Microsoft confirms end of Money product on their website

Along with other notable and memorable products this year, Microsoft Money is being discontinued after 17 years in existence.

As reported on CNet earlier, Microsoft have confirmed it on their website.

All of the pages now have an additional tag saying: Important notice: Microsoft Money Plus will not be available for purchase after June 30, 2009. Click here for additional information. Purchases made by June 30, 2009, once activated, will provide Microsoft Money Plus with online services until Jan. 30, 2011. Be sure to activate your product as soon as possible after purchase to receive maximum benefit of online services.

Microsoft to discontinue Money??

Microsoft plans to stop selling Microsoft Money, its venerable, but not market-leading personal finance program, CNET News has learned.

The software maker has been notifying financial institutions and plans to announce the move to customers over the next 24 hours via a posting on its Web site and a notification in the software. Although Microsoft will stop selling the product at the end of June, it plans to support it through January 2011.

More information at source

Full Microsoft Statement on Money 2009

A full statement from Microsoft has been released about the Annual Release Change and 100% Online distribution (out of the packaging business and physical retail store shelves)

You can find the full text on FAQ Article 562

This statement is relevant to the US product. Future releases (Money 2010?) are TBD.

Even now, we still haven't had any formal announcement about Money 2005 replacements for UK, France, International. However, I would guess that they won't be planning these either.

PC Pro Campaign - Forum Posting of my thoughts

PC Pro's campaign for a new version of Money is gathering some pace, as they've received 400 emails from people wanting a new version. Although I'm doubtful this will change the minds of the Microsoft people who make these decisions, it is an interesting story to follow.

I decided to answer a couple of questions and put my thoughts together (you may not agree with them, that's fine ;-)). Here's what I posted to their forum:

When Quicken pulled out of the UK market 6 or 7 years ago, it seemed that the writing was on the wall for Microsoft Money over here. Little competition meant that Microsoft didn't need to do much to make the product succeed.

Since that time, some new competition has emerged (personal accountz for one), but this isn't big enough to worry Microsoft, and duly we see a lack of new product for 3.5 years

In the US, things are different, not only with competition (I believe Quicken is #1 there) but also with banks competing with each other. You see a product which is being developed for the US market - integration with banks being an area where banks feel they 'have' to be as all of their competitors are doing it. Money is following this over there, and is being driven for the desires of that audience and not ours.

This isn't to say there aren't new features: Since the last version in the UK (Money 2005, released in 2004), the product has had tighter integration with US account aggregation services (Yodlee/CashEdge), a new budget, better backup and the reintroduction of the toolbar tool (now known as 'Insights'). The latter 3 parts would be of benefit to the UK, but one would wonder how much?

I noticed one post above commenting about the Financial Insitutions - I doubt many of them really care that much about the data export - it's a direct cost to them and probably doesn't bring in any significant business. It may just be us current users who cause it to continue to be provided.

Of course there is code clean up so it's a lot less buggy than 2005 and doesn't have that annoying patch that is required when installing.

So, would they bring it to the UK? The longer time goes on, the more work is required to regionalise the functionality because of the new features. The more work, the more cost. Economically, they may be able to do it, but this might mean a download-only version, to reduce costs of artwork, printing etc. It might not win them many friends at some of the retail stores.

One thing to note that it is possible to get hold of the US version in the UK (see FAQ Article 535), but you cannot directly convert from the UK to the US version (you have to go through hoops of exporting as QIF and then importing it). I doubt many people are prepared to do that, unless their files are small. The US product does work here (although the Nationwide integration would not) - I use this version.

I've been involved with the US and UK Money teams through the Microsoft MVP program for about 9 years now. In that time, I've seen 7 UK products come through. Each year I ask myself 'are there enough new or updated features that can justify upgrading?'. In many years, it's been a 'no'. Currently, based on the US SKU, it might once again be 'yes'.

For those of you wanting the history, see the latest article (April 25th) and the Open Letter to Microsoft.

Microsoft rebuffs PC Pro call for new Money

From PC Pro this week:

Microsoft has rejected PC Pro's calls for an updated version of Money in the UK,
despite huge reader backing for our campaign.

Microsoft has failed to release an update for the UK version of Money since 2005, despite the US receiving a new version only last year.

And the company has now restated its assertion that the four-year old software is perfectly suitable for customers' needs, even though all technical support for the product is set to end on 30 June.

In issue 164, PC Pro editor Tim Danton wrote an open letter to the software giant asking Microsoft to rectify this situation, and calling for readers who want to see a new version of the program to email in.

Click here for more information and the PC Pro campaign