User Friendly
Quicken Deluxe 2002by Stephanie Nordlinger, LACS I have used Quicken for perhaps a decade, upgrading virtually every year. The program remains relatively easy to use and extremely useful to people who want to keep track of their finances without full double-entry accounting or time management and billing program. Installation Installation was easy, from a CD. You don't realize how important this is until you get a program that doesn't install fully or easily, like my two copies of Intuit's TurboTax 2001 Premier which can't access its videos despite hours of effort by myself, Tech Support and others. Operation and Features Quicken Deluxe has much improved Internet features including online banking, better integration with TurboTax and more detailed options for investment accounting. Quicken will let you handle your accounts in various ways, at your option. You can do it strictly on your PC as in older versions. Or you can put your accounts (including a dummy portfolio) or several such portfolios on the Quicken web site, where the data is available with a password from any web connection. You can give data to someone else by just giving him or her the password and web address information. The person can see and manipulate the data online or download it into his or her PC. I tried to do this with a trust's portfolio, but the trustee never pulled down the data. This procedure is better than two people having to input lots of data. You can instantly update the prices for your securities (including a Watch List or a dummy account). I do this weekly on weekends because 5 days of data are available. If you are just starting or haven't done this regularly, you can get the past three years of prices for stocks, bonds and mutual funds but not for options. This is done from a Portfolio view, a chart of your investment accounts which can be configured in numerous ways (quotes, holdings, etc.) with columns covering just about anything you would want to know, such as the past year's high and low prices, the P/E ratio, volume, average P/E for a mutual fund, etc. The only thing I dislike about the Portfolio View is that you can't include money market funds unless they are in an account labeled as a brokerage account, so you don't have a full view of your investments. The Quicken and Intuit websites have links to numerous other services. You can get a price on your car, determine the likely value of your home, shop for various kinds of insurance, buy Quicken checks and engage in other transactions in which Intuit takes a cut. The TurboTax tech support website is separate and was quite accessible but not very helpful. Data Entry Data entry is still in the easy basic checkbook format. If you don't know how to do an unusual transaction, you can select from a new long menu. You can also bring in data from earlier versions of Quicken. The program makes a backup of the data before importing and converting it to the current version's format. The last several versions have each had a separate format, so a later version's files are not readable by an earlier version. Bringing in a lot of old data took me only a few minutes. For investment purposes, there is one problem with data entry. If you buy a stock in one file and add it to a later file, all other things being equal it comes in on the wrong date and possibly with the wrong basis. I put my Mother's portfolio into Quicken a few months before she passed away in 1994. I kept her accounts separate from mine by having separate files. (You can apparently have as many files as you like and I know of no limit to the number of accounts per file.) She got a step-up in basis for most of the stock when my Father died seven years earlier. A couple of stocks or mutual funds had been purchased in that seven years, and a corporate spin-off occurred. Even with the additional categories provided in this version, it is difficult to record basis and purchase dates accurately when the transactions are complicated and go through several files. (I split my own file in November 1999 because it was getting to be over a megabyte and slow to load. I also moved stock between accounts in the same file.) After getting bad reports and tax data (see below), I realized that I should have added all of the still relevant investment data to the new files and accounts at the original dates and prices and then entered a reversing adjustment to get the real opening balance for the new account. Quicken 2001 and 2002 have repeatedly lost my reconciliation data. Even though I reconcile every statement every month. Quicken gives me a message that various prior statements are not in balance including some more than a year earlier! You can reconcile (which I do or enter a balance adjustment "correction." Reports and Graphs Quicken provides numerous, well-designed reports, but each is limited to the accounts (bank accounts, brokerage and mutual fund accounts, etc.) in a file (e.g., my current data). and you still can’t print more than one copy of a report at a time. You will have many choices for customization of the preset reports. You can include or exclude almost anything (e.g., by date, by account, by category of income or expenditure). Once you have a report the way you like it, you can memorize it. One thing you can't do (and it's a nuisance) is sort by a security's name. A tax preparation report showing dividends will list them