Money 99 Financial Suite

Money will then show you a chart illustrating the timescale involved, and will also tell you whether you have allocated enough cash to the plan. The Debt Reduction Wizard will increase the payments if you haven't stipulated enough, and show you the result this will have and how much you should be paying.

Money 99 also sports a significantly improved Money Manager. Here you receive independent advice about all manner of financial situations, such as income tax, borrowing money, managing debt, mortgages, insurance, pensions and school fees.

Articles are written by experts in their fields and, once you're up to speed on the information at hand you can also play with Money Manager worksheets. These help you to estimate your tax bill, compare loans and mortgages and work out what you should be saving towards your retirement provision.

So far then, Money 99 has a useful mix of information, calculation and implementation, all working well to help manage both your future plans and historical situation. Microsoft has gone a great deal further than before in these areas and is finally giving Quicken a run for its money.

Financial investments

Yet Money takes things one step further with investment facilities. Financial Suite now includes the ability to create investment accounts and the individual investments themselves in order to track trading deals. You can have any number of investments working through these accounts, including actual stocks, shares, bonds, unit trusts, ISAs, PEPs and TESSAs and investment trusts.

You can view your investments in a portfolio and enter buys and sells here or through the register into the investment account direct. You can also track performance, check allocations and so on. Using the Internet download you can watch the performance of investments you don't own and update the market prices of your investments manually or electronically.

Links to the new Microsoft MoneyeXtra Web site keep you informed of the latest financial information on-line. Considering that, in the past, Money's investment facilities simply meant creating a few special accounts this is a major addition.

On-line banking

It has taken a very, very long time for UK banks to take the concept of on-line banking seriously, at least in terms of providing the ability to dial up and interact with your bank, either on the Internet or using special software. Some banks have supplied software in the past, but this has been aimed only at business use and designed for BACS or automated direct debits and standing orders.

Microsoft has been at the forefront of technology where on-line banking is concerned and Money 99 goes even further down this road. At present you can interact to varying degrees with Barclays Bank, Nationwide Building Society, National Westminster Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sun Bank and the Woolwich.

If your bank is fully supported, you should be able to ask Money to download your bank statement for you. Money then compares the transactions you've entered into your PC yourself with those that have cleared in your actual bank account. This makes for extremely quick and easy bank reconciliation, as Money simply ticks all those transactions that match up and leaves you to deal with the rest.

You can also download the bank statement and transfer the details of transactions found in your actual bank account into Money's own software version. This happens automatically, without any typing at all.

Participating banks should support the payment of bills on-line by electronic transfer and allow you to set up regular payments and transfers from one account to another. So far, this sort of facility is pretty much exclusive to Money 99 and it will probably remain that way until Quicken 99 arrives at least.