newsgroup are answered in on-line help.
Money 2005 moved the on-line help to "on-net". This complicates access to help
for users who do not have continuous broadband connections. Likewise,
Microsoft removed the audio help completely and removed most of the
instructional videos.
Microsoft has finally linked many of the Money support resources to one
support web page.
There is this newsgroup. The Microsoft news server has several months of this
group available. Repeatedly "get more headers" until you have all of the
messages and search from there. See "How can I make my posts here more likely
to get answers?" for advice about posting to the newsgroup. If newsreaders
make you uncomfortable or your proxy server blocks NNTP, there is also a web
interface to the newsgroup.
groups.google.com has year's worth of posting from this news group and a very
sophisticated search capability. Select Advanced Groups Search and enter
"microsoft.public.money" in the newsgroup field.
There is a Yahoo! group on the subject, though it seems to have very little
traffic and it does post a public membership directory, which may put you off.
The Microsoft Knowledge Base has lots of "how-to" answers and some--but by no
means all--of the bugs and issues Microsoft knows about.
Glyn Simpson has an excellent page at mvps.org--it has some unique items
tailored to the UK version of Money along with much else.
There used to be lots of books available for users of Microsoft Money. Perhaps
a lot of them ended up getting pulped as there are fewer now. No endorsements
are offered.
Opening a support incident with Microsoft Support may be the only possible
solution to many installation, setup, crash and data file corruption issues.
But remember, you bought the program for less than $100--in some cases a LOT
less--and they will not fly programmers to your house to debug your problems.
References:
Amazon Microsoft Money books
Glyn Simpson's Money MVP page
groups.google.com
Microsoft Support Incident
Microsoft Support Money Page
microsoft.public newsgroups via web (select English/Money/Money General)
MS Support
MSKB
newsgroups: microsoft.public.money on Microsoft news server
Yahoo! Money group
Q) Why doesn't Microsoft issue a fix for this terrible problem immediately?
A) The only Money problems Microsoft has ever remedied prior to the next
release are high-impact, pervasive problems that are not usage or "how-to" in
nature.
High-impact in this context typically has meant those that result in display
of incorrect balance information or the application abnormally ending in
common circumstances. Problems with reporting and the finance management tools
(budgeting, cash flow forecasting, debt reduction planner, etc.) have
typically not been fixed prior to the next release, which has typically fixed
some and added others.
Pervasive in this context has typically meant that the problem was likely to
be visible to a majority of Money users--not just those who read the
newsgroup.
They do this because they do not want to undertake major rework of the code on
the fly due to concern about regression problems, they don't want to change
how the product works--even when we don't like it working that way, and
because they have limited resources for working on the code itself and most of
these resources are dedicated to working on future versions.
Q) Why won't anybody answer my question posted here?
A) See the answer to "How can I make my posts here more likely to get
answers?"
Q) Why won't Microsoft Support answer my question posted here?
A) This newsgroup is not a Microsoft-to-user support vehicle. It is for
user-to-user support. Some Microsoft folks monitor this out of personal and,
occasionally, professional, interest. They are not here--indeed, this forum is
not here--to provide support from Microsoft to you. Try contacting Microsoft
Support more directly.
References:
Microsoft Support Incident
MS Support
Q) Why won't the MVPs answer my question posted here?
A) The MVPs are all unpaid volunteers with real day jobs who give their time
and talent to try and help where they can. Perhaps they're busy. Perhaps they
don't know how to help. See "How can I make my posts here more likely to get
answers?" for general advice on making your posting more likely to get help.
Whining, begging and complaining that the MVPs haven't solved your problem is
unlikely to help you solve your problem even if it does make you feel better.
Worse, such behavior may get your name in their kill file so that your future
postings will be invisible to them.
Complaint Department
--------------------
Q) How can I sort credits before debits in the register view?
A) You can't. But if you enter them in this order in the first place, this is
how they will sort.
Q) I think this new version is terrible. How do I exercise the 30-day Money
Back Guarantee?
A) Assuming that you are in the United States or Canada, call Microsoft
Customer Service at (800) 426-9400. You will have to send the product back to
them with additional information (like a receipt for purchase and the reason
for return) and they will send you a check. Microsoft has a web page with more
details on this process.
References:
Microsoft North American retail product returns
Refund Help Desk: 1-888-673-8624
Q) I've been reading this newsgroup and wondering: why is Money so full of
bugs?
A) Looking at posts in this newsgroup should no more be used to infer the
defect rate in Microsoft Money than a trip to an auto body shop should be used
to infer the likelihood of automobile accidents.
People come here because they need help or because they are looking for
different or better ways to do things. Many Money users (who may or may not
have similar issues) never find their way here. Some of them may be having
problems. Most of them are not.
You can reasonably expect that issues that are discussed here frequently may
be issues for you as well.
Likewise, many posts here about crashes, data file problems, and installation
issues reflect issues that are not common--many are not even rooted in
Money--and you are unlikely to encounter them. (You may, however, encounter
your own set of issues. As always, your mileage may vary.)
Many of us have used Money for many years and many versions and have learned
to live with its characteristics and deal with the new set of cards the Money
development team deals each fall.
Q) I've got a really neato feature idea. How do I get it to Microsoft?
A) You can submit product suggestions to MSwish or via the Money
Registration/Feedback series of web pages, which seem endless but probably
give them a better chance to get the item to the right place.
The corollary to this FAQ is: how come M[next] didn't incorporate the really
neato feature I've always thought it should?
Prior to the release of M05, the answer to this question assumed that
Microsoft was genuinely concerned with balancing the desires and requirements
of the existing user community, identified through channels like MSwish and
the newsgroup, with support costs, market share, market penetration and
profitability.
Virtually no significant features that make Money a more capable or versatile
product for personal financial management have been added to Money since
M02--and about all it added was the ability to modify multiple occurrences of
scheduled transactions. The bulk of the significant M05 redevelopment was
geared to three things: Yodlee integration; the Essential modes that we are
told, with no hint why we should believe it, "most users prefer"; and further
blurring the distinction between Money as an application on your computer and
Money as a web application and advertising delivery vehicle. The only aspect
of this that has had any significant prior interest in the newsgroup is
broader financial provider support for transaction download. Yodlee
integration is Microsoft's attempt to address this. It's safe to say that very
few newsgroup posters have asked for more ads.
The competition with Quicken and the relatively small market share relative to
Quicken holds the price down. Microsoft makes very little if any money off a
product retailing for $24. One support call and they're upside down. The bulk
of their licensing revenue probably comes from the OEM licenses bundled with
new computers anyway. (And the OEMs get those support calls.) Their only hope
of making any profit from Money going forward probably requires three things:
First, reducing the cost of sales and support. This explains the emphasis on
download sales and dumbing the product down--and progressively migrating it
toward being a web app--to reduce support costs. Second, "monetizing" the
ongoing relationship so that a one time sale becomes an ongoing revenue stream
to pay for even a little ongoing development, the services (like Yodlee and
quotes) and support. This accounts for the focus on advertising delivery and
tie-in marketing. (Examples include "Find great credit card deals," "Find cash
for a car," and "Compare home equity loans" scattered all over the account
registers plus all of the MSN web pages chock full of ads.) Finally, they need
to convert more of the people who say they would use a home computer to manage
their finances to actually doing something like that using "Microsoft Money".
