How Much For Delivery? - Business Forms Software Critique

By Kayla Reed

But I did receive a notification (one of their popups) indicating that I needed to upgrade, otherwise I would not be able to get my transactions from my financial institutions automatically. I have been fighting with the new software to do exactly that. A man can dream. What I like or prefer over MS Money: * Downloads my 401k without creating duplicate entries like Money did! I clicked S for SunTrust and it told me my institution was currently not supported. After further exploring their list of "all financial institutions," I discovered that the list was completely empty.

The navigation completely changed which is OK if it is improved - it is a mess. Single click update often fails on my US Bank accounts and I have to do each one separately and type in my challenge questions about 8 times. Look up the Q2010 and/or Q2008 products, where I posted detailed logs/diaries of the endless bugs, errors and frustrations I endured as a Quicken user. In August, 2010, I finally migrated to the Money Dance product and--after the migration and learning curve issues--I find it swims slick as an eel. Also for any loans I had when I made a payment it put the entire payment amount towards the principle and didn't break it down between principle/interest/insurance/etc. I deleted and recreated the Quicken account and re-imported multiple times and eventually gave up as I could never fix all the errors. Wow, that makes sense. Clearly Intuit's programmers weren't thinking and this is an obvious mistake with the architecture of the system; having two separate classes of payee makes no sense whatsoever!

From a user interface prospective, this is a big step backward. On the positive side, this version of Quicken is the fastest yet.

Unless you consider moving a few buttons a big improvement, which just isn't so. This is basically the same program that's been around for years.

It imported just fine but when I hooked up my online accounts it downloaded and duplicated hundreds of entries throwing off all my balances. If I tried to remove the duplicates it messed up the related accounts (like if I deleted a duplicate mortgage payment it also remove it from the mortgage account which didn't have duplicates causing my balance to show higher than it was). This is my semi-annual purchase/upgrade of H&B. It does the job well for my small business and keeps the tax categories somewhat straight.

But the overall poor experiences over the last several months are totally unacceptable. I'll be looking for other financial management software effective immediately.

It's a total waste of time and money. Well, this would be the third time I've had to "update/upgrade" Quicken. Plus, all our accounts are automatically updated, unlike Quick Books which requires manual input. If you don't have employees, Quicken is a small business owner's dream.

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.

About the Author:

After starting a new business venture in rental real estate Quicken Home & Business has been a tool I use quite often. leather steamer trunk coffee table.