Review of Microsoft Money 2007

For years, I’ve been using Microsoft Money 2001 for keeping track of my expenses. It’s simple, clean, and efficient, albeit probably somewhat outdated in the feature department.

My friend Caryn loaned me Microsoft Money 2007, which I thought would be all the better. I installed it on my laptop this morning and imported my 2001 file. The user interface is fairly different, but I was able to find everything I needed. It offers more report options, which I was really excited about because I use the different reports often to determine where problem areas are in my finances, keep my budget in certain categories in check, and just really be aware of how much money is going to certain places.

However, I’ve been sitting here for the last 5 minutes trying to get a single report to load, and they just keep saying “Loading”. I’ve yet to see what their new report interface or what their new reports look like. Not happy there. 2001 will load them instantly, I’m not sure why 2007 can’t seem to handle them.

I do like that they’ve changed the entering of account information into one screen rather than filtering back and forth through different screens, that’s certainly a bonus. They also offer a bills calendar which just displays your bills and when they are due in a calendar format. Not necessarily that useful, but for people who need a visual guide I can see it as being a plus.

A lot of the program seems to switch back and forth through the Microsoft Money website, which I don’t like either. I don’t know what sort of security is in the built in browser for this program, so I have no interest in browsing with it.

Finally got a report to load, which is just the regular January report. It looks pretty much the same as 2001’s report, offering a comparison to last months expenses, where you decreased or increased your spending. It displays total income vs expenses, but as far as new features I see it shows your top five expense categories, your net worth, and a large section dedicated facts about your bills over the last several months. Pieces like, comparing your debt to the national average, warning you not to charge on your credit card if you already have a balance, telling you if a bill has been increasing over the last 6 months or not and suggesting that you re-evaluate it. It even tells you if you have a gap in your check sequence, and what your estimated income tax will be for next year 😀

I’m still torn on whether I’d be willing to switch to it. I think I might actually use both for a while, 2001 on my desktop and 2007 on my laptop and decide which I like better after a month or two of usage. Nothing is really pulling at me to switch to 2007 yet, and the fact that I can’t get reports to load quickly enough (or at all) is a huge turn-off.