This probably explains the emphasis on "stop typing!" and "the effortless
way". The people who are willing to go to any trouble at all to "manage their
personal finances" using "Microsoft Money" probably already are.
As if this weren't depressing enough, consider the pace at which bugs in Money
get fixed.
Given all of this, it doesn't seem that there is much incentive for Microsoft
to care what existing Money users want the product to do nor have they
released much evidence that they do. But go ahead and submit a suggestion.
YMMV.
References:
Money Registration/Feedback
MSwish mail
Q) M97 (or earlier) stopped downloading quotes. What can I do about it?
[Relevant to Money v. 4, Money97 (v.5)]
A) Apparently your only recourse is to upgrade to a new version. Apparently
this was an unintentional side effect of other things Microsoft was doing, but
since M97 and earlier are no longer supported, they have no intention of
fixing it. See the support lifecycle page for more information and the
Microsoft Money home page for information about the current version. Thanks to
Cal Learner and Bob Peel, both MVPs, for this information.
References:
Microsoft Money web site
Microsoft Support Lifecycle information
Q) What's this 'Savings & Spending Budget'? Where's the real budget tool?
[Relevant to Money2007 (v.16) and up]
A) Lots of people, apparently, found the long time Advanced Budget, *née*
Budget Planner, budgeting method too hard or cumbersome or just not useful.
Somewhere along the way, Richard Jenkins, an editor at the MSN Money website,
"invented" a simpler one-size-fits-all solution that he called "the 60%
solution". M07 incorporated this and calls it the "Savings & Spending Budget".
Collectively, they seem very proud of it.
Perhaps it will work well for some people and if it does, more power to the
60% scheme, to Money for adding it, and to the users it works well for. It
seems like a simplistic toy to me, but that's just me.
Where the new toy budget gets a little more complicated is that they hide the
old Advanced Budget, *née* Budget Planner, tool from anyone who didn't have an
Advanced Budget in their file pre-dating M07. But a crafty poster, Ronald
Pierce, resorted to reading the help files and found out that there is a way
to get to it by typing "money://navigate/newadvbgt" into the M07 URL text box.
As Michael Gordon pointed out, this is finally a useful purpose for the URL
text box. Perhaps a more strategic question is how long Money will continue to
support the budget tool the developers seem intent on making disappear.
References:
MSN article that gave birth to the "Savings & Spending Budget"
Q) What's up with this expiration date for online services I read about in the
EULA?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Many of us always figured there was an implicit date beyond which Microsoft
was not going to provide services that cost them money to provide on legacy
interfaces that cost them money to maintain in exchange for the same $10 we
paid for the software way back when. Beginning with M03, Microsoft finally
made this explicit by setting service periods and cutoff dates after which
they won't provide these services. Further, these periods vary by the package
licensed with the expensive packages getting support longer than the cheap
ones. It makes some sense--who else ever agrees to provide a service to you
forever for nothing more than you paid in the beginning?
M05 set the same service period without regard to the version. It also added
Yodlee integration which probably does have marginal cost to Microsoft as a
function of time. Microsoft is steadily moving Money away from an "application
software licensed in perpetuity" business model to a "service subscription"
model where the fees will be based on time used, regardless of version.
Mark Horn read this answer and correctly pointed out that it doesn't mention a
more insidious aspect to this. Money's service cutoff also includes
transaction data downloads direct from your financial institution to you.
These downloads, provided they work and don't entail support costs or use
protocols that Microsoft and the FIs would rather make disappear, cost
Microsoft absolutely nothing. It's like Stanley Tools telling you that the
hammer you bought from them will stop driving nails in two years. But there it
is. What are you going to do?
Q) Why is my Money file so large?
[Relevant to Money98 (v.6) and up]
A) Money files have grown in size dramatically since early versions. The
reasons for this are no doubt complex and numerous. Added functionality
certainly accounts for some of this increase. Design choices accounts for some
of this--in particular, the choice to use the Jet database instead of the
custom ISAM, made with release of Money 98, increased file sizes by factors of
three or more. (Certainly, those of us who follow this also continue to
collect data each year.) Whether its storage is efficient or economical is
beyond the scope of the newsgroup. We see no evidence that Microsoft considers
compact Money data files a priority in the design process.
Archiving is one way to reduce file size. See "How do I un-archive?" for
reasons not to do this. Some files imported from Quicken have been reported to
be huge, though with use and the automatic compacting of the database, many of
these shrink to more reasonable sizes.
Jet- and MSISAM-based versions of Money support periodic or as-required
compacting of the database. Salvage (see "What is the -s option? What is the
Super Salvage utility?") has been reported to help some cases of this.
The wide availability of huge hard disks and writeable CDs has reduced the
significance of this problem over time.
(My Money 2004 file has had continuous data entry since March 1993, and has
never had entries archived. As of November 2004, MoneyLink retrieves almost
34,000 transactions, i.e., splits, and almost 4,700 investment transactions
from my M04 file. The file is 53.1 MB and backs up, compressed, on ten 1.44 MB
floppies. Your mileage probably varies. As another point of reference, my data
file is growing by about 550 KB per month. At this rate of growth, my data
file will still fit on a 640MB writeable CD in the year 2092. The more
immediate problem in this scenario is that the Excel row limitation will
prevent retrieving all transactions with MoneyLink sometime in 2011.)
M07 added an interesting new "Repair Tool" that has significantly shrunk some
files. One case went from 67.9MB to 54.8MB. Whether this reduction remains as
the files is maintained going forward is not yet known. For details, see "Can
you tell me more about the remarkable new Nuke-the-Bills miracle repair
method?" for details.
Complaint Department: Why doesn't Money…
----------------------------------------
Q) Back to the check stock question: Isn't it obvious that Money should print
the MICR data?
A) No, actually, it isn't.
Money assumes you are using pre-printed check stock. The pre-printed check
stock has bank, payer name/address, check number, and the MICR stripe. Money
doesn't print this stuff because, at least for the MICR stripe, very, very few
(if any) Money users are equipped to print this stuff in ways that conform to
the requirements for these features. MICR stands for magnetic ink character
recognition. As the name suggests, special ink is required to print proper
MICR characters.
Yes, you can print checks with VersaCheck, etc., that "look" right and, at
most banks that use optical instead of magnetic equipment, work acceptably.
