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View Full Version : Spb Finance 2.6 Released (Includes Support for Microsoft Money 2007)


Darius Wey
09-09-2006, 04:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/' target='_blank'>http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Spb Software House, the leading Pocket PC software developer, releases a new version of the best selling personal finance tracker Spb Finance 2.6. With this new release Spb brings to the market the first and the only mobile companion for Microsoft Money 2007. The new Spb Finance provides higher performance, faster synchronization, better OFX import options, smart balance update and many other improvements and fixes. Note! Starting from Money 2007 Microsoft officially stopped the support of its free mobile companion for Microsoft Money. Money for Pocket PC is not available for WM 5.0 and will not support Money 2007."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/about/pressreleases/images/Finance26_PressRelease.gif" /><br /><br />Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. Further proof of it can be found <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50137">here</a>. Fortunately, Spb Software House has come out with a Money 2007-compatible solution that has all the bells and whistles of a full-fledged finance package. You can grab a trial version or the full version from our <a href="http://www.mobihand.com/pocketpcthoughts/product.asp?id=404">affiliate software store</a>. If you use an existing version of Spb Finance 2.x, it's a <a href="http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/products/finance/">free upgrade</a>.

goestoeleven
09-09-2006, 04:21 AM
Much to my disappointment, Quicken 2006/2007 are NOT supported at this time with Spb Finance 2.6. Furthermore, Spb Support told me today that there is no timetable for adding that support, either.

Seems awfully strange to me for Spb to claim "support" for Quicken integration while that integration is based on two major releases back...

Also very much out-of-character for Spb, as I find many of their other products (PocketPlus, Diary, Weather) to be top notch...

:cry:

ctmagnus
09-09-2006, 05:16 AM
:confused totally: I've been using Quicken 2006 for a year now, and I've been syncing with Finance for most of that time. The Spb Finance 2.x/Quicken 2006 combination certainly does work.

Now for the ultimate question: will Canadians be able to legitimately get their hands on Money 2007? I'm sick of all of Quicken's stupid UI bugs and its annoying habit of automatically backing up my data on its own every once in a while, to a subfolder of the Quicken data folder. I have Carbonite and Handy Backup to back up my data for me, the former to someplace on the Internet and the latter to a separate drive and also to another computer.

Phillip Dyson
09-09-2006, 02:03 PM
I've also been syncing with Quicken 2006. Albeit only for a few weeks. So if there are problems perhaps I haven't looked close enough yet.

Cirrob
09-09-2006, 02:04 PM
Yup, I can confirm this. This combination does not work with WM5 for smart phones as near as I can tell... Mine works iwth an axim x51v but my buddy's combination (treo 700) does not work with quicken 2006.


:confused totally: I've been using Quicken 2006 for a year now, and I've been syncing with Finance for most of that time. The Spb Finance 2.x/Quicken 2006 combination certainly does work.

Now for the ultimate question: will Canadians be able to legitimately get their hands on Money 2007? I'm sick of all of Quicken's stupid UI bugs and its annoying habit of automatically backing up my data on its own every once in a while, to a subfolder of the Quicken data folder. I have Carbonite and Handy Backup to back up my data for me, the former to someplace on the Internet and the latter to a separate drive and also to another computer.

miterb
09-09-2006, 03:01 PM
I have never found spb Finance to be kept up properly for Quicken Users. Investment Balances have NEVER been made to be accurate. There is no particular reason to be able to post transactions to the investments but you would think that spb could at least find a way to get an accurate balance sent to the PDA.

Now, I have just updated to Quicken 2007 and so the program is once again totally useless.

A big waste of money for Quicken users.

MerlinAZ
09-09-2006, 05:32 PM
One could only hope that Quicken '06/07 support will be next.

I tried the version before this with Quicken Premier 2007 and it didn't work.
The account balances were way off.
I guess I'll wait until they say it's compatible.

Phillip Dyson
09-09-2006, 05:40 PM
Correction:

I've been using Quicken 2007. I just installed Finance 2.6 and it seems to be syncing fine.

Darren Behan
09-09-2006, 06:07 PM
Unfortuantely, I've never had much success with SPB Finance and this version seems to be no exception. Using Money 2007 it takes about an hour to do the first sync though it otherwise seems to go fine. Then doing nothing else with the PDA, it syncs again and comes up with 65 items to resolve and no meaningful way to resolve them. Even in the normal course it seems to take 20 min per sync which is just too much for the way I use my PDA. So for now, I will impatiently await the update for Cash Organizer which has always worked reasonably well for me (except, of course investment balances).

db

miterb
09-09-2006, 06:45 PM
In light of an earlier posting about QW2007 working with spb 2.6, I just synched to spb 2.4 and it seems functional but without, of course, anything to do with the investment accounts. Guess I'll get the 2.6 update just to stay up with things.

I suspect spb just does not take the time to validate Quicken releases until they have nothing better to do.

freemans
09-11-2006, 12:49 AM
I feel like Sprite Backup better, but SPB Finance is nice 8)

miterb
09-11-2006, 02:33 AM
Well, I did download Version 2.6 and after installing it it now locks up my Axim x50v after synching with Quicken 2007. I uninstalled - Good Riddance!

joderias
09-11-2006, 03:07 AM
I earn around $600-$1500 per month, and I need to track every expense that I make, since I find it one of the most useful features of any PDA/Pocket PC

Is SPB Finance the best money program for Pocket PC?

