Review by Centriculous

The reviews for Money 2005 are very good – I suggest reading them all to see what you’re in for.

The big problems for me were:nn1) The ability to have separate category and subcategory lists was removed from the transaction formnn2) I couldn’t easily use the ‘Transfer’ category, especially in a split categorynn3) Annoying duplicate account creationnnOn the first problem, Money 2005 uses just one combined category-subcategory list, so when you enter a transaction, you must choose a category-subcategory from one big list. I prefer two distinct selections because it’s quicker to enter and easier to find my subcategories. Microsoft provides a Registery edit in the following Knowledgebase article:nn[…]nnI used the edit, and my separate lists are restored. Great, but I am irritated that Money 2005 removed this option and provided no way for a user to change this behavior short of a Registery hack.

On the 2nd problem, my ability to ‘Transfer’ amounts to different account was resolved once I split my subcategory lists from my category lists using the above Registery hack. Now, transfers operate as they did in Money 2003, which is the last version I was using.

On the 3rd problem, one financial institution has, for the 2nd time, downloaded duplicate accounts. I hope it’s an anomoly, but we’ll see. Other accounts operate fine.

I haven’t explored the strengths of 2005 yet – this was just post-upgrade issues I’ve wrestled with over the New Year’s weekend. On the surface, doesn’t look like much new is useful to me.

On the matter of online bill payment, I already had that through Wachovia bank (formerly First Union). I guess what’s new is that Microsoft now makes bill payment through Money work with many institutions. Since Wachovia already provided this function, I don’t think I’m adversely affected…or benefitted (though Wachovia dropped the $6 monthly fee for using Money’s bill payment function).

One final piece of advice: after you install, don’t open your Money data file unless/until you have had Money perform all its software updates. For me, I opened my Money 2003 file, was prompted to convert to Money 2005 file format, and then Money 2005 automatically downloaded software patches afterwards. Wondering whether my conversion worked right nor not, I chose to open a backup of my Money 2003 data file using the patched copy of Money 2005, so any software bug fixes related to data conversion were already installed in Money 2005.

I gave it a 2-star rating based solely on the upgrade process. This upgrade, bad as it was, was better than when I upgraded from Money 2000 to Money 2001!