You may also find that those that aren't using optical equipment are within
their power to reject the check and they will certainly have problems with
them even if they don't reject them. These problems may delay payments, etc.
Despite whether they "work" or not, they still don't meet specifications and
standards for such things. For one discussion of the special toner
requirements from somebody in the MICR font business, see the MICRfonts page.
VersaCheck stays below this radar by being small and selling MICR toner
cartridges for those users who care to do it right. If mass-market software
like Money from a company of the profile of Microsoft enabled lots of ignorant
or devious (or cheap) people to ignore the FRB requirements for such things,
you can bet they'd hear about it. They call this type of activity "aiding and
abetting."
Money is now common enough that most any company that prints check stock can
print in the formats Money expects. This competition has brought the prices
down to the point where the pre-printed stock is always a better choice than
any of the other ways to do this.
References:
MICRfonts page about printing checks
Q) How do I change the category groups?
A) You can't, quite. Category groups are used internally by Money. You can
create new categories and subcategories, or use classifications, but the
'category groups' cannot be changed.
There are, however, a variant set of groupings, called Budget Groups, derived
from the default Category Groups and associated with each budget. These
**can** be modified, deleted, or supplemented in M02 and beyond. To do this,
when editing the budget, use the context (R-click) menus on the budget group
labels or select New to add a Budget Group. (Note that some of the Budget
Groups, like Debt, cannot be modified.) These Budget Groups are not reflected
back to the Category Groups that can be assigned to each category and
subcategory from category details, and, being attributes of each budget, they
are deleted when a budget is deleted or reset. (To my shame, I went over a
year without knowing this could be done until another poster, Carl Draus,
pointed it out. This capability is pretty well hidden.)
So, this leaves the immutable Category Groups which must be used somewhere
else in Money. We will award the newsgroup post of the month award to the
first poster who can identify two or more remaining uses for these Category
Groups besides their being the defaults for the Budget Groups. Honorary
mention for even one other use of any consequence. These things are truly
cryptic. Given this, there seems no point in fretting about modifying the
default Category Groups, even if it were possible.
Q) How do I schedule a bill to recur every six weeks/third year/fourth
Wednesday of the month?
A) Sorry, you can't get there from here. What you see is what Money can
schedule. One of the greatest single weaknesses of Money--and one of the
easiest to fix if they only chose to--is that the recurrence model is
pathetic. Outlook provides a great example of how this should work. But the
Money designers don't seem to care.
The only workaround (that really doesn't work very well) is if your desired
frequency is something that is a nice factor of one of the frequencies
provided: for instance, six weeks can be faked, almost, by two identical
"every three months" transactions set six weeks apart. As I said, this really
doesn't work very well.
Q) I want to use a different budget month/financial year. Where do I set this
in Money?
A) You can't. Quite simply put, you can't because Money doesn't offer a way to
change it. You will have to find a way to make do.
Q) Why can't I schedule a Loan Payment with pre-assigned classification?
A) Only the Money development team knows for sure. It's always been this way.
When you enter the transaction in a register, or once it is entered, you can
classify the split transactions in a Loan Payment. You just can't schedule it
this way.
Complaint Department: Microsoft is Evil
---------------------------------------
Q) I think open source software is pants! Why won't Microsoft release the
Money source code under the GPL?
A) Because they want to make money by developing software and using that
software to vector us all to other things that generate revenue for them as
well. You might want to check out GnuCash. Note that as of 2Q07, the GnuCash
team has an "unstable" port of GnuCash for Windows. Aside from its admitted
and readily apparent lack of stability, it's biggest issue seem to be that it
looks just like a Linux app ported to Windows. This will surely reduce
transfer of training for Windows users. OTOH, it is a start. Please report and
additional GnuCash findings/experiences back here.
References:
GnuCash
Q) I think Quicken is pants! (Or, Quicken has some neat feature Money
doesn't.) Why don't you all change to Quicken?
A) If you would prefer to use Quicken, by all means, be our guest. Send
specific feature feedback to MSWish or via the Money Registration/Feedback
pages.
References:
Money Registration/Feedback
MSwish mail
Q) Must I really install version Y of IE for Money? I prefer version X;
version Y is evil. This must be a conspiracy…
[Relevant to Money98 (v.6) and up]
A) Money versions since M98 depend on IE functionality for their user
interface. When Money says it needs version Y, it means it. If you don't want
that version or later of IE, then you will have to do without the version of
Money that requires it.
Q) Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10) and up]
A) You don't. Use of Passport/WindowsLive ID authentication with Money is only
required for certain features.
Passport/WindowsLive ID (Passport hereafter) can be used as nothing more than
a file access authentication scheme. In this role, it is not inherently evil
in and of itself and does not, by itself, put Microsoft in some unique
position to access your Money data or sell your personal information or
anything else. Passport authentication enables password recovery for continued
access to your data file via the Passport methods for password maintenance--a
much better method for password recovery, if you insist on using file access
authentication.
Passport has been required for use of the "Money sync with the web" feature
since that feature was first offered in Money 2000 +/- and survived through
M06.
Use of Passport was expanded with Money 2002 when they made it a prerequisite
to "background banking."
When MSN Bill Pay service was added, Passport was required to authenticate
access.
M05 added the requirement for a Passport if you use the Yodlee capability to
download transaction data.
If you or Microsoft has connectivity or service problems with Passport
authentication, it can complicate access to your data. In the summer of 2004,
Microsoft made an administrative mistake on their servers that prevented users
from accessing their own data, even off-line, until a special fix was
developed that effected users had to execute off a Microsoft web page. The
better part of a week expired with effected users locked out of their own data
files.
M05 set a new low in its insistence that you should use a Passport to "Help
protect your online Privacy and Security."
The suggestion that Passport INCREASES your Privacy and Security is dubious at
best. Compared to what? I'm not saying Passport is insecure or that it is poor
from a privacy standpoint. But it's NOT BETTER AND AT BEST SURELY SLIGHTLY
WORSE than not using it if you do any of the things Passport enables that
result in your data stored on their servers. Assuming you trust the people in
your house, your data will be most private and secure if you keep it on a
machine that never connects to the net and do not use a Passport or file
password. Anything else is demonstrably less private and secure.
If you tell M05 to go shove on the Passport thing, then it tells you that you
really should have a file password. Even this seems over the top. Telling the
target user audience for Money to put a file password on without giving A
PROMINENT WARNING that they are likely putting their data at greater risk--
forgetting the password--than it was at with no password at all seems like a
profound disservice to the users. It's all just more pseudo-security, just
like the xxx1234 account numbers on the Account List page with the real
account numbers and everything else just a few clicks away.
It is likely that there are other reasons why Microsoft is trying to encourage
Money users to use Passport. Passport may be more important in future versions
of Money than it is now.
(See also "What if I don't want to use Money with Passport authentication?")
