Microsoft Money Discontinued, Transfer Your Data To Quicken
If you use Microsoft Money to manage your finances, you should know that Microsoft will no longer be selling MS Money after June 30th, 2009. From the Microsoft product page:
With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.
But more importantly, your online services will also be discontinued soon. This means stock and mutual fund quotes, tax rate updates, and banking services like their billpay.
For Money Plus Deluxe, Premium and Home & Business customers, online services expire two years after initial activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier; for Money Plus Essentials it is one year after activation or Jan. 31, 2011, whichever is earlier. You can verify your expiration date in Money Plus by selecting Help / About Microsoft Money; it appears to the right of the serial number.
Ditched by Money, but Quicken Wants You
I suppose that this means Intuit wins the desktop personal finance software war. Indeed, it looks like Microsoft has really given up, as their last step is to make it easy for users to move to Quicken.
We’re working closely with Microsoft to develop an easy way for Money users to transfer data into Quicken desktop products. We’re assessing how we can make this capability a reality in conjunction with the release of Quicken 2010 in the fall.
An Intuit representative e-mailed me saying that they are working quickly on making a conversion file that would seamlessly move data from Money to Quicken.
In the meantime, Quicken is directly targeting the Money orphans by offering up to a $50 discount on Quicken products until the end of June: $20 off Quicken Deluxe, $30 off Quicken Premier and Home & Business, and $50 off Quicken Rental Property Manager.
Free Quicken Online & Others
But wait, MS Money says the primary reason they shut down is that many banks and brokerages are offering free aggregation services which provide a similar service. Indeed, there are also standalone aggregation sites like Yodlee, Mint, and Geezeo. And if you want a free desktop finance software with double-entry accounting, there is the open-source GnuCash, though it certainly lacks some polish.
But wait, why didn’t they just do their own online version? Intuit introduced Quicken Online, which is now free and tries to add a little Quicken flavor to the usual aggregation model. More competition would have been good. I guess they spent all their energy on Bing.
Find more in Budgeting, Tools & Calculators | 6/17/09, 4:09am | Trackback
June 17th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Ditched by Money, but Quicken Wants You
Unless you live outside the US, in which case we can’t be bothered selling to you, so please feel free to take your business elsewhere….
June 17th, 2009 at 5:31 am
Why pay at all? I have been using the open source GNUcash for my double entry accounting for the past 5 years with no problems. You know that in a year with a monopoly position in the desktop home accounting software market they will be jacking up the price. Don’t be fooled.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Another reason I hate Microsoft’s business practices. They push you to upgrade, but now when I get a new computer I will not be able to activate my copy of Money 2007. I should have stayed with the older versions of Money. Maybe I can export and downgrade to a version that does not require online activation. Of course it probably won’t be compatible with the operating system. For those of us that have been relying on this product to manage financial info, they really screwed us. I know we need to wait and see, but I have major doubts that we will be able to export and import into Quicken without issue. I had database issues just doing a Money upgrade!!
June 17th, 2009 at 7:05 am
So here’s a question…why does anyone buy anything from Microsoft? have they heard of Apple?
Also, why not just use something like Mint.com?
June 17th, 2009 at 7:31 am
I’ve tried Mint, Quicken and Yodlee and none can compare to what desktop software offers. Yodlee is good for a quick “at a glance” look at activity and balances, but it is painfully slow at categorizing transactions.
June 17th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I agree that you can’t compare mint to quicken desktop, but I end up using both mint and quicken desktop. It’s double work for me, but it serves my needs.
Mint is great for my family because it has mint for iphone application, and now my wife can track our monthly budget while she is out for shopping and I am away from my computer.
Without mint iphone application, I will ditch Mint right away.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Try Moneydance. I switched from Quicken for Mac and haven’t looked back.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:23 am
MS Money user and MMB reader here. I am disappointed with MS like everyone. My plan is to purchase Quicken 3 months before my online services expire. That way I have a 3 month window where I can ensure that all of my MS processes are running smoothly in Quicken before D-day.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:51 am
I’ve been using Money 2002 since, well, 2002. And other than downloading my credit union statements directly into Money, I don’t use any of its online functions. Mainly just a computer-based checkbook/balance sheet. I resisted upgrading because of the issue with online activation & expiration. And I prefer to use desktop software for financial stuff - I just don’t want that all aggregated in the “cloud”.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
The part that rubs most users the wrong way is the inability to export our full account data out into a usable format. The QIF export truncates info and doesn’t pick up everything. Same with MS’s recommended transaction report exports. Since they are no longer going to support the format, they should provide a utility to do full exports or at least open up the data file format so that others can create tools to allow this. I have 10 years of info that I can’t export in a decent format.
