Saturday, January 10, 2009

Money 2010 Tracking

A couple of days ago, I created FAQ Article 604, which is to track the status of Money 2010. The timelines/tracking pages are popular on my website, so it seemed useful to create one for this potential product.

As Money 2009 was never released, we're moving to the next iteration of the software. The naming may not be Money 2010, given that Money 2008 was actually Money Plus. They may, if a release happens, decide to go back to year number, maybe not. I've no idea on how Microsoft decide to name ay product so Money Plus+, Money 18 etc. could all be valid.

One thing that will happen this year is that the 2 year online services feature of some of the Money Plus early adopters will expire, and without either a new product to move to, or an extension to this feature, people using this version of Money will start to lose functionality. The expiration will start around the start of August for those who downloaded a copy, and towards the end of August for those who bought a product from a retail store when it first came out (Note: if you bought Money Plus later than this, your expiry will be later - 2 years after the first activation).

Whether 2010 comes out is, at this stage, a mystery - this posting is not an indication of that. However the expiration of Money Plus is not a mystery - I keenly wait for the news to come out, in its usual manner.

5 comments:

Peter said...

I tried Quicken 2009, not only was the conversion process painful, the interface entirely unhelpful.
I personally have all my accounts in MS Money going back many years, there is no way to export the --hidden- setting from Money, let alone hide multiple accounts at once in Quicken.

I was hoping that after 5+ years of using MS Money, Quicken had actually done something useful, didn't happen.

Philip K said...

I, like Peter, migrated from Quicken to Money several years ago and I am generally glad I did.

I sincerely hope there is a Money 2010 (or whatever they want to call it) rather than just dropping the product. Quicken seems to kill Money in the marketplace (I would like to see comparable sales stats), so I hope MSFT does not rationalize the product out of existence. Disbelievers, it can happen, see Autoroute, their European mapping application.

MSFT needs to fix some bugs in Money Plus. I know it is not supposed to be a tax prep application but it is useful in preparing for tax time. Unfortunately, some of the income lines do not map correctly to tax forms and lines. And there is no work-around other than with a pencil. For instance, if you get a long-term-capital-gain distribution from a mutual fund it maps to Schedule D capital gains rather than to Schedule B dividends. It has the same (I believe) tax consequences but it complicates the filing. This cannot be user-adjusted the way expenses can be; it seems to be buried in the code.

Glyn Simpson said...

Hi Philip K

in addition to Autoroute, Money appears to have been discontinued in all other regions except the US and Japan....

I doubt they'll ever show sales stats - it would make very interesting reading.

I hope there's something coming up too....

Glyn

Jill & Jim said...

I am so very disappointed that Microsoft decided to drop Money!!! Quicken 2010 is horrific. It is extremely user unfriendly. Money was light years ahead of Quicken. I am not sure know what I will do.

ByLog said...

In 2000, With a new pc I also got Money preloaded. Since that time, I have used it extensively, getting updates/upgrades on schedule.
MS Money has never, ever disappointed me. It has never, ever crashed.
Unlike Quicken. I have reluctantly purchased Quicken2010. After two frustrating months of yet one more thing that Quicken does not do, or will not do, I am VERY DISAPPOINTED. I just hope that Microsoft will not disable the one program it has offered that actually works without problems.