Q) Why does Money Setup insist on installing Internet Explorer? I despise
Internet Explorer…
A) Microsoft has used Internet Explorer (IE) components to implement the user
interface for Money versions starting with Money 98. Without IE, Money will
not function. This in no way means that you have to abandon your web browser
of choice. Browse the web using whatever you want. But install IE if you want
Money to work. This newsgroup is not the place for discussions about web
browser politics.
Complaint Department: Help me! Help me!
---------------------------------------
Q) How do I convert my data back to a previous version of Money? I upgraded
and now I wish I hadn't.
A) In general, you don't. For this reason, any Money version upgrade should be
done with this in mind. If you are reading the newsgroup in a panic because
you just now realized that you made a mistake deciding to upgrade months ago
you will be disappointed. You may want to consider maintaining your data in
both your current and new version simultaneously for some period before
committing to the new version. All of these issues are explained in
excruciating detail in the screens that led you through this process.
When you first open your data file with a newer version of Money, it saved a
copy of your old file--with a renamed file extension of the form .mnx, where x
is the version number of Money that the file came from up until Money2003, or,
for a Money 2002 file save by Money 2003, .M10. You can go back to this
file--with the old version of the application--and enter transactions that
have occurred since you converted. You can do this by manual means (print a
report and re-key the stuff in) or by exporting the accounts via QIF before
uninstalling the never version. Once exported, you can edit them in Notepad or
similar to remove the transactions that were in the original file before
importing the files into the old file.
For more information, see the MSKB article on reverting a data file to a
previous version.
References:
MSKB: Q178465 How to Revert to an Earlier Version of Money
Q) How do I do batch submittals of Epays?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10)]
A) You don't. Money 2002 took away this capability since Microsoft thought it
caused problems for some users. Possibly based on feedback here and on the
support lines, this capability returned in Money 2003 as the "new feature"
called Bills Outbox.
Q) I bought Money online. Now I need to reinstall but have lost the
download/key. What do I do?
A) (This question used to begin with the premise that "I made the mistake of
buying the demo upgrade online". Now this is the only way to buy Money. Please
keep copies of the download install/setup file and any keys or activation
codes you needed to make it work. Burn both onto a CD. Test the CD to make
sure you can read it. Maybe burn a second one. Save it somewhere you won't
lose it. Or be prepared to buy Money again if you find yourself in this
situation--at least as long as that remains an option.)
The answer depends on what you've lost. If you've lost the download, but have
the key, the online activation site may be able to help. If you've lost the
key, it's kinda like losing the key in a store-bought CD version. You're
probably out of luck. Because of these complications, many of us recommend
AGAINST upgrading from trial to full versions online: go to the store an buy a
CD--you may end up wishing you had.
M05 changed the process somewhat. Detailed instructions to recover for M05
were posted by Rick MacKeigan, more or less like this after comments from
other users and editing:
1) Download the trial version and install it. (How this will be possible when
Microsoft removes the M05 trial edition from the Money home page is
unclear--hopefully they will still make it available at Microsoft Downloads.)
2) Open the sample file and allow the update to complete.
3) Verify the update has been installed by going to Help and choosing About
Microsoft Money. The version should be listed as 14.*.*.1105 (or higher) which
is the minimum usable version of M05.
4) Assign a Passport to the sample data file. This must be the same passport
you used to purchase the trial version. This can be done by going to the File
menu, choosing Password Manager and following the steps to add/change the
Passport associated with the file. (If you don't have that Passport anymore or
can't remember which one you used or similar, you are probably Out Of Luck.
See above re. recommendation about just buying the CD.)
6) Once you have assigned the Passport to the sample data file, close Money
and reopen it.
7) Accept the prompt to install another update. This will download the full
version of Money. Note: This is a silent download meaning you will not see a
progress bar for the download. Approximate time is 15 minutes on a DSL
connection.
8) Once the download has completed and installed you will be prompted to
restart Money.
9) Once restarted you will be prompted upon sign in "Thank you for purchasing
Money…"
Now you should be able to File|Open your regular data file and get on with
your life. And next year just buy the CD and skip all of this nonsense.
There is also an MSKB item that treats this question. It may or may not be
helpful. Note also that the online fulfillment process has been changed
entirely in M07. That may be good or bad; time will tell.
References:
Microsoft Downloads site
Microsoft Money Trial (US version)
MSKB: 889930 I lost the downloaded installation file. Now what?
Online download for licensees
Q) I don't want to disable Norton Anti Virus to install Money. What's the
workaround? Why doesn't Microsoft fix this?
[Relevant to Money2004 (v.12)]
A) Money Setup says you need to disable Norton Anti-Virus to install Money
because you do. In fact, Norton's copy protection scheme may even necessitate
that you uninstall it to install Money (and other apps, for that matter). You
can re-enable/re-install it after you get Money installed.
Norton created this problem, Microsoft didn't. Remember this the next time
Symantec wants some of your money. Oh, and go to their message board, support
line, and/or web site and complain.
Several poster, wiredup and StevenFromTexas, report that M05 and NAV (05?)
work and play well together.
Q) I just got a new PC with Money Essentials. It won't open my Mxx Deluxe data
file. Why not?
A) Money Essentials (MEss for short) is a toy Microsoft hopes to use to wean
lots of new users from a complex and expensive-to-support product toward
something much more like a bank web site that delivers ads from Microsoft
rather than the bank. They are, apparently, filling the OEM channels chock
full of this thing. The probably license it to the OEMs for a $5 discount on
the Vista operating system license or something.
For some people MEss probably does all they want or need. If all you are
interested in is a consolidated view of balances and transactions--as viewed
by the FIs--and don't much care about analysis, reporting, investment
performance, serious budgeting, income and expense categorization, etc., MEss
may be for you. Cal Learner--MVP posted a handy link to Microsoft's features
comparison. But there are a number of things you can't determine from this
table. Examples: MEss can't even do a Transfer that shows in two accounts at
once. It also won't/can't upgrade your pre-existing Money data file since it's
a fundamentally more "Essential" (less capable?) approach to the problem. For
previous Money users, that's the disqualifier for MEss.
So, if you have been using a previous version of Money, you may just want to
uninstall Mess to get the waste disk space back, then install your previous
version and get on with life. If you haven't used a previous version of Money,
you might want to fiddle around with the thing, but remember this: it isn't
representative of the rest of the Money product line. If you like it and think
it's all you need, that's great. But if it seems like it's missing something,
that's because it is.
References:
Microsoft Money version feature comparison
Q) I just moved my Money file to a new computer. All of a sudden Money wants a
password. Why?
A) You need to make sure that the version of Money on the new machine is the
same or higher version. If not, this is the bizarre way Money elects to tell
you that Money files are not backward compatible to older versions.
Q) I tried the (M03) trial version and didn't like it. Now (M2K) wants a
password to open my file. What gives?