all chronologically or by account but not group or subtotal them within an account by the stock's name. Comparing your data with your 1099s takes unnecessary effort. Reports can be exported into .QIF files (a Quicken Information file format) or copied into a spreadsheet. I copied a report into a Quattro Pro spreadsheet almost effortlessly and then made manipulations there that I couldn't do in Quicken. Quicken has charts (graphs) within it (e.g., for security prices, for your choice of time periods) and additional ones on the Quicken website. Unfortunately, I have never been able to print either of them (using a HP LaserJet 4). The printer works, and all of the stuff around the chart prints, but the chart area is blank. I mentioned this to ex-UCLA PC User Group President Richard Katz (a Quicken spokesman) a year or two ago, and he said to just use Control-P (a Windows standard). This produced the same result (under Q. 2001 and 2002). My printer prints similar charts from other sources without difficulty. Also occasionally, Quicken charts are wrong or have missing data Online Banking I finally learned to do online banking. This was also available in 2001, but I think my bank didn't initially support it. I was also a bit leery about having too many transactions available on other people's computers in an electronic format. Not that I do anything weird, but I don't want extra junk mail or spam because my buying habits are known to others. Click on the Online icon, and you can set up 1-10 online accounts, from which you can write checks. Most banks now support personal electronic access to one's accounts. Intuit pioneered CheckFree some years ago. The service is no longer free. I first arranged to send checks from my Washington Mutual Bank checking accounts. Setup was easy, as the bank already had the data on the accounts and me, so I just had to sign an agreement, get a password and name payees, provide their addresses, the amount to be sent and the timing. Cost: $5 a month, which covers one or more checking accounts, with reasonable rules and limits (up to 10,000 payees!). Quicken's Bill Pay system works similarly, except that you have to provide data on your accounts and yourself through the U.S. Mail and therefore it takes longer to start. I was going to do that for this review (there's a 30-day free trial), but I got busy and didn't want to retype the same data. I didn't expect to keep the Quicken system because it costs almost twice as much each month. This could be worth it if you write a lot of checks because there's better coordination with Quicken, and you wouldn't have to enter the data into your Quicken check register. What you will want to do depends on your personality and peculiarities. The easiest system is to let others just bill your checking account regularly for their bills. This may not cost anything and you should be able to see the bill earlier Using Quicken or your bank's system gives you more control. Letting others draw money from your account may be fine for bills that don't change and for entities whom you trust. But I want to know what my cable company and my phone companies are charging, and I wouldn't dream of allowing a credit card company free access to my checking account. Besides, if your income is irregular and you don't have enough money in the account to pay the bill, it won't be paid. If Quicken regularly and automatically puts the bill into your Quicken check register (as it can), you would notice the red ink and deal with the problem. My income is erratic and I like to plan my expenditures, so putting them in the register in advance (with Quickfill and other shortcuts) isn't a burden. Online banking is wonderful for transferring money between your accounts in the same institution. Neither your bank nor Quicken will necessarily pay a bill at the last minute (you are advised to allow 3-5 business days), but it may. One of my credit card companies said it would consider a payment timely if initiated on the day the money was due, even if it arrived a day or two later. You can use electronic banking to pay
most bills payable in the United States (checks are mailed to
individuals and businesses whose interbank account numbers aren't
obvious). You cannot make a payment that requires significant
additional paperwork (more than a memo line on the check) such as
some government payments and court-ordered payments like child
support. You can set up schedules of payments (e.g., rent,
mortgage). You have 24/7 access to the website where you can
schedule bills to be Ainitiated@ on any day recognized by Intuit or
the bank (usually 5 days a week). The system keeps your payee data
on file so that paying a different bill to the same payee later is a
breeze. My bank's system shows when I last made a payment to each
