As of Tuesday, March 10 at 10:00 am ET, the giveaway of the free Quicken Home and Business 2009 is closed and no more entrants will be accepted.
I’ve been using Intuit Quicken for the last few years to keep track of my savings, investments and expenses. After trying Moneydance, GNU Cash, and Microsoft Money throughout the past ten years, I’ve settled on Quicken Home and Business edition. It’s not a perfect piece of software, but it’s more complete than any other package.
Today, I upgraded my installation to Quicken Home and Business 2009, the latest version. After separately backing up the financial data files I have been using with Quicken 2008, the installation of the new software removed Quicken 2008, installed Quicken 2009, and download the latest patches and bug-fixes.
The new interface shows there is more to explore. As always, a list of accounts sits on the left. On the right, there a new section which can be toggled between a number of new sidebars. The “To Do” tab displays your outstanding bills, predicted income, and a reminder to download the latest transactions from your banks to reconcile your entries. The other tabs contains hints, help, and advertisements.
Between the two side columns, the main window offers many more options for viewing your data. The program opens up by showing an overflow of your cash flow by default. Here is an example.
The views are customizable, so you can create new views and include the data you would like to see on one screen.
There are several issues with Quicken that haven’t been resolved. When you download transactions from banks, you are prevented from using the software fully. Updates should happen completely in the background, but I find that the screen continually refreshes and Quicken has problems accepting new transactions I enter. Screen refreshes are a problem on its own. I have a fairly quick computer, but if I resize the application window, Quicken continually redraws the screen. This and other processes are slow, and make the software feel sluggish.
Another trend that bothers me is the addition of more advertising to the software interface. Perhaps I erroneously believe that free software can be supported by advertising while software you pay for should be free from commercial interruption, but I may be in the minority. I thank Quicken for providing the option for hiding most of the advertising. On the setup screen, hide the Quicken Tab called, “Quicken Picks.” More advertising is included in the “Services” tab along the right sidebar. This cannot be hidden from view, but you should be able to avoid clicking on the tab by accident. If you want to find out which credit cards Quicken suggests, you can always take a look.
Latest prices for Quicken 2009 software
Here are some of the discounts available to Consumerism Commentary readers. Many of these discounts are better than those shared when Quicken 2009 first became available in August 2008.
| Quicken 2009 Home & Business | $69.99 ($30 discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Premier | $59.99 ($30 discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Deluxe | $39.99 ($20 discount) |
| Quicken 2009 Rental Property Manager | $99.99 ($50 discount) |
| Quicken Medical Expense Manager | $49.99 ($20 discount) |
| Quicken Home Inventory Manager | $29.99 |
| Quicken Online Edition | Free |
Quicken Home and Business 2009 Giveaway
If you would like to receive a free copy of Quicken Home and Business 2009, you have a few options. Leave a comment here with an interesting tip for using Quicken or other financial software such as Microsoft Money Plus, Mint.com, or GNU Cash. If you don’t have any tips, feel free to leave a comment about tracking your own money. By leaving a comment, you will receive one chance in the drawing for Quicken Home and Business 2009.
For a second chance to win, share this article using one or more of the tools listed below, like Twitter or Facebook. I will leave the giveaway open for one week and announce a random winner once I close the giveaway. Thanks and good luck!
As of Tuesday, March 10 at 10:00 am ET, the giveaway of the free Quicken Home and Business 2009 is closed and no more entrants will be accepted.
Intuit provided Consumerism Commentary with a copy of Quicken for this review. Consumerism Commentary is an authorized affiliate of Quicken.
Updated March 21, 2011 and originally published March 2, 2009. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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My husband has his own business and I had the pleasure of sorting through his receipts and invoices for his tax accountant. It was an all day job. How can he know if he is claiming all the deductions he is entitled to? His lack of organization is surprising since he is so organized in other areas. I think he doesn’t realize that there is a much easier way to keep track of his bills and cash accounts. He really needs this program!
The most important thing, whether you are tracking personal or business expenses is to make sure you use a CATEGORY for each transactions – income or expense. Then you can prepare end of year or monthly reports by category.
When you install Quicken Home and Business, it will ask you if you have a business, if so, it will set up categories most commonly used by moist small businesses, and the appropriate tax line items will be attached to them. You can see all this in the Category List screen.
Take last year’s Tax return and see what was deducted for business expenses then and make sure you’ve got a category for it. Also, check with your accountant or on the IRS web site to get a list of all possible deductions.
Then as he enters ALL expense transactions, he can select the appropriate category for each one. If there is something not already on the Category List, you can add it, being sure to indicate that it is tax related and selecting the correct tax return line item for it.
Home and Business also has a mileage feature that allows you to enter business mileage as you go, and get totals for the month or year.
The old computer adage of “garbage in, garbage out” applies to Quicken…if you don’t make the entries, you won’t have the data!
My tip is to keep all receipts and immediately enter them into QUicken or whatever program you use. I find that this saves me time and if I ever lose a receipt, I can go on the computer and see what’s missing.
For years I have put off investing in a software program to keep track of our home and business expenses, but after once again spending 2 days organizing receipts, bank statements, etc prior to doing our taxes, the time has come. At first I was leaning toward Quickbooks, but after much research and talking to other users, I’ve decided that Quicken Home and Business is exactly what we need. I’m looking forward to putting this program to use so as to simplify my files!
I have always used TurboTax and have been curious about Quicken. Currently I use YNAB Pro for my budgeting/cashflow and Mint for my overall account view. I appreciate the review since I am currently looking to install a PC version money management software that I can also sync to my PDA. I am also looking to start a business and have not done any budgeting for business purposes yet. Quicken seems to be able to do the trick for both personal and business.
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