At present, I’m weary of the annual “version” of Quicken wherein they have to introduce new bells and whistles each year to justify making people upgrade.

I can live with the necessity to upgrade every three years due to security changes (although I would think that they could just update an existing version for those.) In doing so, they often take out features we LIKE – who knows why!

As for online-only programs – I just don’t feel secure enough with them. I want my data on my own computer. However, for those who travel, they can use a combination of Quicken on a computer and uploading the data to Quicken.com when on the road for easy access.

So what would I like?
1. Leave favorite features in.
2. Issue a major upgrade version only every three years. Use the time between to address bugs in the current version and to hone REALLY valuable additions to the forthcoming tri-annual version. If something earth-shattering is developed during the three year gap, let us add it as a patch.
3. Stop changing the user interface so much unless it’s a REALLY good change…having to adjust to a new look is a real drag.
4. Make the reports more flexible…allow us to eliminate specific transactions from a report if desired, e.g.
5. The basics that everyone needs include: recording all expenses and income, investments (including splits, spinoffs, etc.), debts and assets, downloadable data from banks, credit cards, etc., ability to pay bills from within the programs. All the stuff about attachments, home inventory, etc. are barely necessary.

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I used to run when I used to play around with Linux. I’m using concurrently with Quicken 08, which will probably be my last one after 12 years.

As for anything online, I do not like having all my financial data in one company’s servers. Call me paranoid I guess… I do, however, have a small worksheet with my alloted incoming and outgoing funds to and from my checking account. I like to keep close to almost zero after the outgoings, so I need to keep track of it.

The problem is that it doesn’t cancel out in the graphs or spending charts. Same thing with tranferring money from one account to another, it doesn’t cancel. I transfer money all the time every month, my expense pie chart has 60% transfers… 40% everything else…

What I do in those circumstances in MS Money (and used to do in Quicken) was not to categorize that $40 received as “income” but instead as “Medical – Prescriptions” under expenses (and then the expense under the same category, natch), so that reimbursable-type received monies also cross-canceled with their expenses. It doesn’t show up on the “income” side of things, but as you pointed out, it’s not really income anyway.

(1) It does not seem to do point-in-time budgets well. If my budget changes due to 1 bill (e.g, I moved and rent is different) but other bills are still set up as recurring, it tries to put both bills in the category. I’ve given up on Money’s budget feature

(2) My ideal software would be able to handle CONTRA-EXPENSES. If I get a check from my work or my FSA for reimbursable expenses, this is not income. MS Money, sadly, can’t recognize that $40 charge for a prescription + $40 credit for the prescription = net zero healthcare expense for the month. I still see the $40 expense in all reports documenting expenses.

(3) Is there anything out there that tracks small business expenses easily?

AS a newlywed, and just starting out – we’ve been through SO Many different software programs – they each seem so confusing, difficult, plus you need to pay.

i wish it could just be simple for us “little people” –
i think there could be 1 program that simple people can use!

thank you so much for your blog!!

The annoyance comes down to Quicken’s requirement of entering transactions through their scheduled bill/paycheck system in order to take advantage of cash flow and spending plan.

For example, if I have a “cell phone” expense category and I setup a scheduled bill for that recurring expense. I then make a payment and download the transactions into Quicken. At this point in order for quicken to assign this to the “bills” section of SP/CF I have to delete the downloaded transaction and enter the scheduled payment. Other wise the SP will show “Cell Phone” as part of the other categories, in addition to monthly bills.

From a user’s standpoint, the way this should work is I create a scheduled bill in a particular category. Anything applied to that category belongs to that bill. Obviously this would create a minor (though workable) annoyance of having to create separate categories for non-recurring payments/expenses to this category. I would happily deal with that, in order to have the control of downloading my transaction and seeing everything displayed properly.

As far as features that might be nice. If there was a calculator for automatically splitting out sales tax (given a percentage) from purchases, that would be awful handy around tax time…

The last time I used Yodlee it was around 1999. At the time it wasn’t strictly financial based. It would bring together information from many different types of accounts such as your e-mail or your airline miles.

Yodlee is also the “engine” that is used by other websites, like Mint or “Wachovia OneStop,” to connect to the banks. Mint doesn’t do that on its own.

It’s been a while since I’ve used Yodlee, so perhaps they have added features.

I think the new software package should do the following:

~Track Expenses
~Try to automatically categorize expenses
~Assist in creating budgets
~Recognize when a payment is made to another account and reconcile that debit/credit
~Online Bill Pay
~Net Worth Tracker
~Create Charts/Graphs
~Savings Goals/Spending Goals (track these goals)

That is about all I, personally, would need. Oh, last, but not least… make the software FREE!! (I’d be willing to deal with ads if it was free).

I haven’t done enough research, so this feature might be out there somewhere. But I’d love a web-based app that allows more than one user. Sure, I could share my login with Jason – but I’d like to be able to tag accounts and transactions based on who was doing the spending so we can see our individual “latte factors.”

I agree with you that the next ‘killer app’ in this space needs to integrate a website with software. There are just things that you can do with either that aren’t really feasible with the other.

So for now, I’m using Yodlee to track things at work / get a quick look at net worth and using iBank on my mac at home to do our budget and actually reconcile things. It’s working well so far.