Customer Reviews

Quicken 2004 Premier Home & Business

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I have been using Intuit products for many years, especially Quickbooks Pro and Quicken Home and Business. I must say that with each new version, it does not get easier...just more complicated and buggier. I am probably one of the few who have successfully used Quickbooks Premier Contractor 2003, but I can't say the same for Quicken Premier Home and Business 2004. I have spoken to tech support and they said they've had no problems at all with this software.

I found the interface very busy. What happened to my simple checkbook register where I write checks? There's now a "Home" column on the lefthand side of the register that lists categories. It took me awhile to find my personal checking account listing. That "Home" column is permanent, something you cannot delete and it takes up too much room. At least with the QB 2001 I could "X" out the bottom pane. There's no hope with this. You can expand the register box, and kind of shrink the annoying column. It's a busybox!

I have a problem with delayed response from the keyboard. The words are delayed by about 2 seconds as I'm typing...very annoying. And if I hold down the Backspace key, it stutters backwards to erase something.

I placed a call twice to Intuit. First rep said she never heard of this. I told her I have. Told me to uninstall the software, copy CD to harddrive, and reinstall in Safe Mode. Said it would correct the delayed typing, since she felt that no drivers would load and I should use "Custom" installation and put it in a new folder. Didn't work. Don't waste your time. Same problem exists.

Called again and second tech said that Quicken 2004 doesn't like my computer. Gee, thanks. He said it's something in my database that is causing the delayed typing.

I told them when they get enough calls from irate customers, please put out a patch, that it isn't just me I'm sure. I told them from what I've been reading, their new improved software stinks. QB Home & Bus 2001 worked flawlessly.

My advice: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I should have listened to myself

A major player in the personal finance software arena for years, Intuit and Quicken has helped thousands keep track of their personal finances. I have been a Quicken user since the early days (Quicken 1 and 2), have upgraded to new releases over the years and have always been very satisfied with the Quicken product.

Quicken 2004 Premier changed all that.

The release of Quicken 2004 was advertised as allowing you to get instant answers to questions like "Are my investments outperforming the market?" and "What is my return for the past 1,3 and 5 years?" Unfortunately, after upgrading from Quicken 2003 to Quicken 2004 Premier, the question I was asking most was "What happened to my data?"

Quicken 2004 has corrupted my personal finance information on four separate occasions (I know, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" ... I don't want to even think about "fool me four times...").

My financial books include four checking accounts, several credit card accounts, some loans, several investment accounts, and a smattering of other accounts. No account type is immune to corruption.

In my checking accounts, one major problem is that Quicken 2004 insists on making up numbers (really, really, BIG numbers, like as big as your computer can handle), creating transactions with random dates to go along with the made-up numbers, and then inserting these transactions in the register. At one time my calculated net worth was too large to display (I wish ...); another time I owed more than the United States GDP. On another occasion Quicken 2004 erased all of the transactions from one checking account, strangely keeping a balance that looked to be about right. In another account, I have been overdrawn once due to a Quicken 2004 error.

In the investment accounts Quicken 2004 decided to change the ticker symbols of some stocks in the investment accounts to unknown symbols on more than one occasion. It's not clear when this happened; it may have been during the updating process when prices are downloaded into Quicken. This caused trouble not only in evaluating the portfolio, but the reconciliations of the accounts were very challenging, because I was never sure if the difference was due to my error, or if Quicken had changed a symbol in one of the dividend re-investment transactions (which it did on two occasions).

A few of the shortcut keys that Quicken power users have grown accustomed to, no longer work in Quicken 2004 (hitting the space bar to select a check during reconciliation, for example). These are known errors and "will be fixed in the next release". At least that's what I was told when I discovered the issue in Release 1. It has not been fixed as of Release 5.

I was given the above information on one of my several attempts to get help by calling customer service. I was helped by "Jennifer", although I suspect her name was really Neeraja, or Srividya or something similar. Customer service appears to consist of very bored people, who are very far away, reading answers in OK English off of scripts to solve problems you did not call with. I was told once to reload Windows (I did not). Most of the time, I was told to run the File/File Operation/Validate option within Quicken 2004 (I did several times). I don't remember ever having to run that option on earlier versions of Quicken; I'm not sure it even was an option with Quicken 2003. On another occasion, I was questioned quite closely about the type of printer I had. Apparently, printers have become notorious corruptors of data in Quicken 2004. So, who knew? (I'm joking -- they're not). In no case, did the call to customer support solve my immediate problem.

Sending in questions via email was better in the sense that I did not receive any wrong or useless information. In fact, I received no information at all. All emails went unanswered. Bug reports are never acknowledged, but they never have been.

