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Show Me The Money - Microsoft Money Vs. Quicken
prostoalex writes "The weblog entry 'Show me the money' is an interesting tale of Microsoft Money from a developer who now manages software development in the Tablet PC group at Microsoft. Having worked before with Money, which was assigned a task of beating Quicken, Philip describes the disasters that happen when marketing and advertising people rule the software development: 'Money's success or failure was judged using the same metrics as MSN's websites. Metrics like minutes viewed per month. Like ad revenue. Like click-through. Stickiness. I am not making this up.'"
Most people don't use either because their bank/credit card doesn't support them.
The biggest thing I have found useful is online bill pay.
Yay
This just adds credence to a problem that Microsoft seems to be suffering from. The Marketing and Advertising divisions of Microsoft dictate the direction of the company. Sure, there needs to be some work done with their code-monkeys to stop these exploits from even being created in the first place, but maybe the programmer's jobs would be easier if they did not have to perform on a tight deadline created by those who have nothing to do with the products' creation. A shame too, considering that not all MS software is crap. I'm not an apologist, I'm just not afraid to admit that it's not entirely the fault of the coders that they have working for them.
The weblog entry 'Show me the money' is an interesting tale of Microsoft Money from a developer who now manages software development in the Tablet PC group at Microsoft.
That should read: The weblog entry 'Show me the money' is an interesting tale of Microsoft Money from a former Misrosoft developer who now waits in line for his free cheese every week.
Wow, I don't expect him to last long there making public statements like this!
Put identity in the browser.
Sure there are folks who have disperate accounts and complex fincial arrangements where that might make sense, and they're the 1% actually using these products. For everyone else, a decade ago there was a demand because people wanted to keep track of their finances between bank statements. Today you just click online and your bank shows you exactly where your finances are.
As banks try to differentiate themselves in the online marketplace, you can bet they'll expand their offerings until they compete with the offerings from Intuit and Microsoft. Perhaps those firms should stop trying to sell millions of copies to customers and instead try and sell server based software to the banks to produce a customer interface, or are they already doing thatas well?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From what I know, Microsoft money is a standalone application for Windows. How, then would they measure minutes viewed, click-through, etc unless they secretly transfer these statistics when the computer is online?
I went to the Microsoft Money (TM) website, and they don't seem to have a web-based or online version of it, in which context these stats would make sense.
Does M$ track and report the amount of time each application was in use on a PC? Sounds improbable, but with a TFH on, it's hard to say.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You're missing the point completely. MS & Quicken both managed to screw up their personal offerings to the point that even regular users still bitch and moan. Please don't send these same developement teams to build the back-end for web apps that people are currently happy with. There's a certain point at which even intelligence can't compensate for complexity.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
OMG the author mentions Telemate! I've forgotten all about it. Well, not really forgotten it, only forgot its name (the name Terminate, from its l33t competitor hangs in my mind for some reason).
Telemate was the ULTIMATE BBS terminal application! It did all sorts of funky protocols (like Z-modem with resumed downloads), it did chained downloads with correctly guesstimated time-left for current/all file(s), you could use plugins (like one plugin that let you see JPGs when downloading so you could easily cancel the ghey ones before having completed them) it was multi-threaded, had cool text-based windows, scripts, it was totally the bomb!
*snif* finally a Microsoft employee brings a tear to my eye for something else than excruciating frustration..
Excuse me while I wallow in nostalgia..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I keep all my financial details in a spreadsheet (OpenOffice.Org calc of course :) and with a few simple formulas to calculate totals, I can keep track of all my cash with no issues whatsoever.
I don't play games much anymore and can do anything I need on my FreeBSD box, but for my finances all I use is Quicken. I update it daily and use it to plan budgets and future savings. I've seen some of the open source finance programs but Quicken really rocks.
As opposed to a bunch of propeller-beanie techies who wouldn't know what a customer wants if he was screaming it in their faces? I've worked on projects where the technologists were in charge, and it's equally ugly. The best result seems to come from collaborative efforts where the marketing types say, "We need X," and the tech heads tell them why it's lame, derivative, and technologically uncool. The two sides squabble for a while, then someone in management threatens both sides with unemployment and it gets done.
I am shocked, shocked!
