With automatic online updates (also called background banking), Money regularly downloads up-to-date account information. With some banks, Money automatic updates occur every day. With other banks, you can set up Money to get updated account information at regular intervals, such as weekly or monthly. These less frequent intervals may be useful if your bank charges you a fee to use Money to view your account information.

To use automatic online updates, you must save your bank sign-in information in Money. Otherwise, you will need to enter the sign-in information for your account every time you want to update the account. (Some banks will automatically save your sign-in information.)

If you are using a Money file password or a Windows Live ID to help protect your Money file, you will also need to save your password so that Money can download your account information even if you don't have Money open. If you save your Money file password or Windows Live ID password, Money will download your account information each time you start your operating system unless you specify a different download schedule. If you don't want to save your password, you'll need to open your Money file each time you log on to Windows so that your accounts can be updated online.

Automatic online updates download account information for the last Money file that was opened. If you have more than one Money file that you want to update online, you'll need to open your other files and update your accounts.