Running Quicken 2004 requires some serious horsepower. Intuit will tell you Quicken 2004 can run on a Pentium 200 or higher machine with 32 MB RAM and 75MB hard drive space. I originally installed Quicken 2004 on a spare Pentium 233 MHZ machine with 100MB hard drive. Big mistake. When I fired up the software, the lights in the house didn't exactly dim, but I bet they wanted to. Quicken 2004 is unbearably slow on machines below the recommended 300MHZ limit, and I wouldn't put it on anything less than 700Mhz. Quicken 2004 seems to be doing a lot of disk I/O and window rendering and all of that thrashing around costs performance points. My copy of Quicken is now installed on a Dell Dimension 4600, 2.79GHz, 512RAM, 111GB free hard drive, Windows XP Professional. As you might expect, speed is no problem.

On the plus side, Quicken has done a nice job with the charts and reports. So, even if the numbers are wrong, they look marvelous. The screen gets real busy, though, what with the Menu Bar, the icon bar, the Quicken Home side window, the main register window, the transaction window and the maddening Inuit advertisements (`Try Turbo Tax - the #1 tax solution year after year") at the bottom, all showing up at once. Intuit will tell you that Quicken 2004 works with a Super VGA (800 x 600). It will, but the recommended 1024 x 768 with 16 bit color monitors will make your life more pleasant. Again, the numbers might be wrong, but at least you'll have a shot at seeing them.

So, what's a body to do? Well, I'm digging through my files looking for my copy of Quicken 2003. I'll revert back to that. It worked fine, no funny stuff, had almost all of the features of Quicken 2004 and it was stable. In the meantime, I'll keep watching Intuit to see if they fix the new version, and begin to understand what customer service is all about.

I have been using Quicken since 1994. Only draw back / problem I have had with the product is its lack of "forward looking" capabilities in the area of Budgeting and Cash Forecasting. I was excited about the apparent future looking cash forecast capability of Quicken 2004 Home & Business. However, after using it / testing it extensively, I found it to be buggy. That is, it produces a result with extensive calculation errors. It was difficult to get Quicken support's attention on this matter. I finally got an answer, after attempting to get a relevant response from Quicken for better than 10 weeks, and it appears the identified bug does not have enough priority to get fixed. If there are greater problems than this one (problems which get the higher priority) I'm a bit concerned about what additional product errors are there which the user is unaware. However, my testing and detailed checking hasn't identified any additional out and out computation errors. I would advise users to check the results from the planning features carefully for reasonableness.
In summary, Quicken Home & Business 2004 seems to be ok for looking back, looking where you spent your money (rear view mirror)... but use caution when looking to the future.
Also, I found technical support much more difficult to use / to get now than it was in past years. I contacted Quicken no less than 8 times and got incorrect and / or bad information from their call center which I expect is Off shored to India based on the three phone calls I had with them. Communication was difficult and frankly two of the individuals who tried to help me didn't understand this area of Quicken at all. I was finally transferred to a very articulate English speaking support person who explained that this bug has been given a very low priority and that it is likely that this bug will not be addressed.
This review sounds more negative that I intended. On balance Quicken is a good software package. Although I am very disappointed that Quicken does not work in this area, I am not aware of any other product that provides this cash flow forecasting capability. I will continue to use Quicken because, other than this feature, I think the software works well and is among the best out there.

Wow what a disappointment this product has been. I've used Quicken for the last 10 years with much success. However, since Quicken 2002, each new release has created more and more problems with Quicken 2004 resulting in some very serious ones that Intuit will not acknowledge. The problems I found with the software are as follows:

* The installation doesn't completely eliminate previous quicken versions. As a result, if you had a prior version installed with investment updates set to automatic they will try and update the Quicken 2004 data file. This results in a corrupted file and the only way you can fix this is through a restore from a backup.
* The investment return reports don't calculate correctly. For example, if you are looking at returns for a period from 1/1/xx to 9/30/xx on two securities and one of the securities wasn't purchased until after 1/1/xx then the return comes through as NA.
* Installation also causes problems with the COM1 port. Microsoft has a knowledge base article on this. See article number 810905.

In addition to the technical problems the program interface was significantly redesigned, which creates a learning curve for previous Quicken users. Also, the interface seems slow. Keystrokes are delayed in the interface.

The word on the street is that Intuit released this product early as a result of Microsoft Money 2004 being released earlier than expected. As a result of the rushed delivery the program had many bugs. Since its release over 2 months ago Intuit has yet to provide any patches or support on their web site for these problems.

My recommendation is you save your money and wait until this program is fixed.

I tried to install this program a couple of days ago and was prompted to uninstall the previous version (Quicken 2002 Deluxe). I chose to do so. At the end of the installation process, I got the error message "Your program files may have been damaged. You will need to reinstall Quicken." I uninstalled using Add/Remove Programs and reinstalled with exactly the same result.