A) Didn't you read the screens that popped up when it upgraded your file to
M03 telling you that you could not reopen an upgraded file back in your
original version? That's what they put them there for, it turns out. The
password message you are getting from M2K when trying to open your M03 data
file really has nothing to do with you setting a password on it--it's just a
lousy message meaning Money data files are not backward compatible.
You will need to go find your old file that the upgrade procedure left behind.
The screens told you all about this, too.
It'll be in the same directory as your [whatever].MNY file--which you can
rename [whatever].M11 or just delete--and will be named [whatever].MN8 (if I
remember my version numbers correctly). Rename it to [whatever].MNY and
double-click on it (assuming you've uninstalled M03 and reinstalled M2K) and
you should be right back where you were before you started messing with M03.
See also the answer to the question "How do I convert my data back to a
previous version of Money? I upgraded and now I wish I hadn't."
Q) I want to transfer my copy of Money from my old computer to my new one--why
can't I just copy the files?
A) You haven't been able to do this with most applications for a long time.
The reasons are many, but all come back to the same thing: the setup and
installation tools do many things to install the application that don't
involve the obvious files you want to copy. They scatter different files all
around the computer. They assure that pre-requisite files and settings are
configured. Finally, they register many settings with the operating system
that are not files but are essential for the application to function. Without
executing the setup/installation package, you just can't get there from here.
Sometimes people ask this because they upgraded a trial version to a full
license online and now they can't find the CD they never had. If this is your
case, you might also want to read "I bought Money online. Now I need to
reinstall but have lost the download/key. What do I do?"
Q) I'm having one of an infinite number of possible problems with downloaded
transaction data. Why doesn't Money work better?
A) Some weeks it seems that a quarter or more of the posts to the newsgroup
are from people who are having some problem involving downloaded transaction
data. Many of these people swear that they download transaction data "to save
time and trouble." Others apparently don't know that you can enter
transactions by hand. Some people occasionally even say they have no problems
with downloaded transaction data. For the rest, it seems that there are an
infinite number of possible problems that can stem from downloading
transaction data. It is obvious to some of us that downloading transaction
data is more trouble than it can possibly be worth for many or even most
users. I never download transaction data and have no such problems. Go figure
why.
Why doesn't downloading transaction data work better? In most cases, Money
isn't even the problem. The problem is that all of the back office systems in
the financial industry were never designed with this interface in mind. All of
the support for this has been grafted on, on the cheap, so that the banks can
sound hip and Internet Aware. They can advertise supporting it. Money can
advertise supporting it. "It makes your life easier!," they can say to attract
new buyers who want their lives to be easier. People buy it. Then they come
whining to the newsgroup when they discover the bitter reality of it all.
The worst case is users brand new to Money who have never entered a range of
types of transactions by hand. They are utterly unequipped to understand
what's going wrong and how to fix it because they don't understand how Money
really functions and how it approaches personal financial accounting. Hence
this single most important recommendation to new users: don't even think of
setting up all of the electronic banking stuff and downloaded transaction data
in particular until you've gone three or four months entering your own
transaction data. By then, you'll understand how Money works and how to enter
transactions. Then come and read the newsgroup postings for a week. Then ask
yourself how all of these problems with setting up transaction downloads,
keeping them working, fixing all of the weaknesses in the data they download,
and unscrewing all of the problems they can create can possibly "save time and
trouble" compared to just entering transactions by hand.
M05's integration of Yodlee further complicates solution of these problems.
The previous interfaces depended on your bank's cooperation. Yodlee
specifically goes around your bank. Now your bank is even less likely to care
if you have problems with the data you are downloading to Money. For more
information on Yodlee, see "Who/what is Yodlee that M05 keeps talking about?".
Q) I'm having problems with Money. Should I reinstall the application?
A) You can certainly try that. In most cases it does nothing to fix your
problem though it may make you feel better. Before you spend the time, you
might want to try opening the sample data file that installed with the
application. If it opens and works fine, then your problem probably has
origins in your data file, not the application's program files.
Q) Money is using 100% CPU/reported 'not responding.' Isn't this a crisis? So
I killed it…
A) I don't know who started the rumor that 100% CPU utilization was, *ipso
facto*, a bad thing. It's the height of efficiency. Less than 100% utilization
means that the CPU is sitting idle with nothing useful to do. You didn't pay
good money for a computer just to have it sit around idle sucking electrons
through your electric meter and providing no useful return, did you? What's
wrong is using 100% of the CPU while refusing to service the user. I think
we'd all prefer Money to be snappy to the user and average using 95% of the
CPU than ignore the user at 100% CPU usage some of the time and average only,
say, 20% CPU usage over time.
By the way, killing Money from Task Manager when it is working is a profoundly
bad idea as it can lead to corrupted data files. If you think this isn't much
to worry about, you have not read "I think my file has been corrupted. How do
I tell? What do I do then?" or you have great faith in your backup practices.
Why does Money do this? Well, that's harder to say. There are lots of things
it does in the background like searching for recurring patterns of bills,
checking all of the alert and advisor stuff, updating the spending thermometer
stuff, checking if the transaction you just entered is a match for any
upcoming scheduled transaction and so on. (See "Why is Money so slow?" for how
to turn some of this off.)
I'll be the first to agree that it should use mechanisms like threading and so
on to make this more transparent to the users--a well behaved CPU hog still
allows the Windows message queue to be serviced--but the notion that 100% CPU
usage is, by definition, bad is silly.
Q) What happened to 'Updated'/~/multiple recurrences/multi-select balance and
enter on my scheduled transactions?
[Relevant to Money2002 (v.10) and up]
A) M02 completely redesigned the scheduled transactions implementation and
interface. Before M02, there was the estimated tilde (~), the "updated" status
message for a changed next occurrence, the ability to see all bills in a
series for time X not just the next occurrence of each series, and the ability
to multi-select transactions and see a projected balance after these
transactions or enter them all into the register. M02 brought us the ability
to change any of the next twelve future instances of a repeated scheduled
transaction series.
M03 came along and added back the estimated tilde and multi-select projected
balance but did nothing to show more than one future instance of any recurring
transaction for some window of time, the updated status of individual
scheduled items, or allow multi-select enter. M06 deleted the multi-select
projected balance again. Microsoft must really dislike that feature.
You can see multiple occurrences of scheduled items over time using "Forecast
cash flow."
Q) Why don't budgeting, cash flow projection and debt reduction planner
produce sane results?
A) There could be a number of factors here:
1) Budget picks up some value from DRP and declares it in your budget. The
value from DRP is calculated who knows how, but it can be off-the-wall
sometimes.
2) Budget says that all scheduled income and expense are, by definition,
budgeted income and expense. So, if you have an unplanned income or expense
scheduled, it will distort your entire budget.