Microsoft has never needed a decent marketing team -- they were handed their monopoly on a silver platter by IBM. Since then, their business strategy has had more to do with intimidating OEMs than appealing to customers. Still, I don't think their office ads are as bad or dumb as their choice of a bug as the spokesmodel for MSN! :)
...even with those type of metrics vs. real software quality metrics Microsoft Money is a superior quality product compared to Quicken.
Don't even get me started on the lack of a 'real' money management software package on Mac OS. Quicken is a joke.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Quicken has much better set-up, more support, and a more professional look. Money has the ONE "killer" feature for me. It can show a chart, based on your bills and paychecks you enter in, showing how much money is in an account.
I use this to look at my checking account, and make sure that my lowest point of money each month remains at a certain level. Its very obvious weeks in advance if your checking account is going to drop below the minimum balance, etc.
I used quicken for a few days and couldn't find this feature, so I went back to Money.
I forgot about the reports that Money and Quicken produce. My bank at least doesn't produce anything like wht Money produces and it only shows checks or CC charges that cleared.
One time, this doctor's office said that I didn't pay one of their bills. I produced a report showing the payments, dates, and even check numbers. I made sure all the checks cleared - they did. I then walked in with the report, showed it to the office manager, and she just took it and said she'd confirm it. After not hearing anything for two days, I called. She said thta everything checked out and appologized.
I worked in retail back then. We dealt with a lot of Microsoft products, and I saw their play many times.
First, you find a market with a clear leader. Then, you produce a knock-off, and use marketing to move eyeballs towards your product, convincing the masses that it's superior. (This is the only part that the actual product quality plays. If it sucks so bad that nobody will be fooled into thinking it's superior, then the quality needs to be better.) Finally, if it looks like the market leader will survive, then buy them out; otherwise, drop your price to something minimal and wait it out.
This was played out nowhere as clearly as Quicken. Microsoft made MS Money (which sucked terribly). MS did everything they could to make people see Money. Then they tried to buy Intuit, the makers of Quicken (but Unc' Sam put a stop to that).
Microsoft was clearly dumbfounded. Their three-step plan didn't work. What could they do? MS Money thrashed in agony for a year or two until Microsoft realized they might actually have to put some engineers into improving their product.
Not long after that, I left retail, and knocked the last dust of Microsoft products off my boots. So I don't know what's happened since then; only that every bank I've used supports MS Money downloads.
Most of us watched something similar in the browser wars, but more pronouced. Didja notice that IE was constantly improving lots, right up until IE 4? That's when they started to bundle it with the OS to get eyeballs instead of having to rely on other people who might be able to form opinions of their own. (Actually, the bundling started with IE 3 IIRC, but towards the end of its lifecycle.)
Anyway, when you think of things in those terms, then you want eyeballs. You want people thinking about MS Money as long as possible. That's your only goal. Meeting customer demand is irrelevant, so long as you don't fail by enough to lose eyeballs. And eyeballs are what marketroids know about (well, that and gin).
This entire business strategy is exactly the way for a successful monopoly in one market to expand into other markets. (Leveraging the monopolized markets, like happened with IE, is good too when you can pull it off.) It's terrible for the society, because it mutilates Adam Smith's invisible hand and leaves one finger. But it's good for the share prices.
The learning curve was fairly high, not being an accountant and not knowing anything about this Double Entry Bookkeeping thing.
I had used Quicken before, and found it OK, but I don't normally run windows...
Once I made it through the Included tutorials and documentation, I have used GNUcash regularly for the last year or so and am a very happy user.
It is unfortunate that GNUcash is not on enough radar screens to show up in a weblog like this one. A REAL comparison would be nice.
A friend I know runs a small business. They use MS Money to keep track of small finance items, sort of like a cash book.
:-)
They still use the 16-bit version of Money from the Windows 3.11 for Workgroup days. Why? Because it's simple, and all it does is the books. They won't upgrade because all the later versions of Money want to go on the internet and do other fancy things making it harder - not easier - to use. This is one of the points that the article mentions first.
Personally, I use gnucash and it does for me
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Especially a creepy bug ... I mean, its this pudgy guy in spandex following children around. It portrays an accurate representation of the spyware you pick up with MS web products, but I wouldn't think they'd market that as a feature ...
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
There is a difference between sales and marketing. As you point out, salespeople have to be reigned in and controlled, because they will sell anything. Many software salespeople truly don't understand the limitations of their product, and will try to put a square peg in a round hole if they can get the sale, even if that means shipping an engineer with every unit.
