Quicken Personal Finance Software Review – Part One
By FutureNestEgg | August 3, 2009
It has been a while since my quicken video – months actually. I wanted to have hands on experience with Quicken before I write my review about it. I have been using Quicken for over 3 months now. In a two part series, I am going to share my views about this personal finance software.
Prior to Quicken, my personal finance software was an excel spreadsheet. Not very sophisticated but kind of served the purpose. I have been on a hunt for a professional personal finance software since the beginning of this year. My software pick had to meet the following criteria:
1. Has to be easy to use – should not be overly complicated – if it is then I am sure to get bored in a few months and abandon the software.
2. Should be able to handle all my accounts – savings, credit cards, personal loans and mortgages.
3. Good reporting tools
4. Good Budgeting tools
Quicken was at the top of my list. I used a couple of other inexpensive personal finance software solutions – Good but was very limited. I wanted a complete solution. I have always heard good things about Quicken’s usability and features. The people at Quicken were kind enough to send me a free review copy.
I got my copy of Quicken Home and Business – started using it seriously since April 2009 – so I have a few months of experience with this software and I am now ready to share with you my opinions. Let’s get cracking –
(If you are based in Australia click here – Australian Quicken
If you in US based then click here for your US Quicken link.)
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First make yourself a nice cup of coffee (or a pot). Next keep all your bank statements at a short distance. Once these two things are taken care of, we are ready to dig into it. |
Installing the software was quite easy – had no problems.
When you open Quicken the first time, it takes you through some questions (called Express Setup – optional). If you follow the Express Set Up, by the end of it, you would have set up your savings accounts, credit card accounts, scheduled bill payments and deposits/salaries. I wanted to create my accounts myself and so gave the Express Set Up a miss.
Setting up accounts is quite easy (under File menu) – Quicken will guide you through a couple of screens and by the end of it you will have your account set up – follow the same process for all your different accounts (credit cards, loans, mortgages).
| For your property if you have a mortgage then there are two accounts (mortgage -your liability and property – your asset). First set up your liability account and at the end of your account set up, Quicken will ask you if you want to set up your asset account – say ‘yes’ and this will set up your asset (property) account. |  |
Once you have all your accounts set up – right click each account and edit the account information (all accounts displayed on the left hand side of the screen) – enter contact details, opening balances, interest rates. For mortgages and loans, under ‘Property & Debt’ menu there are screens which will let you set up your regular repayments, payment frequency, original loan, loan term – anything you need to set up for your loan, should be under here. Setting this up will automatically schedule your loan repayments. To make full use of Quicken’s extensive features, this section has to be set up for all your loans – I will explain the reason further down in my review.
Once you have your accounts set up, the next step is to start entering data. You don’t need to enter any historic data – I started entering data only from the day that I started using Quicken. I adjusted the opening balances of all accounts so that it correctly reflects to what’s on the bank statements. The mortgage payments are all transfers – so when you enter a mortgage transaction, Quicken automatically adjusts your loan and property balances.
The Home tab is a calendar view and the account balance of your main savings account is displayed on each day. This balance takes into consideration all your scheduled payments (including mortgage payments) – so this way if you are going to have an overdraft on your account in a week’s time then you will know immediately. This is why to get a proper grip on your finances, you need to have a record of the scheduled payments – remember how in previous paragraph I said that entering information for your loans is essential – this information is used by Quicken to come up with all your scheduled mortgage payments. If you have an issued a cheque which has not been presented yet, you still make sure you enter it as a scheduled payment – so that your calendar view can give you an accurate picture of your finances.
If your bank’s website can export your transactions into a QIF formatted file, then you can import all your transactions into Quicken. This will save you a lot of time from entering the information manually. Personally I have two main accounts – one is savings and the other is credit card. All my outflows and inflows are from these two accounts. I visit Quicken every 3 days. I spend around 5 to 20 minutes updating these two accounts – I enter all transactions manually because I am a regular user and so don’t have heaps of transactions to enter.
Quicken is intuitive but having said that there was a learning curve for me – It was not something I had a control over from the second I started – I had to spend some time understanding and teaching myself how it all works. You should be ready and willing to invest this time too – Trust me it’s worth it – This is an investment you need to make because unless you have a complete control over your personal finances, you are getting nowhere in your journey towards financial freedom – irrespective of how much you earn. The Quicken help files are good and are quite detailed.
Read my part two of this review here – Quicken Review.
Watch my video here – Quicken Video.
If you are based in Australia click here for your Quicken Copy.
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Topics: Product Reviews | 4 Comments »
4 Responses to “Quicken Personal Finance Software Review – Part One”
Comments
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August 3rd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Full Disclosure: Another personal budgeting software I would like to introduce is http://www.budgetpulse.com. We do not access personal bank information, eliminating security risks. Our tool is international compatible and can be used by students for educational purposes. We are strictly focused on budgeting and helping you reduce debt and save for the future. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Craig Kessler
Marketing Director at BudgetPulse
craig@budgetpulse.com
August 4th, 2009 at 1:11 am
[...] your money – all your ins and outs. The online version is definitely not as comprehensive as the quicken standalone application. Having said that the online version is very helpful if you want to get an overview of your [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 12:57 am
I’m trying to figure out Quicken Personal Plus 2009 atm and find it to be horrendous. The help files are terribly useless and trying to find online reference material is a struggle.
Are there any other resources online that i can use?
Will try for another month, and i cant believe i’m saying this, before reverting to simple and reliable MS Excel.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Hello Lost & Confused,
I am sorry you are having a tough experience with Quicken. But I like said in my post, understanding Quicken definitely requires investment of some time from the users side. Give at least another month – month of regular use – take it one step at a time. Trust me – the effort is well worth it. The features in Quicken are quite extensive and it truly is a ‘complete’ personal finance software. Dont give up – use it for a bit longer….