Having issues with Microsoft Money. Help?
Ok, I’m missing something here. I spent a good chunk of this weekend trying to import all my accounts into Microsoft Money 2005. It looks like it uses Yodlee to synchronize accounts online, but more than half of my accounts require me to manually download transactions in “Active Statement” format, from each individual website. Many of these banks sync perfectly fine in Yodlee Oncenter too. Arrrgh.
Then, when I do download the files, the balances are all messed up. For instance, say I download a file containing 1 deposit of $1,000, bringing my balance from $10,000 to $11,000. But Money just shows a balance of $1,000.
It took me 20 minutes just to find and add ING Direct (another bank that works fine with Yodlee but won’t sync with Money). For some reason, only ING Direct Canada is listed under ‘Banks’. ING Direct is actually listed under ‘Investments’. And I’m not even sure that is right, as ING also offers mutual fund accounts…
I know that this must get easier, but is there like a FAQ or something for idiots like me? I may have to buy Microsoft Money 2005 For Dummies…
April 25th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
These problems are why I switched to Quicken this year. MS Money seems to get worse each year. For me it was doubling up transactions that were previously downloaded. It was just too frustrating, so I switched to Quicken and never looked back…
April 25th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
I have become completely frustrated with MS Money and just use it to reconcile accounts once a month now. I’ve had problems similiar to both you and Brian.
Brian, do you think Quicken is really a lot better?
April 25th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
I have been using MS Money for a few years. Getting everything set up is a little complicated, but once you have all the accounts set up and the amounts balance out, things are pretty easy to maintain from there.
If this is the initial setup for your account, you may need to put in a starting balance of say $10,000 in that account. Then after you download that file, it will put in a transaction of $1,000 and your total balance will be $11,000.
Unfortunately, some accounts do require manual downloads. ING DIRECT is one of them. Chase and Citibank are also not part of the auto update list in MS Money. It is a little hassle. Because of this, I’ve stopped using my Chase credit card and use my AMEX card instead. Most of my accounts have the auto download feature, which is really cool.
April 25th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
I use Money 2003 and don’t have any problems (knock on wood). My accounts always sync up and balance correctly, which is amazing because I’m always shuffling money and opening and closing accounts.
I hope you can figure it out!
April 25th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
I think you should check out mvelopes.com. It’s much easier to use than Quicken or MSM, in my opinion. It’s web-based, so you pay monthly, which means it ends up being more expensive than either software package, but I think it’s worth it.
Just a suggestion for those expressing frustration with the two biggies in the budgeting/money tracking software world.
April 25th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
In order to sync ING Direct, you have to go to the website and download your transactions from there. Money no longer lets you initiate the sync for that bank from the software. More of the banks do it that way now. Quicken is also switching to their proprietary format so more banks will be dropping their direct connect feature there as well.
As far as balances not being correct, that might be a problem where you’ll have to salvage your data.
April 26th, 2005 at 3:46 am
Same experience with Money 05. Worthless program to me. whats the point of it when it doesnt even update correctly.
The same can be said for the latest Quicken.. it seems the older MS Money is a better, since new features arent necessary functional at all.
Older Quicken is better too.
Sheesh.
April 26th, 2005 at 6:40 am
Chad, I miss some of the reports from MS Money, Quicken’s are kind of difficult to customize. However, to me keeping accurate balances is more important, and Quicken works perfectly for me. I use Bank of America, and the bill pay even works from within Quicken, something Money never supported. I love it!
I originally used Quicken, but switched to MS Money when it first came out, and upgraded (almost) every year. After Money 2003 though, it started getting buggy. I did some research on the newsgroups and came to the conclusion that it may never get better. MS Money is a product that falls under the MSN umbrella at Microsoft. MSN does great with products like messenger, but I don’t think they know how to develop financial software.
April 26th, 2005 at 10:05 am
Hmm.. I’m not getting the warm and fuzzies for Money 2005 from these comments… I’ll stick out and input the rest of my data this week, and see how the overall picture works. If Quicken works well with BofA, that’d be a big plus. Thanks for the comments everyone!
April 26th, 2005 at 11:52 am
Wow! Money 05 for me is the first version I have installed and continued to use. The prediction for cash flow reporting is amazing! I have had problems when I changed PC’s with the recurring bills and once had the same issue that your having now with seting up new accounts. Actually that issue turned out to be my fault because I went in and adjusted the starting balance, when I let it do it automatically everything was fine. Ive tried Quicken this year too and it has its share of quirks, but the advantages of Money 05 are tremendous. Money05 gets better the longer you use it, be sure to check out the cash flow, and monthly reports, its liking having your own personal CFO report to you! BTW I have two auto checking accounts and yes I have to download ING too. I have been wanting to tell you to hurry up and install Money but too busy to comment or email yah.
November 6th, 2005 at 10:53 pm
Main problem with Money 05 is the syncing with banks. I have no huge problem doing this manually, since I check the bank websites all the time anyway. My problem is that I always have to fiddle with the dates to make sure that I tell (the bank site) to download AFTER my last Money sync, because then transactions get doubled and there seems to be no simple way to just tell it “This was already here”.
Kinda a pain, yes…but hey……The Quicken interface is just nasty, I’m sorry.