payee, which should help to avoid a second payment of the same bill. I use Quicken for non-financial, but numerical, matters such as keeping track of my Frequent Flyer miles. Quicken also has also an Inventory Module, which I wished I had used when my home was burglarized and I didn't have a serial number. Quicken creates budgets and bill reminders if you want them. This and the Home & Business version synchronize with Pocket Quicken for Palm OS. Planning Functions Quicken will estimate your capital gains and losses, estimate your taxes, and do many planning functions formerly found in Quicken Family Planner. Thus you can explore what to do to become debt-free, to pay for a home, college education or retirement, etc. The program explains the various kinds of personal financial planner professionals (what qualifications to look for) and helps you create a summary of the information that you should give to a financial planner when seeking his or her help. This will save you a lot of time and expense. Interface with Tax Programs In addition to creating reports within Quicken that will assist you in preparing tax returns (e.g. a tax summary report or a transactions report), you can export tax-related data into the major tax programs. To do so properly, you should be sure your categories are marked as Atax-related@ and that they refer to an appropriate tax return item, e.g. Schedule A: Charity. Quicken's default categories are so marked, but if you have imported data from an earlier version, you will need to examine and edit the list of categories and their characteristics to eliminate duplication and provide tax references if appropriate. It is also critical that you include all of your accounts or all of the appropriate ones to get all of the data into the tax program. Computers are funny devices: they do what you ask them to do. Eliminating your ADummy Investing@ account is fine, but if you eliminate an account that has relevant data, your tax file data will be incomplete. Most of my data transferred into TurboTax with little effort, but there were about 30 lines of data from one sale of money market fund shares which had about 30 purchase dates (at $1 per share). Most of the transactions had zero income or loss and should not have been listed. Only the few that had a loss (due to a commission) should have been there. This was the data that I brought into the spreadsheet for editing to reflect I.R.S.'s real concerns. I had fewer problems importing Quicken data into TurboTax (or TaxCut) than in previous years. You should always make reports in Quicken and fix the errors and anomalies (e.g., things put in the wrong category or in more than one category) before exporting the data to a tax program. Garbage in, garbage out. Infrequent transactions such as insurance can be split when they are first entered into as many pieces as you need. Unusual transactions may have to be handled manually. Related Products Quick Payroll is an add-on service to do payroll from Quicken. It is installed from the CD after you install Quicken. A 30-day free trial is available. After that, you have to pay for the service as long as you use it. You need an Internet connection to properly use it. It lets you track the usual employee data, automatically calculates earnings and deductions, and prints reports and federal tax forms. Quicken 2002 Home & Business adds invoicing, cost estimating and other small business functions and more reports to Quicken Deluxe. It can also use Quick Payroll and will also synchronize with some versions of Palm, Act! and Outlook! Bart Koslow reviewed Quicken Home & Business 2001 in the August 2001 issue of User Friendly. Intuit's QuickBooks Pro ($500 before upgrade rebate) does full double entry bookkeeping including payroll. Charlotte Semple reviewed it last August. QB's data cannot be imported into Quicken. Documentation and Ease of Learning Quicken has always been an easy program to learn. It is intuitive and has good menus and help files and additional help on the Web. Each version adds a few features and changes others, but the Alook and feel@ remains largely the same. This year's manual (AQuicken Setup Guide@) is only 90 pages, well-written, illustrated and indexed. It explains each procedure and some of the choices you will need to make. You can download it if you lose it. The Intuit website has an 11-part video tutorial. If you have used previous versions, you can read the manual or just plunge in and solve problems as they arise. I've kept my old manuals for reference, but answers can usually be found on screen or on the website or by buying a third party book. You also get information in the CD case and in a Checks, Forms and Supplies Catalog. (You don't have to buy checks from Intuit; I have used Intuit's, but I now make mine using VersaCheck.) Tech Support Free tech support is available 24/7 via the website, automated phone support, tutorials on the website and Help in the program. The Quicken Setup Guide is downloadable. One-on-one chat is free on Wed., Thurs. & Fri., 7 a.m. - 4 p.m. Pacific Time. Live phone support is $1.95 a minute, 5 a.m. - 5 p.m. Pacific Time; it's free for some installation and registration issues. Special support is available for a fee to fix or recover corrupt data, transfer data from PC to Mac versions or vice versa or remove a password. A few program updates are added automatically (but with your permission) when you go online. Requirements Quicken Deluxe requires a 90MHz Pentium PC or better running Windows 95/98/2000/Me or XP with 24-32 MB of RAM. There is also a Mac version. Conclusion Quicken does an outstanding job of helping you to organize your personal or small business finances. It is well worth its modest cost. If you have investments or a small business, I recommend upgrading it at least every year or two. Quicken Deluxe 2002.
Intuit, Inc., 2535 Garcia Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043.
1-650-944-6000 (corp.). Tech support: (520) 618-7140 or (900)
555-4932., |