I wonder if there is any chance of a lawsuit relating to MS in essence holding my data hostage and not giving me adequate access to it.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I always use Money in offline mode.
Will it make any difference to me too?
June 17th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
It seems QOL is full of bugs. I just tried it with one account but it has all incorrect information. It shows bill due which is not even my biller.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Moneydance, http://moneydance.com/, is a good alternative to Quicken that works on Linux, Mac and Windows.
It is well worth the money for the software. Plus upgrades to the latest version are included in your original purchase of the software. I have been using the MoneyDance on Ubuntu Linux for 2 years and am very happy with it.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
If you don’t use Money’s online services AND you just input everything manually, you should be fine, assuming you don’t need support.
However, another issue if you import Money files from your banks, is how long your bank will keep making those QIF file types.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Guess what…. I have been a MS Money user since 1997 or so and I have entered all my data going back 32 years! So my MS Money file covers pretty much my entire financial life. It’s about 30 MB. Can anyone beat that? Anyway, there is a 1-step Quicken data convert out there now that’s supposed to convert files from Money to Quicken. It did not work for me (It gave me an error message, told me “my Quicken file is open”). Quicken support could not help, told me to use QIF files. Import/Export using QIF’s must be done one account at a time (I have 20 accounts including closed accounts.) Plus it has limitations as mentioned. As mentioned, Intuit is working on an improved one-step conversion program. We’ll see how that works. In the end, I might just stick with MS Money. The discontinuation of online services are not as important as most institutions have an download to MS Money feature that can be initiated from their website. So that leaves stock and fund quotes. I might just stick with MS Money and update stock and fund prices manually from time to time. We are not supposed to track our net worth minute by minute, day by day anyway, right?
June 18th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Gosh, first Encarta and now Money? What’s up with creating programs that enhance home life and help households learn and keep track of their money?
Oh, well, back to the old pencil and paper!
June 19th, 2009 at 7:41 am
To those worried about not being able to activate ever again, why not try creating a virtual machine using VMWare/Virtual PC/VirtualBox and installing MS Money there? Unfortunately, you will need another Windows license to put on there.
June 19th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I use mint.com. Maybe not as powerful but it’s free and I can check it anywhere and see all types of accounts.
June 19th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Warren,
I can share your pain.
Even if Quicken data converter may be able to help one day but you can never be sure of data integrity.
Who know Q will not raise its price too high once it has monopoly.
June 21st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I have used money for ten years and loved the low price and interface. I will probably keep using it and update stock accounts manually. I think I will not trust microsoft again:(
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:52 am
Are there any oneline service simular to mint.com that support international users outside of the US and Canada, or at least QIF import?
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
D’OH - I’ve been using MSM since 1994 (got you beat there Warren) and my file is like 55mb (but I didn’t backfill like you did). I’ve faithfully and stupidly bought every update even when all they did was shuffle icons around, take away functionality and just confuse me. I’ve switched credit cards and banks because they stopped being “2 way” with Money. And put up with 15 years of botched updates and processing problems when they decide to do something different without notice.
And this is the first I’m hearing of it!! Of course when they want to sell something, its right there after the login.
Way to screw us MS!!!
June 24th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I’ve also been a long time MS Money user, and backfilled data (mostly credit card transactions) to 1991. The discontinuance of MS Money is irritating.
The easy reporting, searching, and “listing of everything for a payee” is something I use a lot. I also like the online updating of credit card, bank account, and credit union accounts.
This year for the first time I did my tax returns online through a web site (credit union offered a good deal) instead of Turbo Tax on the desktop (I’m pretty sure the online app was also based on Turbo Tax). It makes me wonder if I should switch to something similar for personal finance.
But … there are times when I cannot access the Internet (or a specific web site), and that’s never the case with a desktop app (at worst, I just couldn’t get the online updates).
