Money 99 Notes

Welcome to my

Money 99 FAQ

Notes on the use of Money 99 especially
for those upgrading from Quicken.
See the UK Money newsgroup.
Email me for clarifications/updates.

These notes are based on upgrading to Microsoft Money 99 Financial Suite UK edition from Quicken 6 UK edition and any problems/issues encountered:

Quicken conversion - Discrepancy in starting balance when reconciling account. Seemingly a number of financial transactions became unreconciled. Even when these were fixed, there was still a discrepancy (though less than Ł50). This was fixed with a balance adjustment until such time as I work out a precise fix.

Bills/Transfers. Money classifies a transfer as a special transaction and does not allow splits. This means that what was a split transfer in Quicken becomes a bill payment in Money 99. For example, a transfer to an investment account which includes a commission fee must be classified as a bill.
As transfers don't have payees, the transaction looks unusual in the transaction register.

Currencies. The list of currencies is odd as it appears to have two entries for each currency. In fact the currencies from Quicken get added to the Money list. These currencies do not have a country associated with them and I suggest deleting them and setting the base and the planner currency to GB pounds immediately. If you do not do this, Money produces lots of confusing messages about 'converting pounds to pounds'.

Stockmarket Indices. There is a bug whereby the conversion from Quicken disables this feature. See the Microsoft knowledge base for a description. It might be worth creating a test account which is not created from Quicken to see what you are missing.

Online quotes. The upgrade from Quicken might cause trouble here also. The problem with countries and currencies above causes Money to not only fail to look up the symbols but to report a problem connecting to the quotes server (very misleading). Stocks appear to be associated with Argentina by default. Make sure you have at least one quote for Great Britain (the little blue lightning symbol indicates that that country should be available for online quotes).

Money Manager articles - these are supposed to show your personalised data alongside (the Expert Assistant). Unfortunately, this feature doesn't appear to work and produces messages such as 'the total value of your accounts is <..$$98$$$>'.

Unit trusts online updates do not work currently. Apparently these will be available 'within the life of the Money 99 product'. These may be manually updated but not nearly as conveniently as in Quicken.

Unlike Quicken, the price update function only shows the change in prices, not the change in market value of holdings.

The Quotes/Fundamentals and Positions Views in the Investments area unfortunately can't be filtered to just 'active' investments (ie. it includes stocks no longer held whether they are marked as an 'Investment to Watch' or not. This can make these screens very cluttered.

Conversion from Quicken. Shares get converted to unit trusts and annoyingly there is no way to change this categorisation apart from recreating the account.

Share splits. 'Shares Out/Shares In' method in Quicken causes the Cost Basis to be incorrectly reported in Money 99. The share split function in Money should be used and the Shares Out/In transactions deleted.

Online quotes. The 'Find symbol' button does not do anything in the UK version. Why is it there?

The online help and manual are very skimpy compared with Quicken, not mentioning how to enter endowment mortgages into Money and handle MIRAS.

Money data files are very large compared with Quicken (about four times larger in my case) so it is just as well that disks are cheap these days. The reason is that Money uses an Access database to store its data. Apparently in Money 98, it was possible to open the data file in Access 97 just by changing the file extension. This does not appear to be possible in Money 99 though programmatic access from VB should be possible with a little investigation.
The moneylink.xla file supplied with Money 99 is a useful way in to see what is going on. Install the add-in and then invoke it from a new worksheet. By then going to the VBA editor, one can examine the code (the password being 'dino').

Selecting payee compared with Quicken. When entering a payee in a transaction, Quicken allows you to type a few characters and then use the up/down cursor keys to select a previously entered payee. Money is slightly less convenient - you must use Alt-up/down before selecting the payee.

If all the woes of the Quicken import are too much for you, an alternative is to export QIF files from Quicken and then import these into Money. This should workaround some of the upgrade problems though could be quite a lengthy process if you have been using Quicken a few years.

Summary

Very slick interface, excellent planning and reporting functions but an annoying number of bugs. Some of the problems suggest that no testing has been done whatever.

For a product obviously designed with the Internet in mind and extensively using HTML/browser technology, the online reality in the UK is frankly poor eg. no online updates of unit trusts or financial articles. Probably half of the questions in the UK newsgroup seem to be related to the 'Find Symbols' button not working and how to find stock symbols. One would have thought that justified a 'financial article' from Microsoft. The US version is probably a lot better but it seems that the UK version has some way to go.

Stop Press. 1st financial articled spotted on 11 March concerning Budget news. This coincided with a very helpful 'Tip of the Day', namely 'No symbolic name defined for 0x0079FF50L'.

Email alistair@compuserve.com .

