No Worries, Good Stuff - Business Software Critique

Posted by The Popular News Today on Tuesday, January 3, 2012

By William Ramirez


All in all, after dumping the tax forms and correcting the categories to meet the tax form issues with TurboTax, it works well enough to buy a new copy every two years. Be aware that when you edit out the duplicates on the CC transactions, it will also correct the checking account balances. I just got finished customizing my home screen in the 2011 version, and that helps, but still, I don't like it as much. I owned an older version (2000).

The same goes for entering invoice data when a client only makes a partial payment. Quicken overall is a good program but lacks sufficient helps.

Attachment Encryption: I'm fairly certain this wasn't in the prior version. I guess you can now password protect attachments.

Some features I have been excited about, such as Bill Pay, have numerous problems that occur and take hours to clear up. One of the worst features about Quicken is that the free support is very short lived after buying the product, then it is quite expensive to get help, and often the problem is one of their own.

The only reason I upgraded was b/c my 2005 Quicken H&B version was no longer fully supported by Intuit. But overall, I actually liked the user interface better in the 2005 version. Turns out none of these accounts are accessible with 2011! It was a complete waste and it actually runs slower than 2008.

Automatic transaction downloading for my checking, savings and credit accounts is all very handy, allowing me to add more verbose metadata to my daily transactions beyond what my monthly statements can offer. It's also nice to see all of my assets in one place, added up to provide my Net Worth. As advertised, it does connect reasonably well to my bank account, credit card accounts, and investment accounts. However, I have two complaints.

This BY FAR is the way to go - everything is nicely organized and all the values are now correct. The down side to this is I'm going to have to leave Microsoft Money on the computer for a couple years just in case I need to look up an old transaction. I purchased Quicken 2011 H&B because I received an email from quicken saying they would no longer support my old version (Q 2008), and I wasn't all that satisfied with it either. So I upgraded. I promptly returned (Costco) and reverted back to my earlier version 2010. I know people who find this software useful, and relying on their advice I paid out for it (and it's not cheap). Quicken has a great product but run an abusive company, forcing you to update. I often wish there was a viable alternative. That forced me to update, although I was basically happy with the 2007 version. I don't download from financial institutions so saw no need to update, until the multiple malfunctions occurred. It was well worth the effort and I will not upgrade again before doing major homework on the software. I have been using Quicken 2008 and this is a totally worthless upgrade.




About the Author:



{ 0 comments... read them below or add one }

Post a Comment