3) Budget ignores the first due date of a future expense that is a scheduled
income or expense. (E.g., if you have scheduled next year's IRA contribution
separately from this year's, Money will put both contributions in your monthly
budget now.)
4) DRP assumes that any account in plan will never be used once paid off. For
this reason, if you are a "convenience user" of your credit cards, it is
almost worthless. (I.e., if you continue to charge new expenses and pay the
bill off every month and do not incur interest charges.)
5) Money makes some assumptions about which account will be used for budgeted
but unscheduled expenses and income--generally it assigns these amounts to the
last account that accrued for the category in question. (Starting in Money
2002 you have more control over these assumptions.) This can lead to some very
flaky results from the cash flow projection.
6) If you have set amounts of other expense or income in the budget manually,
and use accounts in the DRP to pay them you may have essentially doubled-up
the amount in the expenses half of the budget.
7) The settings in the "Customize cash flow" Common Task may help you get
results from Forecast Cash Flow that work better for you. Try them and see.
8) There seem to be a number of other strange things that these tools do.
Q) You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error reading. What do I
do?
A) If you are dependent on restoring a Money data file from floppies and are
getting a message like "cannot read from the specified device," there is
nothing anybody here can do to help you. It's really sad how many people show
up at the newsgroup with this story because they were depending on a $0.10
floppy to hold one of their most important data files.
Error messages stating that the system cannot read from the specified device
are typically due to poor quality media (what do you really expect when you
buy white box diskettes for $0.10 apiece?), media damage (scratches from dirty
floppy drives or worn out diskettes), or media interchange problems (writing
floppy drive out of alignment one direction and different reading drive out of
alignment the other direction). Other things like CRT proximity to floppy
drives can cause transient problems--though this doesn't happen much anymore.
Morals of story: #1) Always test backups to be sure they really are. #2) Never
depend on just one backup or form of backup as your only backup. #3) Bad Money
files can produce bad backups--so have multiple generations of backup. #4)
Never trust floppy drives and diskettes. Corollary: the less you use the
floppy drives, the more likely you are to have problems with data errors. They
get dirty and the dirt chews up diskettes. Corollary 2: using diskettes cleans
the drives by ruining the diskette.
My Money data is **far and away** my most important data file. It gets backed
up over the net to a second system on every exit. Once a week it gets backed
up to floppies and a) copied to another system, b) copied to an MO drive on
primary, c) copied from the second system backup file to a Jaz drive on
primary system, and d) copied to a MemoryStick on the laptop. Every time I do
anything major I make a copy before doing it and keep it around until the next
time I do something radical. This way if a problem creeps in and doesn't get
noticed for a while, I can go further back than one week. Think all that's
anal? Every time I go to the safe deposit box (twice a year minimum) I take
either or both of a Jaz cartridge and an 8cm CD-RW or CD-R with a copy of the
Money data file as a minimum. On top of all that, after my most recent problem
with corruption, which occurred on the day of the weekly backup and also
corrupted the "on-exit" backup, I wrote a script I run as a scheduled task
every night, which maintains a weekly cycle of rotating daily backup copies on
the primary system.
YMMV. But consider yourself advised.
Complaint Department: Money 2005/6
----------------------------------
Q) I bought M05 Standard because M04 Standard did everything I needed. Where's
Forecast Cash Flow?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14), Money2006 (v.15)]
A) Microsoft removed Forecast Cash Flow from Standard. Apparently they didn't
think forecasting cash flow was something the average user needed to do. The
average user just needs to see ads.
The Microsoft marketing materials on the web indicate that M05 Deluxe adds
"essential tools for improving credit and organizing taxes" to the tools in
Standard. Microsoft must think that Forecast Cash Flow is a feature that makes
it easier to organize taxes or improve credit. Shows how well they understand
the problem.
M07 did away with Money Standard and replaced it with Money Essentials. There
has been almost no feedback on Money Essentials in the newsgroup and few, if
any, of the regular posters have tried it. It is surely less capable than M06
Standard.
Q) I just reloaded M05. Now it crashes when I start it. Why?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14)]
A) Additional forms of this question include:
- I just reloaded M05. Now it complains that my file is read-only. Why?
- I just moved my data file to another machine with M05. It refuses to open my
data file. Why?
- Why does M05 on my new, or newly re-loaded, machine refuse to restore my M05
backup file?
- Why does M05 on my new, or newly re-loaded, machine ask for a password when
I've never used one before?
- Why does M05 on my new, or newly re-loaded, machine reject my password?
The basic issue in all of these scenarios may be the same one: you are trying
to open your data file on what is, effectively, the previous version of Money.
As with opening an M05 file on an M04 system, this does not work. Some users
have reported this only effects users who use Yodlee download or some other
subset of users. FWIW, I duplicated this issue on my experimental M05 file
which has no online services enabled. The workaround is to either:
a) open the sample file by navigating a Windows File Explorer to the Money
installation directory (c:\Program Files\Microsoft Money 2005, typically) and
double-click on the Sample.MNY data file.
b) temporarily relocate your data file, start Money, and let it create a new
data file. Somewhere along the way you can skip the setup wizards.
Now you can do an Internet Update and Money will download the service updates
to get the Money application software to the latest level that will deal with
the "M05.1" data file format.
After completing the update, Help|About should report a version of 14.0.*.1105
or higher. Note that the originally shipped M05 CD installs 14.0.120.728 (for
a US Deluxe edition, anyway).
In 12 prior versions, it's not clear Microsoft ever released a patch that
broke intra-version compatibility. Problems in the initial release of M05 were
so severe that they had to release, essentially, a version 14.1 file format.
The really sad thing about this is that the chaos this will create--indeed,
already is creating judging by newsgroup postings--will merely confirm in the
Money team's minds the importance of moving this whole thing from a client
computer hosted application to a web service where they control what version
you are running, every time you open their web page. This way they won't have
to bother worrying about the "dumb users" who dare to do things like reload
the application from the CD whenever they feel like it and expect their
original M05 to open their randomly up-level M05 data file.
References:
MSKB: 890393 There are two M05 file formats
Q) M05 always wants to connect to the Internet. Why?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) This is probably because M05 insists on getting Internet Updates including
stock quotes every time you start it, even if you turn off the setting to
update quotes automatically. Even the on-line help has moved to the Internet.
Microsoft seems to be trying to desensitize Money users to Money and the
Internet being tightly coupled. You could probably get around this with
firewall settings, but you would surely have other side effects, given M05s
dependence on the Internet.
It is not clear if this was fixed in M06. For this reason, I've referenced
this answer to M06 until we know for sure that it's been fixed.
Q) M05 seems to have cut back on the on-line help resources. Doesn't this seem
backwards?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) You'd like to think that keeping the help files on-net would enable
Microsoft to fix errors and back-level information in them and respond to
search terms to improve the help and so on. Given that some of the same errors
and out-of-date information have been in the help file for several versions,
this seems unlikely. Removing the audio help and most of the instructional
videos is even more perplexing. Perhaps they've given up on improving "help"
as a way to reduce support costs. Long time followers of the newsgroup
certainly know that lots of users don't find the on-line help resources.