Last updated 14 Mar 1999.

Welcome to my Money 99 FAQ		Notes on the use of Money 99 especially for those upgrading from Quicken. See the UK Money newsgroup. Email me for clarifications/updates.
		These notes are based on upgrading to Microsoft Money 99 Financial Suite UK edition from Quicken 6 UK edition and any problems/issues encountered: Quicken conversion - Discrepancy in starting balance when reconciling account. Seemingly a number of financial transactions became unreconciled. Even when these were fixed, there was still a discrepancy (though less than Ł50). This was fixed with a balance adjustment until such time as I work out a precise fix. Bills/Transfers. Money classifies a transfer as a special transaction and does not allow splits. This means that what was a split transfer in Quicken becomes a bill payment in Money 99. For example, a transfer to an investment account which includes a commission fee must be classified as a bill. As transfers don't have payees, the transaction looks unusual in the transaction register. Currencies. The list of currencies is odd as it appears to have two entries for each currency. In fact the currencies from Quicken get added to the Money list. These currencies do not have a country associated with them and I suggest deleting them and setting the base and the planner currency to GB pounds immediately. If you do not do this, Money produces lots of confusing messages about 'converting pounds to pounds'. Stockmarket Indices. There is a bug whereby the conversion from Quicken disables this feature. See the Microsoft knowledge base for a description. It might be worth creating a test account which is not created from Quicken to see what you are missing. Online quotes. The upgrade from Quicken might cause trouble here also. The problem with countries and currencies above causes Money to not only fail to look up the symbols but to report a problem connecting to the quotes server (very misleading). Stocks appear to be associated with Argentina by default. Make sure you have at least one quote for Great Britain (the little blue lightning symbol indicates that that country should be available for online quotes). Money Manager articles - these are supposed to show your personalised data alongside (the Expert Assistant). Unfortunately, this feature doesn't appear to work and produces messages such as 'the total value of your accounts is <..$$98$$$>'. Unit trusts online updates do not work currently. Apparently these will be available 'within the life of the Money 99 product'. These may be manually updated but not nearly as conveniently as in Quicken. Unlike Quicken, the price update function only shows the change in prices, not the change in market value of holdings. The Quotes/Fundamentals and Positions Views in the Investments area unfortunately can't be filtered to just 'active' investments (ie. it includes stocks no longer held whether they are marked as an 'Investment to Watch' or not. This can make these screens very cluttered. Conversion from Quicken. Shares get converted to unit trusts and annoyingly there is no way to change this categorisation apart from recreating the account. Share splits. 'Shares Out/Shares In' method in Quicken causes the Cost Basis to be incorrectly reported in Money 99. The share split function in Money should be used and the Shares Out/In transactions deleted. Online quotes. The 'Find symbol' button does not do anything in the UK version. Why is it there? The online help and manual are very skimpy compared with Quicken, not mentioning how to enter endowment mortgages into Money and handle MIRAS. Money data files are very large compared with Quicken (about four times larger in my case) so it is just as well that disks are cheap these days. The reason is that Money uses an Access database to store its data. Apparently in Money 98, it was possible to open the data file in Access 97 just by changing the file extension. This does not appear to be possible in Money 99 though programmatic access from VB should be possible with a little investigation. The moneylink.xla file supplied with Money 99 is a useful way in to see what is going on. Install the add-in and then invoke it from a new worksheet. By then going to the VBA editor, one can examine the code (the password being 'dino'). Selecting payee compared with Quicken. When entering a payee in a transaction, Quicken allows you to type a few characters and then use the up/down cursor keys to select a previously entered payee. Money is slightly less convenient - you must use Alt-up/down before selecting the payee. If all the woes of the Quicken import are too much for you, an alternative is to export QIF files from Quicken and then import these into Money. This should workaround some of the upgrade problems though could be quite a lengthy process if you have been using Quicken a few years. Summary Very slick interface, excellent planning and reporting functions but an annoying number of bugs. Some of the problems suggest that no testing has been done whatever. For a product obviously designed with the Internet in mind and extensively using HTML/browser technology, the online reality in the UK is frankly poor eg. no online updates of unit trusts or financial articles. Probably half of the questions in the UK newsgroup seem to be related to the 'Find Symbols' button not working and how to find stock symbols. One would have thought that justified a 'financial article' from Microsoft. The US version is probably a lot better but it seems that the UK version has some way to go. Stop Press. 1st financial articled spotted on 11 March concerning Budget news. This coincided with a very helpful 'Tip of the Day', namely 'No symbolic name defined for 0x0079FF50L'. Email alistair@compuserve.com . Last updated 14 Mar 1999.