Microsoft Money 2004 Financial Suite

Another year and another Microsoft Money hits the shelves, closely followed by another Quicken from Intuit no doubt - but we'll have to wait a little longer for that. In the meantime, Money 2004 has arrived and looks pretty much the same as Money 2003, except for a few changes to the home page layout and a new taskbar. Don't let this put you off, though, as this is a fully matured and comprehensive personal finance package.

In reality, there's only so much you can add at this stage of the game. Over the last few years, we've seen several major enhancements. First came the integration with financial institutions for the purposes of downloading and reconciling bank statements, then followed the acceptance of e-transactional data both ways, made possible by the huge leap into online Internet banking. There have been no major initiatives in the finance sector since, so this release sees just a few extra features, some improvements in the main package and online tax return lodgement via the TaxSaver add-on.

If you already use Microsoft Money 2003, you may find the recent customisable pull-down task list in 2004 gets you around the place a bit quicker. You can also display manually updated headlines and breaking news from the major financial news agencies on the home page. The Alert Centre has been usefully enhanced and can now be used to set up how you'd like your financial information from MSN Money to arrive - straight to your Desktop, into your email inbox or to your mobile phone. This could be useful if you want to edit and manage your own user-defined alerts and have them arrive all in one place.

The only really new functionality is the Credit Centre. This could prove a valuable tool if you're using other people's money a lot. The Credit Centre not only provides credit-checking and debt-related tools and advice, but also a new Mini Debt Reduction Planner.

Lest we forget, Microsoft Money 2004 is primarily designed to track your monetary ins and outs, mostly via keyboard entry and supplemented by online integration with your bank. The product is well placed to manage all your bank accounts, credit card accounts, petty cash and outstanding loan agreements, giving you instant and up-to-date information along the way. If you have a compatible bank account, Money can download your bank statement for you and enter the transactions found into your computer, saving hours of typing. In the process, the software will reconcile any outstanding items against those already found in your Money cashbook, leaving you to sort out those it can't match.

The more time you devote to putting information into Money 2004, the more you can get out and the more the software is able to help you manage your financial affairs. If you enter all your debts and loans, for example, Money can help you arrive at a budget plan to get you back into credit, advising along the way if you're going to reach your goal or whether you might need a rethink. If you enter mortgages, planned school fees, saving plans, pensions and so on, the software can even help you with a lifetime plan and again keep you informed how well you're doing against your predictions. To help with buying finance, Money is also able to calculate mortgage comparisons and compare loan-interest scenarios.

Not everyone deals in stocks and shares or even simple investment plans, and if you don't Money 2004 might be a bit unwieldy. But if you do, this is where the fun begins. You can easily analyse portfolio performance, such as tracking your best and worst investments, plus keep a careful eye on the risk and return of each investment. You're able to track investments you own or those you're just interested in, plus set up accounts and associated cash accounts for shares, bonds and unit trusts. Money copes with all the transactional actions that might occur when buying, selling and transferring investments and provides copious on-screen and printed reports.