Perhaps telling users that "most users prefer" the dumbed down version will
keep them from doing anything even slightly complex. OTOH, maybe this is all
about making the download smaller. Perhaps they are pushing so hard on the
download installations to make a precious few bucks for themselves on the sale
since they probably don't make more than $1 or $2 on the $23 copy at Sam's
Club. And that's before we return it to Microsoft for retail+tax+shipping.
Q) My account numbers are alphanumeric. How come they display as XXXXXnnnn in
the M05 Account List?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) This is nothing more than stupid knee jerk pseudo-security. R-click and go
to the account settings and it will look correct. Some security, eh?
Q) My transaction data is only available via Yodlee. Why must I store my data
on the web to download transactions?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) Only Microsoft knows why Yodlee transaction data download forces storing
your account data on the MSN web servers. Some possibilities:
1) Not enough people were actually using the MSN Money access feature in
previous versions to rapidly advance their plan. The plan is to wean us all
from dependence on a locally installed licensed application ("Money") toward
using a web based subscription service ("MSN Money") without our really
noticing or caring. This helps move another large chunk of users in that
direction.
2) They knew the coupling to Yodlee was going to be troublesome, and they
wanted the Yodlee interface to be available to exclusive MSN Money users. So,
in order to implement it once, do it in a way that they could easily keep
tweaking it to get it right, and do it in a way that involved the least
development for the (hopefully soon to go away) client side application
software product called Money, they setup most of the Yodlee-to-Money stuff as
server side Yodlee-to-MSN Money code and just hooked the existing sync with
the web feature in Money to actually get the data into the client-stored file.
There's probably a third reason, but I'm just a skeptical curmudgeon and those
are the only two I can think of.
No matter, if you want downloaded transaction data via Yodlee for even one
account, your account data for all accounts is going to be stored on the web.
As of M07, only data associated with the Yodlee accounts is stored on the web.
If you don't want your account data stored on the web and Yodlee is the only
mechanism for downloading transaction data from some account you want to
download data for, you'll have to learn to enter transaction data the
old-fashioned way. It's really not so bad.
Q) We had Transfer and Credit Card Payment in M04. What's with Credit Card
Payments/Transfer added in M05?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) Microsoft added an expense category "Credit Card Payments/Transfer" to M05.
Note that this is not the Transfer we are familiar with or the Credit Card
Payment we are familiar with. It's a new expense category guaranteed to
confuse further the meaning and rationale for the other two. That's REALLY
BRILLIANT! Adding something that has a 100% probability of confusing new
users. Way to go!
New users have enough trouble getting a grip on Transfer or Credit Card
Payment. So now they add "Credit Card Payments/Transfer" just to mess with
them and leave it to people like us newsgroup regulars to help explain all of
this? What were they thinking?!?
Cal Learner--MVP wisely suggests just deleting this category.
See also "I've entered charges in my credit card account, when I pay the bill
aren't I spending twice? Is my card a category or account?" for more
information on Credit Card Payment and Transfer.
It could be worse: they also added an income category titled "Not an expense."
Well, duh. Curiously, they didn't add the symmetric expense category "Not an
income."
Q) What happened to Money Express in M05?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14)]
A) Microsoft sent it off to the same place they sent Money Side, the bin of
long lost Money features. It didn't work right in M03 or M04 and apparently
was easier to remove than fix.
Q) What happened to the option to see Single Category Lists? Now it's all I
can see in M05.
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14)]
A) Microsoft removed the option, which had been available since maybe as far
back as Mv1, to display categories in a single list. Instead they made it the
only behavior available in the initial release of M05.
To ease the pain, once Money autocompletes the category, you can advance to
the subcategory by hitting Shift+;. Tommy Becker pointed out--and a number of
long time users learned a new trick--that autocomplete will complete a full
category:subcategory if you just start to type an unambiguous subcategory
name. For instance, if you want Food:Groceries, typing gro will work. Unless
you never type a category name first, you will probably still have to type
more for autocomplete to disambiguate your entry.
After about two months of very upset M05 customers breathing down their backs,
Microsoft relented and made it possible to re-enable the dual category lists
through a registry hack. Note that the implementation forces Dual Category and
does not expose a Tools|Settings UI to change the choice. It's all reg
hacking. For this hack to work, the second (presumably or subsequent) "QFE"
must be downloaded and installed. ("QFE" stands for Quick Fix
Engineering--Microsoft-eze for a service update. Perhaps if they were doing
more engineering and less marketeering in the first place, they could avoid
having to issue so many QFEs, but that's another subject.) Once this update is
installed, you must add a specific key and value to the system registry. It is
the policy of this unofficial FAQ not to aid people in hacking the registry on
the theory that if readers know enough to be safe doing so, they can find the
specific details on their own. In this case, the thread where this was
discussed is referenced. Registry hacking can be completely benign or utterly
disastrous. Be careful out there.
It is not clear to us end users if they initially removed the feature from M05
for any reason but to annoy long time users who type in their data. Russ
Paul-Jones, "MSN Money" development manager, was relentlessly pestered later
in the thread announcing they'd relented and put it back, sort of, until he
offered the following explanation [note this is extracted from a larger quote,
see the whole thread if interested]:
"Very early on, we decided to settle on one version of the category combos for
the new register, and a single combo was deemed better for the customers we
thought would use it. It has been our default for new users for a few versions
now, and it tests better with potential customers. … The team did look into
the question of backwards compatibility, but convinced themselves that users
didn't need both ways to accomplish the same task. This evaluation didn't take
into account the attachment you naturally have to certain keystroke patterns
or the seeming arbitrariness of the decision."
The good news is that this episode demonstrates the possibility of getting the
development team's attention. The bad news is that it takes serious open
revolt by the users, after the fact, to do so.
Cal Learner--MVP provided a pointer to an MSKB item that captures the
workaround.
M06 put back the Tools|Settings user interface for controlling use of dual or
single category lists.
References:
M05 UseDualCatMode reg hack
MSKB: 889931 dual list category key
Q) What happened to the register view spending thermometers and forecast cash
flow in M05?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14)]
A) Removing them was probably a secret performance enhancement since turning
off the feedback was the #1 piece of advice to people complaining that the
program was slow. Besides, Microsoft had to free up some screen real estate
for all of the new UI clutter.
Q) What happened to version 13?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14)]
A) It's version 14's good twin. Apparently it died at birth. (That was just a
guess.)
