Software Quicken Deluxe 2006 [Old Version]
Rating:  -
I just spent $60 on this at the store, brought it home, installed it, went to my desktop, and it had put 4 advertising icons on my desktop -- credit card, credit report, bank, and online bill paying. I just spent $60 to put advertising icons on my desktop. I haven't even opened Quicken yet. Words can't express how furious I am right now.
If it wasn't 11:30 pm I would take this straight back to the store.
Update: September 9, 2006
I've been using the software for several months now. Although its good for managing money, I am still irked at how Intuit keeps trying to use it as a means to sell you other stuff. Just now I was entering transactions into my Amex account, and a dialog popped up that literally said, "I see you are entering credit transactions manually. Did you know with a Quicken MasterCard you can download transactions automatically?"
This kind of stuff is garbage in my opinion. If they want to put advertisements in this software, then give it to me for free.
The software itself is quite good. I've never had a crash and it is quite easy to set up complex transactions and quickly monitor your cashflows across many accounts. I'm a young professional learning to manage my money and I've found that Quicken has in 5 weeks made me more disciplined with my money.
Rating:  -
Think real hard before you upgrade to the 2006 version. Yes, Intuit a.k.a. Quicken invented "QIF" (Quicken Interchange Format) but now you CANNOT Import QIF data from your financial institution. While many companies offer the "Web Connect" format which works fine (only a few glitches with some transactions), if your banks and credit card companies only offer QIF download format and you use this feature, then save yourself some aggravation and DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! Check out other financial software. Maybe after we all convert to Microsoft Money Intuit will see the error of their decisions. Why would a company remove working functionality from their product is beyond my comprehension. Quicken user since 2001. I doubt if I upgrade on the Quicken path again unless they fix this.
Rating: -
Quicken has tons of great basic features, and some fairly advanced ones, too. I wouldn't do without it, and I have been a loyal customer for 10 years, upgrading faithfully.... and now I am getting p**sed off.
Why? Because Quicken is more interested in stoking the upgrade hamster wheel cash cow, than in fixing bugs and adding features that would TRULY be useful to real world people. I need FEWER bells and whistles, and more features that actually add true value every day, rather than something to add to a marketing bullet list of "whiz bang" features that really don't help much at all.
For example, I have been requesting a register view option that would allow me to see Category AND Memo in the One Line Display mode! My monitor has 1920 pixels across (3 times the original VGA reolution in width), and Quicken 2006 STILL FORCES ME to toggle modes in order to see either a lot of transactions per screen, or all transaction detail visible -- I can't have BOTH. For cryin out loud, why not?
Ok, another thing... the Paycheck form is really, really buggy. In Quicken 2006, even after online bug fix updates, you can't reliably edit a Paycheck entry in your register. Either you end up with some kind of strange entry duplication, or, when you attempt to edit individual amounts in the split, the input focus isn't handled correctly -- you can't edit the number just by clicking on it. You can work around that by clicking Edit next to the field, but to me, this is a FUNDAMENTAL bug, and they shipped this s**t with the bug present. And, in the meantime, I'm invited to "Rate my payees" using Zipingo, whatever the hell that is! (Why is this in my personal finance software anyway?)
Finally, I'll give you another example of a lingering bug that has existed in the last THREE releases, and they're not gonna fix it ever, I bet... when you download data, and it attempts to match register entries to the downloaded transactions, there are times when the matching isn't correct... either the wrong item matches, or it decides that there (incorrectly) is no match. You would think that pressing the Match Manually menu item for that downloaded data entry would give you a chance to fix it. Sorry, you are wrong; at least 50% of the time, Match Manually doesn't work! You see a transaction in your register which is a PERFECT match to the downloaded one, in date, amount, and unreconciled. You think that item will appear in the list of choices, and you'll simply click on that one, and the manual match will be complete. But (as John Belushi would have said) NOOOOOOO.... that unreconciled transaction you have your eye on DOESN'T EVEN APPEAR IN THE LIST OF POSSIBLE MATCHING CANDIDATES! Very clearly, the bug that is causing this phenomenon also causes the failure of the automatic matching. Sure, there is a work around, but again, there is a mindset of "pump out new, but mostly useless, features" over "make version N solid, then work on version N+1".
One of the things that annoys me to no end is Quicken's inability to swiftly and conveniently handle today's modern mortgage loans. ARMS, Indexed loans, 30/10/1 ARMS, etc, etc... they are all too common, and Intuit has done JACK SQUAT to improve Quicken's ability to handle these kinds of loans, with Option ARM payments, interest rates that vary monthly, and so forth. The best thing one can say about it is the tiny amount of functionality that is present at least seems to have no bugs.
I haven't had time to investigate alternatives... and I suspect that this juggernaut is just coasting on market share at the moment. They have a great franchise, but now the arrogance is showing. Is Microsoft Money any better? Is there anything out there that can top Quicken? If there is, I will be willing to pay for it, for I am sick of Intuit's attitude towards its customers on this particular product.
UPDATE 12/2006: I have a new "feature" to tell you all about -- the Quicken Tax Planner feature! Uh, I mean bug. Here's another area where the product is so riddled with bugs, it's unusable! This feature provides a multi-screen data entry process whereby you can put in your tax estimating information (or have Quicken extract it for you from your data), then Quicken will estimate your year-end tax situation: will you owe, or have a nice refund? Forget about trying to get a decent answer from THIS thing... it won't even "remember" the data you enter as you click around in the multiple screens, trying to get your numbers entered and perhaps doing a little "what-if" game playing. You'll get a DIFFERENT answer with each attempt! There's no consistency because the program simply *does* *not* *remember* what choices you made and what numbers you entered... it will -- seemingly at random -- revert to some default choices and/or data. In the end, it seemed to be telling me I owe $8000 in taxes. I got my TurboTax 2006 product, entered the same data into it, and the result? I owe only $800. Two products, same company, same data, very different results. Since Intuit "guarantees" the results of TurboTax, I can guess where they're spending their QA dollars. Certainly, it's not on Quicken!
Rating: -
I have run Quicken accounts since 2000.
From 2000 to late 2005 all my balances, both stock and bank, have been fine, and generally everything else was accepatble.
Prior to using Quicken, I used Managing your Money (MYM, remember that one?) and a Schwab software package back to the early 1990s.
Since I "upgraded" to Quicken 2006, both my stock and bank accounts have gone out of whack. In over 15 years of using personal accounting software, I have never experienced the kind of problems I have now encountered.
Quicken help has been of no help at all - Quicken help is now outsourced to India, and the people I contacted (and which you would need to contact) dont use Quicken, so they don't really know much about it. In my case, I got instructions about how to use the "command" button to fix a problem (I use a Dell PC - command buttons only exist on MACs), then I got instructions about how to export to QIF files and import back (which of course, duplicates the account entries).. Basically, there appear to be indexing (and other) problems that are not easily resolvable from any Quicken menu entries.
Just my opinion, but after 5 years of relatively smooth Quicken operation, the waters have gotten awfully rough.
I can't help but think this is because the software development and help was outsourced.
Whatever the reason, now the system seems like it is falling apart.
Rating:  -
Works well enough, although it seems to be challenged by multiple accounts with same credit card bank.
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