Product Reviews

Well in time for the start of most people's financial year, Microsoft has rolled out its new Money software. Marketed as 2002 (but really version 10), Money once again comes in three versions. The prices are the same as last year, but the specification of the computer you'll need to run them has been raised. Money 2002 Standard sells at £26, Financial Suite at £43, and the Personal and Business Edition at £60. The Standard Edition is for first-time users, the Financial Suite for those who need sophisticated investment and financial planning facilities, and the Personal and Business Edition, reviewed here, is for those who need to keep simple business accounting records alongside their personal accounts separately. The Personal and Business Edition also has all the features and facilities of the Financial Suite.

Most of the new features focus more on the personal finance management side of things, and include MoneyViewer, online banking and more versatile reports. You can use MoneyViewer when shopping, banking or researching investments online, though you'll need to set up a password first. Principally, MoneyViewer enables you to make a limited range of entries in your Money files without running Money itself - you'll need Internet Explorer 5.5 or later to access this feature.

While you're doing all this investing and shopping, you might need to review your cash flow, which you can do using live data from your accounts over a few weeks. If you need to look at longer periods, you can set up a budget.

The new Online Services Manager lets you sign up to your bank and other financial service providers. Once you've done that you should find it easier to carry out online transactions. You can, for instance, automatically download statements from your bank with that account information being automatically added to your Money account, and you can schedule bills to be paid from your account at a set date. The new Background Banking feature is able to automatically connect to your bank and update Money's account registers, even when you're not in Money.

Money integrates with Microsoft's MSN services (which are not limited to Money users), letting you take advantage of its pool of financial information, getting online quotes, researching investments, and reading financial news.

Support for the euro includes being able to define all your accounts and transactions in euros; although not applicable for

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the UK, it's certainly necessary for, say, Eire. Strangely, Money lets you convert the old EU country's currencies too, although it's comforting to be reminded of these old-fashioned ways.

Among the modest number of new business features is the facility to change and design the layout of your invoices and business forms, though this is mostly implemented in a limited way. You can now also email reports directly from Money to your accountant or other interested party or, if you prefer, export your accounts data to Excel. For that professional touch, Money can handle VAT using either Cash or Standard (Accrual) methods.

Money still offers all the previous versions' features, including tracking your income and expenditure, balancing chequebooks, preparing budgets, and monitoring savings and investments. You can also work out your total worth, including listing and valuing your house contents, for which Money dedicates a special section. Related facilities include a will maker, an 'important records' organiser and worksheets to calculate your mortgage, loans and pension options, not forgetting the vexed question of whether to accept a company car or take the money. There's a tax centre to help with income tax matters, and you can even export account data for use in third-party taxation software - though you could do this in the previous version. Finally, you get access to MoneyCentral, Microsoft's financial information Web site.

Money's interface is largely unchanged, except that even more information seems to have been crammed into its starting 'home' pager. Extensibility is a key implementation and you can decide what information to include, as well as being able to customise colours and toolbars. That said, Money's interface is still less convenient than its rival Quicken's. Add to this that Money's help system is also confusing, grouping too many options under its search criteria, and the idiosyncrasies heavily weigh down its usability rating.

You're not short of reports, for both personal and business use, with the Reports Gallery allowing you to view and print out data organised into text reports or charts. Business users can generate reports for profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance, aged debtors and creditors, as well as VAT summary (VAT 100 data) and detail. For Personal users, you get reports for account balances, bills, credit card debt, income, expenditure and investments, all by various categories.

As the most fully featured version, Money 2002 Personal and Business offers almost everything the sole trader or very small business might need to keep finances under control. Larger firms will find it too limiting and should consider something like QuickBooks (version 2002 Pro reviewed opposite), TAS or MYOB. That said, the improvements may not be earth shattering, but added to Money's previous core facilities this is certainly one of the most versatile personal accounting packages available, as well as providing inexpensive though limited business features.