The heavily criticized "Get My Payment" tool at the Internal Revenue Service web site could be working on a makeover. The "Get My Payment" tool at IRS.gov was designed to help people track their stimulus payments and allow taxpayers to provide to the IRS when necessary to receive the more quickly. But nationwide, taxpayers continue to express a great deal of frustration, especially when they try to use the system but then see words like "Payment Status Not Available." The IRS will be initiating "planned outages" on Friday and Saturday, following an earlier scheduled outage on Thursday. The "Get My Payment" tool will be unavailable starting at 10 p.m.Eastern Standard Time until approximately 1 a.m. "due to planned maintenance" on those days. The IRS is expected to be making "critical system updates." "In an effort to improve the user experience and address some of the concerns raised, our programmers are making critical system updates," the IRS said in an alert. Many people have received their already but millions of others are waiting, many are on edge. About 88 million people received totaling nearly $158 billion through April 17, according to a statement Friday afternoon by the IRS and the Treasury Department. That's a bit more than half of those who qualify. The IRS said Friday that nearly 2.95 million people in Michigan have so far received their stimulus money with the total payout exceeding $5 billion. More payments are being delivered each week. The IRS said the payments are automatic for people who filed a tax return in 2018 or 2019, receive Social Security retirement, survivor or disability benefits, as well as Supplemental Security Income and Veterans Affairs beneficiaries who did not file a tax return in the last two years. Many people, of course, become anxious when they hear about a neighbor receiving money and they still haven't gotten a payment, especially during a time of massive job losses during the coronavirus crisis. The process, though, isn't immediate. Some money will be issued via direct deposit but checks will be mailed too. The IRS has said that checks will be mailed in batches of 5 million checks a week. The mailing of those checks could drag out as much as 20 weeks, according to some estimates. The checks will be issued in reverse “adjusted gross income” order — starting with people with the lowest incomes first. Many people had hoped the "Get My Payment" tool would help them track their money or supply bank account information for direct deposit and avoid waiting even longer for a check. The IRS has been frequently adding new information online to try to explain some problems people are facing. But it has been clear that more work needed to be done on the system ever since it was launched April 15. The IRS said those who use the tool, for example, will see a "Payment Status Not Available" notice if "the application doesn’t yet have your data, or you are not eligible for a payment." The wording itself can be highly confusing for taxpayers who are eligible based on their income to see the "payment status not available" notice. Several readers told me that the system prevents them from entering their bank account information if they neither owed money for taxes nor received a refund in recent tax years. Some people do end up with a zero balance on their tax return but then cannot use the tool. A few readers who claimed to have IT experience said that problem was a programming mistake. About 80 million taxpayers were on course to see stimulus payments directly deposited into bank accounts during the first week of April 13, according to the IRS. That's a bit less than half of those eligible to receive payments. This week, more money was being deposited regularly; and the IRS had said that checks will be mailed in batches of 5 million checks a week. The mailing of those checks could drag out as much as 20 weeks , according to some estimates. The checks will be issued in reverse “adjusted gross income” order — starting with people with the lowest incomes first. People have continued to be upset this week and unable to use the "Get My Payment" tool to help them understand when or how they'd receive their money. No one needs to use the "Get My Payment" tool to apply for the stimulus cash, though some people are confused and wrongly think they need to sign up online to get the money. As of April 17, the IRS updated its page to say: "The Get My Payment application will return 'Payment Status Not Available' for several reasons, including:" Contact Susan Tompor at stompor@freepress.com Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter .