Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 59
 Essential November 14, 2007
Yoshiro Aoki (usa)
16 out of 31 found this review helpful
Quicken Home & Business 2008 is one of my most essential and used software applications. It manages my multiple saving, checking, investment, and trading accounts for me and, so far, I have had no issues with it. As a precaution, I keep the Quicken data files under a version control system on another hard drive that I periodically backup, encrypt, and dump to DVDs for secure local fire-safe and remote offsite storage along with other data for disaster recovery purposes. Though Quicken has the ability to manage scanned data, I prefer a separate package for that and for my encryption needs as well. This allows for a more general data management solution, for me anyway.
There is a lot to like about Quicken, such as its ability to define categories and local accounts. This is handy when you decide to track expenses pertinent to, say, a relocation or vacation. The tool also offers you a subsequent forecast as to where you might be come tax time. Then there is Quicken's immensely useful and easy to setup, manage, and use online account transaction reconciliation features. I do not use its online bill-pay feature, preferring instead to create Internet browser icons to respective accounts payable sites. This avoids single-point-of-failure scenarios that would arise if any one of my packages or computers handled all financial operations.
Another nicety is Quicken's ability to `skip' bills. This allows you to set estimates of future expenses such as weekly auto fuel and dining out, and observe a very accurate end-of-month balance for as far ahead as you care to view. This is especially helpful when managing a monthly or quarterly income, where its especially important to know where you stand between pay periods. Properly managed, this software can truly become a crystal ball for your financial present and future.
I spend about ten minutes a day with Quicken, and in return I know, to the penny, exactly where I stand on multiple accounts. The software is intuitive enough that I personally never bothered reading any books or manuals about it. Just use it, I would suggest, and keep backing up to handle any newbie goofs.
For me personally, Quicken is just a component of a larger paperless home data-management picture including version control, cryptography, backups, secure storage, UPS, cascaded firewalls, intrusion detection, etc.
In this regard, so far, it has proven to be a five star component indeed.
 Quicken 2008 and Savings Goals December 8, 2007
Dave Dowding
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
I just upgraded from Quicken 2005 to Quicken 2008.
I'm a big user of Savings Goals accounts to put money aside for non monthly expenses, like those quarterly property taxes, sewer and water bills, and other expenses as well.
Quicken 2005 allowed me to see the future balance of my savings goals accounts in the Account Balance Graph in the calendar window. This allowed me to see if I was putting enough money aside each month to cover these expenses in the future. Quicken 2008 no longer allows me to see the future balance of savings goals accounts.
I'm very disappointed in Intuit for making this change and am looking for a replacement product. Quicken is no more than a check register for me now. It doesn't allow me to see my financial future.
Good product--worst customer service ever from Intuit December 11, 2007
me
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I update my version of Quicken every couple of years as I find it useful in creating budgets, tracking my finances and keeping me organized in general. HOWEVER, I feel compelled to warn anyone considering downloading this software from Intuit...DON'T!!!! Not only did they charge my credit card three times for the one purchase, I had to spend the better part of my afternoon trying to get someone to refund the $160 erroneous charges to my bank account. The 800 number on their website refers you back to the website and then hangs up on you. When I contact their legal department I was referred back to the website. Each time I went to the website and tried to enter in my order number (so I could file my complaint as directed, I was told that my order number had too many digits and they couldn't process it. Finally, after three live online chats with someone in India (Thanks, Sigat!), I was told that they would refund the two incorrect charges. In seven business days. That doesn't help me all that much when it's 2 weeks before Christmas...It only took them a milisecond to deduct the funds...why does it take 7 business days to put them back??!! Intuit, I hate you.
 I keep hoping... February 24, 2008
Mark Sicignano
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
I'm a Quicken Veteran. Been with them since 1990-91. Originally using it on a Mac, but then moving over to the PC a few years later.
The early Mac version was solid as a rock. I used to rave about how it had to be THE best software purchase I have ever made. I told everybody about it. I was a fanatic. It was simply awesome. Software that did what it said it would do, did it well, was very intuitive and was a model of what software should be like. As a software developer myself, it was a great role model.
I think the last version of Quicken that I was happy with was Quicken 98. Since then, I've just gotten more and more frustrated with the product. Generally, it works for me (I'm on 2007 right now), but the interface is not as simple and intuitive as it used to be. I've got plenty of screen real estate, but Quicken forces me to use it in a very wasteful way. I would really like to have more than one account up at a time. (Does anybody else remember the days when quicken let you have multiple account windows open in different windows?)
I feel as though Quicken has morphed from it's earlier "perfection" into a clumsy tool for managing finances and it's trying to be a platform for trying to sell lots of other Intuit products and services. They've cluttered up the menus with other things I just don't need and that have little to do with managing my money.
There is a menu option that lets me apply for a Quicken Credit Card. I don't get enough offers for credit cards in the mail already? You're going to pitch me one from within your software? Of course, I clicked on it, and up pops a window that gives me an error "A system error has caused a delay in processing your application. Please try again later." Kind of sad really.
If anybody is listening and even cares, here is what I want to see in Quicken 2009: NO NEW FEATURES. I want to see the Quicken Team clean up their act. Focus on making the product super easy to use again. Bring it back to the way it was when it was a nimble and helpful program. Make sure I can use keyboard shortcuts in the check register where I do most of my work. Get rid of the quirky behaviors. Focus on quality. No new features... lots of quality. Make this solid as a rock and fast. Let me work with more than one register window at a time. Clean up the menus and get rid of all the entries that are trying to sell me more services. Leave that on your website. If I want to buy something, I'll come looking for it.
Please give me a product that I can once again rave about, instead of getting an ulcer worrying about whether or not I should upgrade and risk data corruption or losing the ability to do my online banking.
Big Waste of Time - Advertising False December 4, 2007
UseYourHead (IN, USA)
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
I've used Quicken since it first came out years and years ago and I must advise you NOT TO BUY this product.
Do not trust your financial tracking to Quicken even if you buy the top of line version. The files become corrupt and you end up manually entering tranasactions one by one line by line. And sometimes you have to do it two or three times.
Good financial software should allow you to enter data once and then save it for you.
If you invest with Schwab - forget it - you can't download transactions as they advertise. EIther the transactions download over and over again; or they do not download at all.
Quicken support is also terrible and they will avoid helping you by just throwing a lot of web links at you.
As soon as a competitor enters this market - I'm buying their product.
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![Quicken 2008 Home & Business [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51UQj98rJXL._SL500_.jpg)