What the article was talking about was a Marketing organization that wasn't thinking straight. There is a profound difference. In this case, Marketing was out of control, not Sales. I have seen this many times. They made one of the most common mistakes that marketing organizations make, namely checklist selling against the competition. This is a no-win situation. First one product is "ahead", then the other, wake me up when you have something new to say.
In order to really make a dent in a market, you have to change the playing field, not just tweak the product. Microsoft is scary/dangerous not because they release new versions of Office occasionally, but because from time to time they do really profound things like boot everyone else out of the Office business by betting on Windows when everyone thought Windows was a non-starter. Remember when Excel used to ship with its own Windows shell, before Windows was available? No? Well, I do. I remember the difference between that early Excel and Lotus, too. Lotus had more checklist features for a long time, but Excel -- it was just plain beautiful and fun to use. Once you used it, you couldn't go back to Lotus, even if it had some bullshit statistical function that Excel didn't have (yet).
Now THAT'S product marketing -- long term perspective, vision, eye on the goal line, pick your cliche of the day.
I hate to admit it (as a Linux user) that I use Microsoft Money. I've used MS Money since 2001, and the reason? Because I could try it before I bought it. As far as I can tell there's no way to try the latest version of Quicken without first plunking down some cash. And then if I don't like it, I'm stuck with something that I don't like.
I've tried gnucash and Moneydance. Frankly, they suck. I would love to see a usable personal finance software package from the F/OSS crowd that will run on my linux boxes. But I haven't found one yet. The only two options (IMHO) are Quicken and MS Money. And I'm not going to pay for Quicken until I'm sure that it will meet my needs. And personal financial management software is absolutely critical in my ability to maintain what I espouse in my signature. I use MS Money every day. I skip a day every week or so. But if I ever skipped a week, I'd feel very uncomfortable about my personal finances.
So, I'd much prefer to use a F/OSS package that accomplishes what I can do in MS Money. And, in lieu of that, I'd prefer one that was platform independant. But nothing that I've tried yet has come even close.
FYI: I run MS Money under linux using Win4Lin
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Of COURSE he's not a feature, he's a...well, you know.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You know...I know you're right, but I think you're wrong.
:) and sometime utterly useless.
One month ago I had to pass a Marketing exam which basically was about "studying" a couple threehundred pages books on the subject of marketing and answer 50 multiple choice questions.Feh ! I bargained a not satisfactory vote for 3 more months of time wasted into memorizing silly "right answers".
+-80% of the book was well written vapourware with a glassing of rational analysis, but there were some valuable hints in the salesman section.The big point of all the marketing exam was "customer must be satisfied".
Now you say customer feedback is important and I couldn't agree more : after all, the customer is paying so we'd like him to be satisfied and to come back for more. But who's giving the job to the marketeer ? The Company is and according to that M$ guy, M$ was pushing Money as a "portal" to sell advertisement space for advertisers ; in other words the clients were NOT the Money end-users, but the advertisement agents.
So was the marketing team really so shitty ?I don't think so, as they were probably requested to sell Money to ad-agencies and probably concentraded their effort for this purpose, not for the purpose of end-user satisfaction.
This is consistent with the fact that relatively few people actually routinely use Quicken/Money every day, unlike Word. I think M$ choosed not to invest too much geek time on building a superior product and opted to make money on Money by selling ads ; which again is consistant with the end-user financial market, bent on extracting money from the customer rather then helping the customer make more money.
What M$ didn't like is the fact Quicken was and still is taking away customers from this advertising scheme ; marketing isn't to blame if some other company is making a better product, when marketing was asked to sell the product NOT to end user, but to ad-agents.
Btw, marketing is evil
I am still using Managing Your Money from Andrew Tobias. It is DOS based, and I am planning on moving it over to DOSEMU. He sold the program to H & R Block, and then they dropped it.
erm.
quicken and money can now log on to the bank *for you* and download the transactions, differentiating between what it already knows and new transactions.
I use Money for account management, and I've never had the problem with duplicates that you describe.
The trouble is, that marketing departments are usualy so far removed from Customer Service departments that to a marketing person "User Feedback" sounds like some sort of exotic disease...
Marketing departments are more interested in _telling_ users what they want, than asking them.
Advanced users are users too!
ahhh the old adage - "a good manager can manage anything". While that certainly may be true in some sectors and at some higher management levels (Corporate Officers etc) I think the reality for IT is a manager DOES need have some experience.
Based on my (admittedly somewhat narrow) experience you really do have to know something about the technology you are managing or your employees are going to walk all over you or attempt to subvert you, your clients will bypass you and you will be limited in your strategic planning due to wildly innacurate "saw it in a magazine so it must be right" type thinking.
Also I've seen first hand projects spin wildly out of control or fail to meet client's expectations due to last minute "golf course" promises or bizarre inexplicable "You don't need to know why just do it" decrees.
It's never too late to rule by fear though...
I currently keep my records in spreadsheets and on paper. I would use Gnucash, but its support for check printing leaves a bit to be desired (can only print one check at a time on a sheet of three).
I remember the difference between that early Excel and Lotus, too. Lotus had more checklist features for a long time, but Excel -- it was just plain beautiful and fun to use. Once you used it, you couldn't go back to Lotus, even if it had some bullshit statistical function that Excel didn't have (yet).
Depends if you need those features or not. Spreadsheets today and 15 years ago started to get used by people who never would have used the paper versions. Further they got used by people who didn't know much math. In the early-mid 1980s that wasn't the case at all. I saw lots of people using things like matrix features of Lotus, non linear curve fitting, statistical tests which reflected the actual data... 20 years ago. Books like "Lotus 1-2-3 for engineers" or "Integrating SAS with Lotus" were popular.
What Microsoft deserves credit for was cutting the cost of high end spread sheets by 90-95% over a period of a few years and thus turning it from a high end feature to something everyone had. Of course the product aiming for the people not willing to buy Lotus would in general need to be easier to use and less feature rich.
Yep, the fancy features don't get in the way of the ones you want first. GNU cash has very sophisticated accounting, but I'm easily able to use it to just balance my check book. Other stuff, like being able to deal with Yen, stocks, taxes and the very powerful reports are all there but not obtrusive. When I use GNUcash, I'm not bowled over by feeling of gee wiz bang, and doubts about trusting my money to the program.
Kmoney, I'm sure is another excellent program. Everything else KDE rocks and everytime I do a review of a KDE thingy, I end up hooked. GNUcash is good enough that I have not made the effort, yet.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Neither Quicken nor Money understands the information that they're downloading.
So, they go by the date of your last download. But you can override the date (in case you've deleted entries that you should not have).
So, they download everything for that date range, even if the information is ALREADY there.
I can understand doing it that way for the download, but they should also do some basic checks to see if duplicate entries exist. They don't.
In more technical terms, they are "brittle". As long as you don't make an error, they are fine. But people make mistakes.
If the banks TRULY supported those apps, they would be keyed on unique transaction numbers. The app could query the Bank's server for a list of transaction numbers associated with that account and then compare that list with the list it already had and just download any changes.
I'm not sure how long banks keep their transaction records, but if the apps were really supported, it would be possible to download all your data instead of picking a date and starting from there.
With the current level of "support", all you get is an automated method of receiving your monthly statement. You could get the same functionality by typing in your statement yourself.
Microsoft money and Quicken both suck because it means I have to like do things and keep track of things. Seriously, it looks like too much work.
Here's what I've done instead. I have automatic paycheck deposits, all my bills on automatic payment and I use an ATM card for cash. Property taxes I pay online and my IRS return takes like 5 minutes to do because I don't own or buy jack. I never worry about checks because I don't write any. I should have my house payed off in a few years and I'm under 30 years old. I don't make much, but since I don't have shopping sickness I've always got cash.
Once the house is payed I'm going to get a part time telecommuting job, make a recurring grocery list which will be delivered to me in the mail once a month, and just never leave the house except to maybe go have a beer. There is a bar down the street that gives flight miles for your tab, so if I get drunk enough I can get a free cruise or a vacation or something and meet tropical chicks and party. Who needs financial software? Just don't blow your money on stupid stuff or get married or have kids or anything that takes all your money away. Its worked for me.
Clearly last time you checked was in 1979.
Many banks support direct connect download and many more support indirect downloads from their website (also automated within PFMs) Among the direct support ones are Wells Fargo, BofA and Citybank, as well as credit cards like AmEx, Discover, and MBNA (they are behind a LOT of branded cards). There is a full list somewhere and it is pretty long.
