12-22-2004, 07:45 AM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Spb Software House Unleashes a Horde of Financial Wonders
"Inspired by the success of the previously released editions of Spb Finance, Spb is now targeting the needs of those whose favorite desktop financial program is Microsoft Money by offering Spb Finance Money Edition. In this version of Spb Finance you can synchronize your finance data between Spb Finance and Microsoft Money. If you have Money installed on your desktop, it will remain your main financial program. At the same time you will always have a powerful program on your Pocket PC that provides quick and easy data input. You can go shopping with the assurance that you will not miss a single transaction, because Spb Finance will carefully collect and store your data. Afterwards, when you get access to your desktop PC, just dock your device and all the changes will be synchronized with Money automatically."
Spb Software House have just released a string of updates to their Spb Finance package. There are now three versions of the product: "Standard Edition", a stand-alone finance manager, which has just been updated to Version 1.60; "Quick Edition", a finance manager with support for Quicken; and the new "Money Edition", with full support for synchronisation with Microsoft Money. There are a host of new and improved features included in these updates - among the favourites are importing/exporting functions, the ability to display budgets and graphs, and data encryption. Having beta-tested these before the release, I was happy with the features they delivered, and I think you will too. You can download a trial version or purchase the full version of each of these products for $19.95 from Handango (Standard Edition and Money Edition) and PocketGear (Quick Edition). [Affiliate]
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12-22-2004, 08:54 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 1
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Given that MS' Money client is such a PoS, I'd gladly try a replacement that allows me to enter more data about the transaction item... However, it seems that Spb Finance "Money edition" synchronises via a file not transaction records. Would this mean that only one file is "right" and the synchronisation is one-directional, or can the Sync import and export transactions?
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12-22-2004, 09:13 AM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Good question. As you may or may not know, Microsoft Money stores its user data in the form of a MNY file on your PC. Spb Finance Money Edition installs an ActiveSync component which can be configured to link to this MNY file. So all you need to do is install the software, link the MNY file to the ActiveSync component, and from then on, subsequent synchronisations work in much the same way as how your PIM data synchronises. That is, it's effortless and requires no user intervention. It's not uni-directional so any changes to one side will be imposed on the other. The financial databases on both the PC and Pocket PC are kept in sync. It works well. Give it a go and you'll see what I'm talking about.
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12-22-2004, 10:21 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 327
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I had high hopes for this, but could not get the first sync to complete without errors. 4 unresolved items, and no way to find out what they are.
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12-22-2004, 11:29 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 227
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I just downloaded the trial for Spb Finance for Money, installed it on my Imate and successfully synchronized with my Desktop MS Money. I like all the features in this app and am still wondering if microsoft is sleeping or something...
Anyway. my experience was not without issues either.
After the sync, I could see all the information was downloaded correctly to my device and was showing up correctly.
I went to reports and selected "spending by category" and the report showed up (pie chart) correctly.
After that whenever i have tried to run the report, (the spending by category report), it says "there is no data to display this report".
I havent made any changes or resynchronized, i.e. done nothing to it for it to suddenly stop finding data for the report. I am selecting all the filters correctly (categories/sub categories, time period, accounts to use etc.)
The data is there so its not like the data is gone. There is data for the selected accounts, categories, time period so I have no idea why this is happening especially because it worked once (but just that once).
Any ideas?
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12-22-2004, 12:20 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by humayunl
The data is there so its not like the data is gone. There is data for the selected accounts, categories, time period so I have no idea why this is happening especially because it worked once (but just that once). Any ideas?
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Odd... I've never seen that happen before. Have you tried deactivating and reactivating the ActiveSync component, and resynchronising everything again? If the problem cannot be resolved, it may be a good idea to advise Spb in case it's a bug specific to your device. Here's the support contact form if you wish to get in contact with them.
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12-22-2004, 01:37 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 227
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I figured out what the problem was.
In the "Customize" option for reports, there's a tab caled "Classes". "NONE" has to be explicitly checked EVERYTIME I run a report.
I am a MS Money user and i dont even know what classes are. So thats why my classes selection is empty with only one option, namely "none". And everytime i want to run the report (i ahve only experimented with the spending by category report so far) i have to customize the report and go to the Classes tab and check NONE or else my data wont show up.
I guess the part about the application not remembering the setting for this option is probably a bug. But its too obvious to have been missed.
I dont know why and how the reports worked the first time without me changing anything.
Thanks for the info Darius.
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12-22-2004, 02:02 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 256
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"Inspired by the success of the previously released editions of Spb Finance ..."
I thought it had sunk without trace ... was it a success ?
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12-22-2004, 02:09 PM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by dommasters
"Inspired by the success of the previously released editions of Spb Finance ..."
I thought it had sunk without trace ... was it a success ?
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It may not have been the biggest and best, but it was still a good quality application. Many people out there used it and thoroughly enjoyed the features it offered. These new updates only add to this.
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12-22-2004, 03:03 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 31
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I've been beta testing the software as well. It's come a long way. There are still some issues to work out but I think it's ready for 1.0. As a money user who could never get the pocket version of Money to sync correctly and consistently with the desktop version this is a great application. Even though it is file based it does sync on a transaction basis.
There are still some issues to be resolved:
The class of none needs to be checked for reports.
If you uninstall Finance and reinstall it, rename the money.mny file or transactions will get removed.
No option to force one platform to overwrite the other after initial sync.
On the plus side it does sync and does it consistently which is more than I can say for pocket version of money.
The changes that have not been synced are bold which is a useful feature. The backup, import/export feature offers convenience and peace of mind knowing that the data is fully recoverable.
I view Finance as a great companion to Ms Money. Not a replacement. It gives me most of the features I want while on the run while keeping data entry simple and quick.
One feature Money for Pocketpc had that I miss is the running balance after each transaction.
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