Money Plus Deluxe

List Price: $49.99 Discount Price: $28.50

Features:

• All your finances in one place
• Improve your financial picture
• Understand your spending
• Get a desktop glance at the information you need most
• Improve your investment strategy with help from the experts at MSN Money

Accessories:

Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008

Customer Reviews:

terribly unstable/unusable [Posted on 2008-07-12]
This is the most frustrating piece of software I've ever used, hands-down. It has all the features I want, but it just doesn't work.

On my first computer (Windows XP), I got all my accounts set up, and they sometimes would update their balances online. Usually the operation wouldn't work ("The online update was unsuccessful"), but sometimes it would succeed. Every few months the file would get corrupted and I'd have to start from scratch. But at least I could get things to work with some effort.

On my next computer (Windows XP also), I gave up completely. Online updates *never* worked with my original file (again, "The online update was unsuccessful"). I started a new file, but I couldn't successfully connect to online services. I'd add a bank, then would get an error that it was unsuccessful. In my account list, there would be a link to "provide sign-in information". When I clicked it, I'd fill in a username/password, then get a message that "An online operation is currently in progress. Please try again in a few minutes." I would get this message even after waiting 6-12 hours, closing the file or *rebooting the computer*. This happened for all banks, in all of the *27* attempts I made at creating a new file from scratch.

For a while, I found that I could work around the problem by using Money's "Repair File" functionality after *every* account-setup and every online update. Eventually that stopped working though -- my accounts are currently stuck with new transactions that can't be accepted because... you guessed it... "An online operation is currently in progress.".

I tried all this with and without "background banking" enabled -- don't even get me started on the stability problems that this functionality (a program that ran in the background) caused.

I've been trying to use this from version 2006-2008.

I uninstalled this program and am currently using a money-management website. It has far fewer features but at least it works.

Money Plus is a joke [Posted on 2008-07-15]
I have evaluated Quickbooks Pro and Pro Contractor edition. I installed the trial version of Money Plus after reading that it can run concurrently with prior versions (I have Money 2002). After evaluating it, it doesn't even come close to Quickbooks for funtionality. However it would probably be ok for someone who sells Lemonade.

After installing it, I opened my prior version of Money (which has my entire life's checking history) to find out that it somehow got password protected. I couldn't figure out what the password was so I restored the prior backup. That worked fine except I had to reenter a ton of checks. Being a little po'ed about the trial version, I deinstalled it. That worked perfectly... and then some. It deinstalled my copy of Money 2002 as well! I had to restore my system to get that back and needless to say I also had to install and deinstall lots of other stuff. What a collosal waste of time.

My experience with Money [Posted on 2008-07-21]
Money Plus Premium

I've been using Microsoft Money for 10 or more years and have found it to be excellent. I don't use a lot of the bells & whistles that come with the program, e.g., investment management, bill paying, etc., but I use it for keeping my checking account register, for budgeting and for running reports on income and expenses. It's easy to export files to Excel for doing my own budget performance analysis. The only drawback I've experienced with Microsoft software is it can be very difficult to get through the maze to get technical support. One of the reasons I finally purchased a copy directly (all my previous copies came with the computer) was to avoid the conundrum of having Microsoft point at the OEM for tech support and the OEM pointing back at Microsoft (they don't know the software well enough to give tech snpport). And you're caught in the middle. I now decline preloaded commercial software and purchase it directly to make sure I can get support when I need it.

Money Plus Deluxe Trouble, with a capital T. [Posted on 2008-07-22]
I'm looking at a desk littered with years of software right now and this product is the absolute worst of the bunch. I hate it. How can I describe it? Counter-intuitive, complicated, gut-wrenching, and even error-prone. I use this software to chart my investments and have used both Quicken (years ago) and three generations of MSMoney which I first started using because it was free and then was suckered into upgrades. The most obvious problem with the package is you can't enter everthing on one screen. Buying and selling stocks on one screen - interest on your money market in another. Recent problems I've encountered are... Dealing with the Tyco spinoffs which the product simple could not do correctly. Plus, when I searched for information on "record a spin-off" (which is supposed to a feature of the program) I got all sorts of random mess returned in the help topic list. The program also could not deal with a merger (even though it is also a specific feature of the program). It would not let me enter the merger because I didn't own shares in both companies! Another problem occured when I entered stock transactions in the regular screen but because I had sorted the transactions "by investment name" the transactions were not subtracted from my account! How's that for a major screw up? There are other problems and inconveniences (software has an expiration date? Who knew.) but they are too numerous to mention. DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT.

No issues here [Posted on 2008-07-23]
I have been extremely pleased with Money Plus Deluxe. Some other reviewers have had lots of problems loading the full version of Money after they used the trial version. I have not found any issues and yes, I did have the trial version first. I am extremely pleased since my last version of Money was from 2000. This program does exactly what I need it to do. I'm most excited about the automated account updates from my bank. I've found that all my transactions have been matched perfectly except on 2 instances, but it was easy for me to just say,"Don't match these." And they weren't.

Great product!

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