I used (when I had a LifeDrive) the Splash Money program, it was very useful

Denis Khitrov
09-11-2006, 08:44 AM
Hello to all Quicken users!

I think I should give an explanation of current situation with Spb Finance – Quicken synchronization.

Spb Finance utilizing QIF (format essentially invented by Intuit) import/export features of Quicken for the synchronization. Starting from Q2005 Intuit start to make some limitation of QIF importing/exporting abilities of the product and as a result this changes reflected on Spb Finance abilities. Our idea was to wait until this migration process is finished and then implement a new engine.
But as I see there are many users interested in this update. We will have a special meeting with a Spb Finance team and decide how we could force an update of this module.

Thank you for your feedback. I think we will need help of Quicken users as beta testers. If your are interested you could join our Spb Finance beta testing forum at spbdn.com.


I earn around $600-$1500 per month, and I need to track every expense that I make, since I find it one of the most useful features of any PDA/Pocket PC

Is SPB Finance the best money program for Pocket PC?

I used (when I had a LifeDrive) the Splash Money program, it was very useful

Joderias,

The simplest way to evaluate the application is to install it and play with. All Spb Products have 15 days 100% functional trial, so you easily could play with Spb Finance during 15 days and make a decision yourself.

joderias
09-11-2006, 08:51 AM
One quick question, is the synch done automatically?
I installed Microsoft Money 2006 Small business (PC), and SPB Finance 2.6 on my Pocket PC, it will be really cool if these two can synch in an automatic way, like every day, without having to do it manually

Thanks in advance

Denis Khitrov
09-11-2006, 09:03 AM
Unfortuantely, I've never had much success with SPB Finance and this version seems to be no exception. Using Money 2007 it takes about an hour to do the first sync though it otherwise seems to go fine. Then doing nothing else with the PDA, it syncs again and comes up with 65 items to resolve and no meaningful way to resolve them. Even in the normal course it seems to take 20 min per sync which is just too much for the way I use my PDA. So for now, I will impatiently await the update for Cash Organizer which has always worked reasonably well for me (except, of course investment balances).

db

Hello Darren!

We seriously improved speed in 2.4 and 2.6, but anyway the first synchronization with a big Money file may take a while.
We implemented synchronization in a "honest" way =) using ActiveSync provider. It means that items are synchronized one by one. Due to a tree-like structure of the data some times it need two or three sessions to finish synchronization. But typically this made be filled only during first “big” sync.

How big is your Money file?

As for unresolved items I think we will need your help to find a reason. We really did our best to cover all possible data cases. But surely there is always a chance to meet something unexpected. You could help us joining Spb Finance beta testing forum at SpbDN.com.

joderias
09-11-2006, 10:07 AM
Denis Khitrov hey man congratulations for this software

I didn't knew how to synchronize, but after a while I found out that in Microsoft Active Sync, if you click on "Tool -> Options" you can enable the synchronization

Hey I had I think 90 out of 450 unresolved items, "heck", I though

Users like to USE programs, not to fix them, anyway I'm much into computers so I thought these might been small errors

As soon as the synch finished, I open Microsoft Money Small Business 2006
WOW

All my data is there!!!
VERY NICE!!!

Congratulations

Explain us technically, what is an unresolved item?
ALL my accounts seem to be accurate, excactly like in my Pocket PC

ctmagnus
09-11-2006, 08:32 PM
Explain us technically, what is an unresolved item?
ALL my accounts seem to be accurate, excactly like in my Pocket PC

I had this issue as well, with Quicken 2006 and virtually all versions of Spb Finance released since August 2005. So, I just disabled that portion of the Today plugin.

Denis Khitrov
09-16-2006, 10:24 AM
Denis Khitrov hey man congratulations for this software

I didn't knew how to synchronize, but after a while I found out that in Microsoft Active Sync, if you click on "Tool -> Options" you can enable the synchronization

Hey I had I think 90 out of 450 unresolved items, "heck", I though

Users like to USE programs, not to fix them, anyway I'm much into computers so I thought these might been small errors

As soon as the synch finished, I open Microsoft Money Small Business 2006
WOW

All my data is there!!!
VERY NICE!!!

Congratulations

Explain us technically, what is an unresolved item?
ALL my accounts seem to be accurate, excactly like in my Pocket PC

Unresolved items may be an objects that Spb Finance ActiveSync provider was not able to sync for some reasons. There were a cases when unresolved items was related to currencies or budgets. In recent update we fixed all known issues related to this problem. If you have these 90 unresolved item it mean that we probably missed something.

Synchronization may need several sync session to be fully completed (especially for first synchronization), becase financial data have complex structure and it's impossible to create new category and new transaction using this cateogory during one sync. So probably you should try to make one-two extra syncs to finish synchronization.

If you always have unresolved items please could you please contact me via e-mail air[at]softspb[dot]com. Wel probably will need some help form your side to find a reason.

joderias
09-16-2006, 05:50 PM
sure
I will email u if I have any further trouble
From what I saw so far, synch seems pretty accurate

ctmagnus
09-17-2006, 06:47 AM
Unresolved items may be an objects that Spb Finance ActiveSync provider was not able to sync for some reasons. There were a cases when unresolved items was related to currencies or budgets.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had the unresolved items issue with previous versions of Finance. I now think it was caused by the fact that I would never get the currency information across to my device from Quicken, and the budget category titles were all out on the device end. At the moment, I'm waiting for Money 2007 to be released in Canada before I reinstall Spb Finance to my device, so I'm not able to see if this new version fixes the problem.