Home → General Questions →

Why no Moneydance 2009 version?

• Edit

Chris

10 Aug, 2009 05:01 PM

I was going to D/L MD 2009 to test out to see if I wanted to use this product, coming from MS Money 2007 Premium. I noted that the current version is 2008, not 2009. I also see that there is talk of an upcoming 2010 version. Why no 2009 version? Has MS announcement of abandoning it's Money users piqued the interest of the MD team to upgrade their product?

1. 1 Posted by Ben Spencer on 10 Aug, 2009 06:50 PM

   

   Hi Chris

   The trouble with naming software by the year that it was released in, or intended to be released in, is that software development is not an entirely predictable process. Until a software engineer gets down to the business of implementing a particular application or feature, how long it is going to take is always to some extent an unknown. Expected release schedules not being realised is is just part of the process of software development. The next major release of Moneydance was originally predicted to be released at the end of 2008 or early 2009 and at that time it seemed reasonable to call the software MD2009. It now seems highly likely that the software will now be release in late 2009 and it no longer makes sense to name a new piece of software after a year that will be almost over. And so we shall call it MD2010.

   I believe Microsoft first popularised this naming approach with their release of windows 95 and to some significant extent it is little more that marketing. It conveys to the potential user a sense of newness in the software and also builds in a perception of the software becoming obsolete over time. My personal preference would be to move away from this naming system.

   Sincerely

   Ben Spencer

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by Chris Mallea at... on 10 Aug, 2009 06:57 PM

   

   Chris D. Mallea, MCSE,CNA,WCSP
   Director of Information Services
   Structus Building Technologies, Inc. 
   20870 Redside Court
   PO Box 5937
   Bend, OR. 97701
   541-330-0668 (office)
   541-848-4585 (fax)
   [email blocked]
   www.Structus.com

   -----Original Message-----
   From: Ben Spencer [mailto:[email blocked]]
   Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 11:51 AM
   To: Chris Mallea at SBTI
   Subject: Re: Why no Moneydance 2009 version? [Questions]

   I agree and understand what you are saying here.

   Based on what I'm reading about MD I have a few questions:

   1.) How small a company are you?
   2.) How long can we expect you to be around?
   3.) Does MD have the ability to change a single recurring transaction without having to change all future transactions?
   4.) Does MD have a cash flow charting feature like Money?

   Currently I'm looking at your product alongside Quicken.

   Thanks;
   Chris

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by Ben Spencer on 10 Aug, 2009 07:23 PM

   

   Hi Chris

   We are orders of magnitude smaller than the likes of Microsoft or Intuit. Currently 7 employees. Although we have 10s of thousands of users.

   We have no intention of disappearing. We have been around for years, sales are strong and be are confident we will be around for a long time to come. Should the unexpected happen Moneydance is able to export your data to the industry standard QIF file format. Your valuable data will not be locked into our software.

   I am not sure I fully understand you suggestion or intention. You can certainly record a reoccuring transaction (they are called reminders in Moneydance) and then changing that recorded transaction in the register. Changing it once it is in the register will not affect future incarnations of that reminder.

   There exists a free extension for Moneydance called balance predictor. That calculates future balances based on past transactions and reminders. I beleve that it inferior in some ways to the feature in MS Money.

   You can download a free trial version of Moneydance from here and decide for you self:

   http://moneydance.com/other

   One of the significant difference between Moneydane of Quicken is that Moneydacne does not do forced obsolescence and forced upgrades. This is a common complaint of Quicken users and a common reason why people move over to Moneydance.

   Sincerely

   Ben Spencer

   • Edit

4. Angie Rauscher closed this discussion on 24 Jul, 2011 06:51 PM.