July 21st, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I use microsoft money 2007 Home and business and had all my accounts, three different banks being updated with money 2007 with no issues. Microsoft decided they wanted to do and update on their network mid-July 2007. Now I can’t do an update for one of my banks through Money 2007 anymore. I did everything possible to fix it, but can’t get it to work. This makes me so frustrated and wish for once microsoft just left things alone. I keep getting “Your logging credentials are not correct’” from microsoft money. Grrrrrrrrrrrr…………….
I know the login credentails are correct because I can login with them on the bank’s site, but not through microsoft money anymore. Anyone else having this issue?
July 31st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Roy -
You’re not the only one. Google the error message “ms money obres:22063″ - there are a lot of unhappy Money users out there.
August 1st, 2007 at 11:10 pm
i’m having the same issue ron. i used to be able to synch to two banks. after the mid july update, i can’t synch to any of them. i keep getting the message, “can’t update information from your bank” i’ve also tried to fix this, to no avail.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
MS Support says the issue I’m encountering “can’t update information from your bank” is due to the Chase and Bank One merger:
“This is an known issue with Chase. Chase and Bank One have merged together causing some problems. You have 2 options. You can try to setup the account in Money under Bank One from the list, if that does not work you will need to contact Chase to have your online crendentials updated at the bank.”
I know my credentials are good because I can log into my account from my browser. This weekend I’ll try setting up my account in Money under Bank One. I’m concerned that I not lose all my account data in the process.
It would have been nice if I got a more informative error message than “obres:22063″ which apparently covers ANY error in MS Money.
And I’m pissed that MS, Chase, Bank One, Yodlee, etc. dropped the ball on this update. How could they not test this ahead of time?
P.S. Sorry Ron for misspelling your name.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I am having the same problem with ms money 2007. I tried the update accounts directions they provided, it just keeps saying your accounts could not be updated at this time, the new account shows up and forever says “update in progress”. Nice job on the mid-july update a-holes.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Here’s the latest on my attempts to get my Chase/Bank One accounts to update automatically (all my other accounts update correctly). I tried Microsoft’s suggestion to setup the Chase account under Bank One but that failed with the same error. Then I tried installing Money on a different computer and downloading transactions into a new account. That also failed with the same informative message “Unable to update your account”.
Further discussion with Microsoft support suggested the reason for issue is that Bank One and Chase are still having trouble with the merger. ;-/ YMMV. Nobody looks good to me at this point.
The workaround for now is to download the transactions from the bank’s website manually and import them into my account.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I’ve got a problem where Money 2006 just won’t sync with Citibank anymore. I tried deleting the account, and re-setting it up, and it doesn’t work. Completely frustrated.
September 4th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I have MS Money 2007. Since mid July I have 2 banks where update will not work. I get the Update In Progress, but it fails with, Can?t Update Information From Your Bank. I even stopped online updates and reinitiated them to no avail. This is extremly frustrating and a bug time waster. I have been to MS database but it is as if Money has no problem, it must be with my saving institution. I left Quicken for this?
September 4th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I followed the instructions shown here, and it seemed to fix my problem. Give it a shot: link
September 7th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Here’s my problem. Recently (in the past couple weeks) Microsoft Money 2005 Premium has started changing my transaction dates.
I will enter a transaction…let’s say a $20 debit purchase at Wallyworld on 9/5/07, and then when I do the update, it downloads all my transactions from 5/3 Bank. Money says something like, “This transaction matches a previously entered transaction” to which I say yes, but then it will change the transaction date by a couple days or so.
Anyone else have this problem…and how do I stop it???
September 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am
The instructions at Dave’s link for updating the accounts did not work for me. Dave got lucky with the link.
My Money 2006 hasn’t worked for months. I keep deleting and attempting to add my bank accounts and get the same useless error.
obres:22063
Microsoft needs a real patch for this or at least a real fix. I wouldn’t oay any money to upgrade until I can get my existing program to work. I must mention, that Ihave gotten these update errors regularly since 2006. When Money 2006 was new. Some of it might have to due with the date issue mentioned. I get the date errors too.
MS Money is very unstable if you ask me.
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:55 am
I am closing my bank accounts that have stopped automatically synchronizing with MS Money (US Bank, ING Direct) and am trying to find new ones to replace them. Does anyone have suggestions for banks and credit card companies that synchronize perfectly? I currently find Wachovia works great with MS Money for my regular checking, but I also need a new money market account, and Wachovia’s rates stink.
Would love some suggestions - thanks!
January 30th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Where can I get help for version 14, 2004 M/soft money.
in australia. ( sydney).
February 5th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Does anyone have a hard time with the cash flow forecast? For some reason my Debt Reduction Planner amounts don’t show up on the Cash Flow Forecast so it makes it look like my cash flow will be higher than it actually is going to be. Does anyone know how to fix this so that my Debt Reduction Planner amounts show up on the Cash Flow Forecast?
Thanks!
February 16th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I had similar problem, then noticed that each of the entries was not set-up to take the $ from my checking account. I had to edit each bill series to assign the checking account. Hope that helps, good luck.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
The fix for accounts (such as US Bank) not downloading transactions seems to be to go into the online services settings and delete the MSN Money service. Once I did that, everything started working again. I believe it has to do with having old account information. I had no problems with Money 99 through 2007, but when I upgraded to plus, it quit.