Microsoft Money 2003 Financial Suite

There's the slightest possibility that you haven't encountered Microsoft Money before, so let's summarise the story so far. Money is one of the two leading personal finance managers, the other being Intuit's Quicken. Both products tend to leapfrog one another with features each year as new versions arrive on the scene, and this latest incarnation of Money just about brings the count to even pegging.

Microsoft Money is an effective day-to-day cash organiser, looking after your bank, credit card and loan accounts so you're able to see exactly how much you're worth at the press of a button. To keep the accounts up to date, you can take the old-fashioned route of entering transactions directly into the cashbook, or you can use the built-in online banking facilities to enter transactions automatically.

Online banking

If your financial institution is on the ball, Money will download your bank statement for you and seamlessly enter the transactions found online into your computer bank account. It will also mark cleared entries for quick and easy bank reconciliation. Not all banks offer the full service, though, so check with yours before buying.

Money 2003 doesn't just track your ins and outs either; it also looks after your savings and investments with the built-in Portfolio Manager. You can easily manage tasks such as finding the best and worst performers, calculate the risk and return on investments and analyse performance. For example, stocks and shares may not be to everyone's tastes, so if you have other kinds of investments Money can make any long-term financial planning a part of the mix.

The Online Services Manager now lets you sign up to your bank and other financial service providers while online, automatically connecting to your bank and updating the Money files, even when you're not in the program. MoneyViewer also pops up from the side of the screen while you're online, and here you can make entries into Money and review your cash flow on the fly, again without running the full program.

Getting personal

If you fancy sitting down long enough to enter into the software your personal financial goals, Money is able to arrive at a lifetime plan, calculate mortgage comparisons, loan interest and pension options on the fly. If planning for the future wasn't enough, Money can also help you make your will.

So what does Money 2003 add to the mix this time round? Not a great deal. The new task-based home page brings all your financial chores into one place, sorted by topic. You can quickly jump from here to paying bills, financial planning and budgeting, but even with this tidy-up the interface is still seriously busy. Originally, it was Quicken that had the feel of a more cluttered workspace, but funnily enough that package now has a thinned-down interface while Money has fattened up.

Other noteworthy features include a re-write of the bill-paying routine, which arrives at a new process of payment. Money 2003 estimates future bills by using the improved Advanced Bill Entry feature. The software then calculates the average amount of a scheduled bill based on its previous instances, which is useful for cash flow projections and forward planning.

Preparing bills for online payment is also easier, as you gather together all your payments into a Bills Outbox and then send them all at once with the new online Batch Bill Pay. This feature requires a two-way OFX Money 2003-compatible bank, however, so this narrows down your choice of financial institutions.