Q) Who/what is Yodlee that M05 keeps talking about?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) Yodlee is an Internet service company specializing in "aggregation" of your
financial information from any financial institution (FI) that exposes any
human-usable user interface (UI) to you via the web. You setup web accounts
with all of your providers, then tell Yodlee about them and give them your
account/password info. Yodlee systems then pretend to be you and login in and
"skim" the information out of the resulting web pages ("screen scraping" is
another term-of-art for this), reformat it, and present it to you in some
aggregate form. This allows all of this data to be collected even if the bank
doesn't want to expose an OFX or similar low-level interface. Since there are
only a handful of UIs that these banks buy (written, one presumes, by Oracle,
Sun, HP, Unisys, CA and similar players and then personalized by/for the
individual FIs) and only the very largest players are developing their own
from scratch, Yodlee only has to figure out how to fake out this handful and
then figure out which FIs are built on which software. It is resold by some
folks like Fidelity (as "Fidelity Full View") and, now, Microsoft Money.
For about a decade, Microsoft and Intuit have been trying to get the FIs to
adopt low-level standard interfaces designed exclusively to let some
application ware like Money or Quicken interchange data with the FIs. For lots
of reasons, some to be discussed shortly, a decade later relatively few FIs
have adopted these interfaces. This has prevented Quicken and, to a larger
degree owing to its smaller market share and the threat the FIs consider
Microsoft, Money, from providing a seamless uniform interface to all of your
FIs.
With Money 2005, Microsoft threw in the towel and decided that integrating
with Yodlee (and, presumably, paying Yodlee real money) was the only way to
get lots of FIs integrated with Money. They claimed to have added thousands of
institutions not previously supported for data downloads to Money in M05.
Yodlee is how they did it. If the banks uniformly supported something like OFX
well, Money could readily do what Yodlee is offering to do with good results,
ease of use, and broad support from the FIs. Microsoft encapsulating Yodlee
under Money is essentially a concession that a decade of futzing with QIF and
OFC and OFX has failed because they could only add thousands of institutions
at this late date by going the Yodlee route. The FIs couldn't be made to care
about supporting OFX.
Why didn't the banks support the low-level interface? Apparently they couldn't
make a business case to do so. Another reason is probably that they didn't
want some other entity, much less Microsoft, "owning" the interaction with the
customer. This is probably why Money found it necessary to include hooks for
all of the branding support to make sure you see the FIs logo on the account
register and so on. The FIs don't want Intuit, or, probably especially,
Microsoft, getting in the middle of their customer relationship. Another
reason is probably that they can't see any way to make more money off their
customers by supporting the low-level interfaces. People won't pay extra for
it, relatively few people use them, and relatively few of these people
consider failure to support these interfaces cause to move their money to
another FI.
Given all of this, improvements to make OFX work better are probably unlikely
and so is increased adoption of OFX-like interfaces by the FIs. The FIs don't
see a need to spend a dime in this direction. Yodlee wouldn't exist if the
banks and so forth were stepping up to the plate. Yodlee couldn't do what they
are doing without the FIs tacit acceptance--since it would be very easy for
the FIs to play with their web sites enough to wreak havoc on Yodlee. But the
FIs don't add their own low-level interfaces and do tolerate Yodlee; they
apparently don't see a business case for doing anything else.
So what's wrong with Yodlee? Several things come to mind.
First, it's inherently an unstable technology. Yodlee's entire Reason for
Being is that the FIs have not broadly supported a uniform low-level
interface--e.g., OFX or similar--for transport of data to the customer, which
would enable Money or Quicken to be the interface and tool for aggregation.
Yodlee's entire model is to get around this by exploiting the high-level
interfaces the FIs have supported to collect the same data. It's a fake-job.
Because of this, it is less reliable than a purpose-built interface designed
to do what Money is trying to do. As Joe Guidera posted, "the upside of
[Money's integration of Yodlee] is that many institutions not previously
available for use with Money are now available. The downside is, that from
experience the technology is unreliable (at best). While I can't say this is
necessarily the fault of Yodlee (it can easily be issues with the target web
site), nevertheless it's much less reliable than the 'direct connect' (read
custom) technology prior versions of Money used."
Second, when it doesn't work, there's much less chance of getting a
resolution. Before Money+Yodlee, if you had a problem with downloaded data,
the problem was either your FI's or Microsoft's. Maybe you could get your bank
to care. Maybe. Add Yodlee to the equation, and, if you're an FI, you disown
the whole thing if the data looks right on the human-readable web site Yodlee
is skimming. That leaves you with Microsoft--Yodlee isn't working for you in
this scenario, they're working for Microsoft. So now Microsoft owns 100% of
the problem and your only hope is working any problems through MS Money
Support. Good luck.
For the third concern over the Money+Yodlee integration we come fill circle
back to the customer management issue. Yodlee views their value-add in terms
of enabling FIs (not Microsoft or Quicken) to capture the entire customer
interaction with them and with their competitors. It's all about "customer
retention and cross-sell marketing, [so] aggregation can significantly
increase an institution's per customer profitability" and "significant
opportunity to use aggregated data to grow customer relationships through
offers tailored to meet particular customer needs". Translated from
marketing-speak, this means the FIs can monopolize you as a customer and mine
all of your data to find more ways to transfer money from your pocket to
theirs. This is certainly consistent with everything else about M05 that
tries, first and foremost, to monetize your relationship with Microsoft and
the MSN properties instead of just providing a tool you can use to manage your
finances.
Some research after a posting by William R. Wood put me onto another example,
referenced below and discussed in better words than mine in a newsgroup
posting, demonstrative of Yodlee's "value proposition" to its customers--not
you, by the way. They are there to help the FIs find ways to drain more money
from your wallet into theirs based on things they can learn from data about
your financial activity you let them handle. If you read these and then think
Yodlee is doing anything that's in your best interest, then by all means sign
up today.
Note that somewhere along the way Microsoft added a second "third party
download" service named CashEdge. They may be better or worse in terms of
stability and underlying motive than Yodlee.
References:
What's wrong with Yodlee
Yodlee describes what they offer to FIs
Yodlee does it again
Q) Why did the upgrade to M05 mangle Food:Groceries to Groceries? How do I
undo this?
[Relevant to Money2005 (v.14) and up]
A) After a decade of upgrades without mangled categories, M05 just had to be
different. Only Microsoft knows for sure why this had to be.
To fix it, go to the categories page and Move Groceries to a category named
Food:Groceries and move Dining Out to a NEW category named Food:Dining Out.
Money will ask if you want to create these new subcategories. You do. Please
do this as I wrote it. Do not Move Groceries to Food thinking you will end up
with Food:Groceries. You won't. If there's any doubt you understand these
instructions, post a question in the newsgroup asking for clarification or do
it in a copy of your data file first.
Despite the relatively large number of postings complaining about this after
M05 was released, M06/7/Plus still does it when upgrading M04 and earlier
files. If you upgraded to M05/6/7 and undid this damage, M06/7/Plus leaves it
as Food:Groceries and Food:Dining Out. Go figure.