Update: The giveaway has ended and the winners will be announced shortly.
Note: This is a long article containing an in-depth review of the new version of Quicken. If you are just interested in the giveaway of Quicken 2010 Deluxe, scroll to the bottom of this article.
It took me a long time to warm up to Intuit Quicken. When I first saw the software in the early or mid 1990s, I wasn’t very interested. That’s not the software’s fault; at that time I most likely did not see the need for tracking money I did not have. When I finally realized I needed to build some control of my personal financial situation, I first looked for free solutions.
After several months of spending less than I was earning and tracking my progress using freeware, I evaluated Microsoft Money alongside Quicken. Money looked nice and ran smooth while Quicken was clunky and unattractive, so I stuck with Money for a few years. After some time, I came to realize that Money’s features for dealing with investments were not as comprehensive as I would like, and for some reason it interpreted the downloaded data from my 401(k) incorrectly. I decided to give Quicken another shot.
While Quicken wasn’t perfect, it worked better with the transaction data I downloaded from the banks and offered configurable reports. So I stuck with it, and I still use a desktop version of Quicken almost every day. I receive questions about why I haven’t switched to popular Web 2.0 applications like Quicken Online (review here) or Mint.com (review here). These websites offer interesting features, particularly those powered by community aggregate information, but they lack some of the basic investing functionality that I get from the desktop version of Quicken.
Quicken 2010 review, first impressions
I received Quicken 2010 Home and Business in the mail yesterday and gave it a test drive tonight.
The upgrade from Quicken 2009, including downloading updates to the software online, took about ten minutes. Tens of thousands of transaction records needed to be converted to the new version, and this took the bulk of the time for the upgrade.
After the upgrade was complete, the software brought me to Quicken.com to register. Although I am already registered at Intuit, I was required to provide my information again before using all of the software’s functionality. Although required, the registration process was quick.
I was impressed with the new version’s look and feel. The interface is redesigned to be cleaner, and switching from one page to another within the software seems to move faster. One of my biggest complaints about Quicken has been its sluggish display but this seems to be greatly improved.
Quicken 2010 opens to a new main screen with three horizontal sections. The top includes a pie chart describing your spending within categories and the middle of the screen lists your anticipated expenses.
The focus here is on your cash flow: how much is left in your spending accounts at the end of the month. Here is the top half of my screen. Click on the thumbnail to view the image full-size (and note the exceptionally large tax expense thanks to quarterly estimated payments).
The bottom section of this screen is new. According to Quicken, it would take 5 minutes to begin tracking spending goals. I began creating spending goals, which seem to form a softer style of a budget. Unfortunately, because I use sub-categories, Quicken’s “average monthly spending” in categories like “Auto,” “Dining,” and “Entertainment” were inaccurate. As a result, the “suggested monthly goals” were not appropriate. I solved this by choosing my own categories, such as “Auto:Fuel” rather than “Auto.”
After assigning several categories to watch, here are my results so far for October. [click to continue…]
I’ve been a relatively faithful user of Quicken for the past five years after switching from Microsoft Money and other more basic personal finance management software. Even though I continue using this software to track my income and expenses and to share my finances with the world, I have never been silent about the software’s drawbacks.
Here are the latest Intuit Quicken products available for download or for shipping.
More Quicken products are available here.
Unfortunately for Mac users, Intuit is still working on an updated version of Quicken. Quicken Financial Life for Mac is slated to be released in February 2010. I should have my hands on the latest edition of Quicken Home and Business in a few days and I plan on reviewing the upgrade as soon as possible.
My accountant has strongly suggested I move my business-related financial accounting out of my personal Quicken file and into QuickBooks. It has been a slow process so far, and I have determined that I have not done a great job of separating my business finances from my personal finances.
QuickBooks 2010 was released yesterday. The software comes in a number of different flavors and the variety is a bit intimidating. I downloaded the QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition in order to get started, but this edition of the software is limited to the point that it is insufficient for me. The Free Edition is limited to only twenty customers. In this version there is no connectivity with banks. While a very basic business could get by with these features, even running websites requires something more robust. One feature I would have liked with the free version, or the $100 (on sale for $80) QuickBooks Simple Start, is the ability to enter my bills as I receive them.
If you’re serious about keeping your books, it looks like your best bets are QuickBooks Pro ($200 on sale for $160) or QuickBooks Premier ($400 on sale for $320). You can also find editions of Pro and Premier that allow more than one user to access your data at the same time for an additional price.
Intuit also offers one version of QuickBooks for Mac.
My accountant says he has a few clients who upgrade their version of QuickBooks every year, so in order to complete their tax returns, he must also upgrade every year. It looks like I’d be best suited for QuickBooks Pro but I want to do as much as I can in the free version of Simple Start.
There are too many flavors of QuickBooks to list, but you can find discounted prices on all Intuit QuickBooks products here.
The news in personal finance today is that Intuit, the makers of Quicken and TurboTax, purchased internet start-up Mint, a service that has come into its own in the past few years. The two companies offer competing products: Quicken Online and Mint are both free web applications that aggregate your financial information across a wide variety of banks, credit cards, and investment accounts.
We’ve reviewed both offerings at Consumerism Commentary. We offered one of the first looks at Quicken Online as well as an early look at Mint, both from 2007. We’ve also spoken to representatives from each of the companies for the Consumerism Commentary Podcast. On May 3, we spoke with Aaron Patzer, the CEO of Mint and on June 7, we spoke with Barron Ernst, the product manager of Quicken Online. Both interviews offered interesting insights into the software and the philosophy behind the companies.