I've never had any duplication issues either. Quicken (which I use) detects duplication and matches transactions when it detects duplicates, which works great 99% of the time - sometimes you do have duplicate transactions and occasionaly it trips up on them - But it also never does anything you did not approve, thus if you are paying attention it is not an issue.
The reason not many people use it is because people are affraid of the unknown. I tried to convince several people to use them, and most did not understand what it is or how it would work. On the other hand the few that listened are now avid users. Most of the people I know who use these programs were near broke in college and smart enough to know that something like Quicken is the only way to survive without spending tons of time on managing finances. (I love that forecasting graph in early quicken, the goal was always to find a way to have it cross the 0 line more than a week from now.)
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
I have been a Quicken user for longer than most people around here have been out of diapers. I started back with Quicken 3.0 for DOS.
Ever since I discovered Linux, I have wanted a replacement that I could live with. I tried lots of stuff running Quicken with Crossover, GNUCash, etc..
But Moneydance wins. It looks a little primiative but it really really is nicely done. It runs on any platform Linux, Windows, MacOSX, Solaris, HPUX etc.. It has a great development company. Email them and they will email you back in a day or less with detailed technical information. Try that with Quicken and Microsoft.
There is also a very active and helpful online community for support.
It supports most all online banks systems because it totally emulates quicken to the banks. It even has integrated online bill pay that works great with my BancOne account.
Try it... for $29.99 its one the best peices of software out there. If your not against paying for anything its great.
There is also a free 30 trial that will import all your data from your old program.
http://www.moneydance.com
'fraid I disagree. I have had quite a few jobs in my life so far, so that means a lot of bosses. As a general rule of thumb, a boss/manager who has actually done the work that his company does, is a better boss. I've had so many examples of both I have a hard time arguing with myself over it. People who enter the workforce strictly as managers have unrealistic expectations, and..well, most of them I have ever met are quite lazy too. Not all, not singling anyone out here, etc, just a general rule of thumb I have noticed anecdotally. Whereas someone who has done the physical sweat and the skull sweat before, actually knows what his employees are talking about. And yes, to go beyond that step requires additional skills, but frankly, I think management skills in general are over hyped. Being a good manager means you are a good person,emphasis good, as in not a dickhead personality wise, you can relate to various situations and people in an even handed and logical manner. To make money at it you just need the additional ability to think a few steps farther and to do long range planning, but the day to day "management" aspect is just being able to keep the humans acting like civised humans, and to be able to understand what people are saying, from any direction.
I know that's only my personal outlook, but it's the one I have now, seeing all the various types of bosses out there, from super hands off minimalists to overbearing dictatroids to know nothing clueless dilettantes. My favorite is a near minimalist who you can talk to, and your input is just as important as the marketing guys input.
From the "marketing is king" side of running business, of course, they say there is no business unless you sell, from the other direction, you make a really good product, then market it, you must have a good product to sell something in the first place. I don't even think crap should be attempted to be sold, to me it's unethical. Mostly because I believe in quality in being job #1 all the time, as a consumer I have overhyped crap being attempted to be sold to me with unethical, but advanced and psychologically studied, peruasion techniques, etc, all the time, it's annoying, rude, crude and counter productive. Makes me think it's a bad company, so that means bad management, from a "management and marketing is king" oriented corporation. It's distateful. Sort of how I feel about the borg for instance, marketing is more important than quality it appears. Hmm, also similar to the current resident at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. Never done a single days work in his life, only been a "manager" and he's done a pretty dismal job so far, IMO. I think that's one of the reasons why, too.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree on it, it won't change a single thing out there one way or the other.
On behalf of everyone who is being held hostage by Intuit's mafia subscription scheme, I am pleading with developers out there to come up with some sort of alternative. MS Money doesn't seem like an acceptable alternative. We need some ethical, unmaniacal finance software. Please please PLEASE! I'm sick of having to pay a few hundred dollars a year to get tax tables for my accounting system that should be freely available. I'm sick of being forced to upgrade my software to keep it running. I'm sick of Quicken collecting private information on my company and my clients. I don't need to route every facet of my financial dealings through some new "feature" that Quicken has foisted upon us. It has to stop - we need alternatives!!
sorry guys, tried moving over to OSS and wasn't satisfied with current state
May I ask which programs you tried & what faults you found with them? GNUCash is really quite good, as are some of the simpler alternatives.