Microsoft Money Premium 2005 [Old Version] review:2 stars (Maybe good for business but short for personal) - M.S. money seems to still be lacking easy of use for the home user. Several lingering problems seem to holding on.
1) If you use Money to pay bills on line, you must provide a category for the bill each and every time you pay it. Its not enough to set up your mortgage and tell it that payee is for mortgage, you must tell it each and every time you pay a bill.
2) Paying multiple bills is tough. Even with 2005, its not much better. You can select a group of payees to pay but you must click on each one to actually pay them. Compare this to most bank web interfaces where you can bring up a spreed sheet of payee, $$$ amount, and date to pay and set up every bill without clicking away.
3) No expression langauge. It would be nice to say that any checking account transaction that looks like *ATM* will automatically be categorized as CASH. However, Money doesn't allow that. Unless your transaction looks 100% the same each time (no transaction number, etc) you must manually assign the category each time.
4) Budget could be easier. It would be nice to say "make last money my budget and I'll work from there". It doesn't do this.
5) No true user spending categories. When you create your own spending category you must put it in one of the M.S. money categories. When you run reports on budgets they are all relative to these seeded categories, no the ones you created.
6) Putting categories on all your account transactions is just too hard. It takes lots of keystrokes (alt-E, 5 tabs, type in category, alt-S) to categorize your tranaction. At the end of the month when you want to put a category on all your tranactions you downloaded, this can take some time.5 stars (Best value for non-professionals) - As a practicing tax attorney, I'm frequently asked to recommend a software package for home users. This is without doubt the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and easy-to-use software for the layman. If you use a CPA or tax attorney, this program helps track and print all the needed documents. If you file by yourself (good luck), it is equally effective in tracking your overall assets. Recommended.4 stars (Not bad but buy a reference book for it.) - This is my frist try with personal finace software and so far its not bad. I would however recommened getting like a dummies guide to book of some sort with this software. It takes a lot of frustration out of setting it up. The users guide that comes with ths software isnt really a users guide, more like a book of advertisments for other products. The only other guide is in with the software through help and I found that equally as usless. So if you are willing to spend 50 - 70 bucks for this software go out and spend another 20 and get a book. It really helps. Other than that, that is my only complaint.
Microsoft Money Premium 2005 [Old Version] Features:
Computer software (programs)
Personal Finance (Financial)
Invest (Investment)
CD
Simplify taxes, maximize savings; achieve financial goals
Personal finance software with award-winning Portfolio Manager
Automatically consolidates online financial information
Provides essential tools for planning financial future
Integrated GainsKeeper for tax-smart investment choices

Microsoft Money Premium 2005 [Old Version] is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 74.99USD.