So it will be a tough decision on converting. If the Money to Quicken conversion app that Intuit is working on truly brings over everything, quickly and easily, that will sell me. I have no interest in losing major chunks of information (e.g. payee info, comments, inventory records). Otherwise, I’m still investigating.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Hey Warren and other long time MSM users. We bought our first computer in Fall 1992 and it came with MSM, so I started using it then and upgraded as needed. I loved the automatic stock transaction update that was pulled from Charles Schwab. Switched to a broker that didn’t do this. Had to update manually. Bummer. MSM in the early years didn’t have much on the investment side, so in later years when it did, i back filled back to 1992. This was helpful to have one place to show the wife that we weren’t doing too bad. You could say I was a comprehensive user with all credit cards, bank accounts, investment accounts including 401k’s, 529 and IRA plans. I hope (and pray) the conversion program brings everything over, 17 years of info is hard to replace. I’ll be interested in hearing what others experience.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I started out using MS Money, then switched to Quicken. After dumping my PC for a Mac I couldn’t get into the Mac version of Quicken so I went with MoneyDance and I’ve never been happier!
July 19th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I have been a MS Money user since 1994, although my first personal finance software purchase was Quicken, I gave it up quickly when Microsoft Money came on the scene. I religiously bought all of the MS Money upgrades until about 2007 because they didn’t really change anything and took away some neat features. Still, I have been a very loyal MS Money user and am very concerned about the thought of transferring all of my data. I do use the online portfolio feature and I understand I don’t have to switch right away, but they dumped me so I guess I’m anxious to move on. They very least they can do is offer Money users and incentive to switch to Quicken. Money has been my friend for so many years, I’m going to be very sad to see it go.
July 20th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Microsoft strikes again - first FrontPage, then Digital Image now Money - what next?
Seems like MS should provide some compensation for customers who have become dependent on their products and have accumulated extensive data files based on their software - I know, don’t hold my breath
Jeff
July 27th, 2009 at 5:53 am
How about costing $0 !!! Migrate to GNUCash or an open source alternative. GNUCash will continue to update as long as it is developed, and it will ALWAYS be FREE. I’ve had it for commercial software, and having to re-buy it every few years because they stop updating online.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
To bad MS doesn’t evacuate the desk top os, then maybe we’d get a stable product without the blue death screens.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
One of the few products they had that kind of work, must be making the rest of their stuff look bad. But I guess this is the logical conclusion, the last few updates did not add much but did eliminate features that I used, so now they eliminate all of the features.
September 27th, 2009 at 10:51 am
I am currently using money 2007 on my computer. I never really use the online service at all. however, the problem is that I am planning to get a new computer and reinstall the money 2007. I intend to keep using 2007 since i really do not have any crazy needs but simply input my transaction everyday.
I wonder whether i can actually reinstall money 2007 to my new computer. anyone knows?
September 27th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
@sadperson -
“Product Activation” started with MS Money 2008 (MS Money Plus). So if you are using MS Money 2007 you should be able to reinstall and use Money 2007. With MS Money 2008 / MS Money Plus, you get only 2 activations total.
October 13th, 2009 at 8:05 am
I have used Money for a long time. Getting trasactions from downloaded from the bank has always been the big thing, and mine is going to expire in about 20 days.
I use Money for business and so I have to get the data to another program.
Any other programs besides Quicken that can import the old Money data?
How has the Quicken conversion gone for people so far? Is their new converter program out yet?
Thanks for any help you can offer!
October 13th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
@Brent -
You may be able to download data from the bank website into an OFX file which Money can then import. This should still work after Money expiration.
Attempted “automated” Quicken conversion was a failure for me. Not sure if Quicken is working on an improvement.
Exporting all Money accounts into QIF files, one per account, would be an extremely tedious process and I don’t think QIF format recognizes transfers between accounts. Only deposits and withdrawals.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Update - - MS Money gave me a splash screen today upon opening telling me that Quicken 2010 will now import MS Money files directly. The Quicken website (updated 10/26/09) says that too, and also Quicken 2009. See http://quicken.intuit.com/supp...../7468.html . I will probably try it. The online price for Quicken Deluxe 2010 is $59.99. Definitely want it cheaper than that, so the least I can do is wait for the Quicken/TurboTax bundle deals that come out after Jan 1. If any one tries the conversion into Quicken, please let us know how it goes!