There has been fierce competition between the two companies as they raced to announce higher user numbers. Intuit challenged Mint not too long ago to substantiate their claims that they were adding 3,000 users a day. Any bitterness seems to have subsided for the time being. Mint seemed to be winning the battle over users, and it’s not a bad move for Intuit to buy the competition.
Each application has its own strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I use the desktop version of Quicken to manage my own finances. I don’t believe the software is perfect, but I prefer it above any of the web-based applications.
With this deal, Intuit obtains customers it was unable to reach and Mint obtains the backing of one of the best-known software brands. Intuit will continue offering both web-based services for free, and there are no current plans to integrate one set of users into the other piece of software. How long will it continue to make sense to maintain two highly similar services under one roof? Consolidating the users of the two separate services into one larger user base would solidify the surviving software’s spot at the summit among other similar services such as Geezeo.
Read Quicken’s announcement | Read Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s opinion
Until now, I never paid much attention to the different companies and providers, but I’ve learned that not all GPS devices are equal. I’ve recently been tempted by the TomTom app for the iPhone, especially in connection with the car kit. Turn-by-turn directions, as well as charging my phone, and playing music through the car’s speakers? Yes, please.
But I don’t just go throwing around $100 at every iPhone app. I figured it was at least worth a little research, and I found that one of TomTom’s special attractors is something they call IQ Routes. In short: they gather anonymous user data to provide:
… the driving experience of millions of TomTom users into your maps, calculating your route based on actual speeds driven on roads compared to speed limits. With TomTom IQ Routes you always get the smartest, most efficient route. Saving you time, fuel and money by driving like a local.
Much the same as GMail’s method of eliminating spam e-mail, TomTom “crowdsources” traffic routes in order to save you time. The good news is that you can try out their route planner for free right now and see if it can shed any light on some of your normal routes.
When I started my new job last November, I spent weeks trying different scenarios to and from work, and thought I had it nailed, so I was shocked when I tried the route planner and found a new way home that saved me 5 minutes.
And as we all know, time is money, and in this case, fuel. Give it a try yourself and let us know in the comments how it works out for you.
Adriel, the product manager for the new Quicken product for Apple Mac, has posted an update about the software’s development. There is good news for users of Quicken 2007 who have been anxiously awaiting an update for the software on par with the updates that Windows users receive each year.
First of all, the delayed product called “Quicken Financial Life for Mac” will not be released as planned. The new Quicken for Mac will be released in February 2010, incorporating some aspects of Financial Life, barring no further delays. According to Adriel, the programming team is incorporating user feedback during the testing phases for both the Quicken Financial Life for Mac and the new Quicken for Mac.
Mac users have an option to run a Windows version of Quicken in a “virtual computer” within OS X with the help of certain software, and the new Quicken for Mac should have a seamless upgrade option to migrate your data from the Windows version to Mac.
Quicken for Mac 2010 Update for August 2009, Adriel, August 11, 2009.
I’m a previous customer of the Mac Bundle Box, and I’m always curious to see what’s on the offering block when it reappears.
If you’re unfamiliar with the program, it’s one of the best ways you can save money on Mac software. Not only can you get $460 worth of software for $50, but 10% of each sale goes toward charity. This time it’s charity: water, which provides clean drinking water to developing nations.
Of particular note to our readers are two apps in the group dedicated to personal finance:
iCash
iCash is a software intended to control your personal finances, keeping track of incomes, expenses, credits, debts and Banks transactions for you. As simple as creating the accounts you need and move money between them! You don’t even need to know about accounting or even care about it! Your finances depend largely on good organization that lets you know where your money comes from and to where it goes.
Chronicle
Keeping track of your bills has never been so easy! Intuitive and remarkably simple to use, Chronicle will help you pay your bills on time, every time. It takes only a few seconds to add a new bill for Chronicle to remember. Once you enter your bills, Chronicle’s overview shows you all your upcoming bills at a glance, and alerts you when one is due soon (Leopard only). Plus, payment history and statistics by year and month help you determine when, where, and how much you spend. Chronicle also automatically averages your payments for bills that fluctuate, like credit cards and utilities, helping you budget for the future more accurately. You can also use Chronicle’s goals to work toward reducing a balance or paying off a loan. Late payment fees often cost $25 or more. Why risk it? Let Chronicle keep track of all your bills simply and easily!
There are twelve programs in the bundle, including the very-well-reviewed DEVONthink.
If you’ve used any of the apps in the bundle, I’d love to hear your comments, so our other readers can decide better whether it’s worth the $49 to them.
Microsoft is ending its support of Microsoft Money, the desktop financial management software that feebly competed with Intuit Quicken. This comes as no surprise to me. Microsoft appeared to have given up on the Money product several years ago. Personally, I switched from Microsoft Money to Quicken in 2004. Although I was happy with Microsoft Money 2004 in the autumn of 2003, after trying the equivalent version of Quicken for several months I decided to permanently switch.
Quicken has not been perfect, but some of the interface drawbacks were outweighed by the superior reporting functionality and tracking of investments. I revisited Microsoft Money occasionally in the last few years but never saw a compelling reason to switch back. With Microsoft’s announcement, I am pleased with my decision.
After June 30, 2009, Microsoft Money Plus — the newer name for the desktop software — will no longer be available for retail purchase. The feature that allows bank activity to be downloaded and reconciled with the transactions entered in the software will cease to function after January 31, 2011. For those looking for a seamless switch, Microsoft is working on a file converter that will allow users to directly upgrade from Money to Quicken 2010.
While Intuit claims they are committed to to customers like myself who prefer the robust desktop application over the free and lightweight Quicken Online, I expect the company’s focus to continue shifting toward the more mainstream online product.
Announcement from Microsoft, June 10, 2009
Microsoft to discontinue MS Money, Ina Fried, CNet News, June 10, 2009
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