At that stage, having looked in vain for help on the Intuit site -- the solution to this error message did not work for me -- I went elsewhere and found dozens of negative reviews. Intuit seem to have hit rock bottom with this product.

So I decided to go back to using Quicken 2002, but of course it had been uninstalled and I can't find my original CD. So I chose to use the Windows XP System Restore function to roll back the clock. But although Quicken 2002 reappeared, my Quicken file no longer seems to work properly. The screen freezes and flashes when I switch from one account to another.

I called Intuit this morning and described my scenario. They offered to replace my Quicken 2002 at a total cost of $20 plus. It would take them two days to get it out of the warehouse and a further 7-10 days for shipping. Shouldn't they provide a free downgrade when their buggy software doesn't work?

My purchase of Quicken 2004 PHB arrived yesterday. It installed and converted my Quicken 2003 PHB files without a problem (I have been using Quicken since 1992 without any problems, and have upgraded each year) and then proceeded to give me a memory write error and crashed. Two complete removal/install cycles later, it still crashes when I try to run the program.

Some searching on the web produced reports of a known bug when you try to display net worth graphs spanning more than one year, which I am doing on my "entry page". This apparently is keeping me from even running the program.

I am in the process of testing Intuit's 100% Satisfaction Guarantee and am returning thier product - this bug has been know for two months but no patch is available...

I have reinstalled the 2003 version (fortunately I made data backups, as did Quicken). Guess I'll wait and see if the 2005 version works...

Quicken 2004 has a bug that prevents Windows XP computers from entering Standby or Hibernate power saving modes.

Previous versions have been fixed with updates. However the 2004 version has not. This problem has been confirmed and documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 810905.

Quicken Tech support stated they would release a fix for bugs after receiving user reports. Apparently this product has been released with insufficent testing and debugging, especially since this bug has appeared in previous versions.

The more I use this product the buggier it seems to get until it just got to the point where it has become absolutly useless to me.

Now that I have invested lots of time into developing it and getting everything set up for my new small business, I am trying to use it and it no longer seems to work. Sure I can still create an estimate, but if I try to print my estimate, the whole program freezes and quits. I was willing to deal with the buggyness of it freezing and quitting all the time, I would just start over - time consuming yes - but it seemed to have some really great features. Now it actually limits the functionallity of the program to useless.

There are no patches available even though Intuit has been aware of all problems. And no, I am not a helpless secretary that some other reviewer suggests the problem might be. I have been in the software industry for the last 10 years as a database developer / trouble shooter / technical support. This product just has to many bugs that intuit isn't supplying fixes for. They should have gotten better QA on this product to begin with before releasing such a buggy product.

Thanks for nothing Intuit - this product has been nothing but a timesink. I have to now completely start over with a new product.

Beware - the longer it appears to work for you the worse off you will be when you finally encounter this breaking point.

I have used Quicken for home finances for years, and recently "upgraded" from Quicken 2000 to Quicken 2004 Premier Home & Business.

This package is loaded with features that allow you to very quickly and completely get a grasp of your finances both numerically and visually. Adding accounts and transactions is a breeze. The system is very intuitive (at least for a user of earlier versions of Quicken)and visually appealing. The importing of the old data file went seamlessly and completely. (Always make a back-up of your database before trying the importation - it may safe you a whole lot of grief.)

The negative - you cannot run ANY other program at the same time. Forget multitasking. Period. Even with ONLY Quicken 2004 running, the system frequently gives messages of "Resources dangerously low" and "out of memory", etc. The system often freezes with these warnings and requires a reboot. Quicken seems to be out booting Windows! My system is not the problem - I am running on a Pentium IV 1.3 MHz Windows ME system with 512 MB RAM and 40GB of free hard disk space, far about the recommended requirements from Intuit.

The Intuit web site is NOT helpful when it comes to trying to problem solve the memory problems. There basic advice: keep rebooting and remove all other programs from your system. They even suggest going through the process of removing TSR programs before you start Quicken. Everytime! Not very user friendly recommendations. Really!

I certainly hope (and expect) that Intuit will come out with a patch that makes this a reliable program. If the memory problems were handled, this would be a 5 star program without question. With the memory problems, my CTL-ALT-DEL keys are getting worn-out! In the meantime, I am torn between putting up with the memory frustration for the added features, or bringing the back-up data file off the shelf and re-installing Quicken 2000 that is more limited but works first time, everytime.

I've been using Quicken since 1994, and have upgraded every few years when useful features are added. I recently purchase 2004 "home and business" because I am starting my own business and needed the business functionality. As a small independent computer consultant, it seemed a perfect match feature-wise (or so I thought). As a very adept computer user, I haven't had the issues with the changing interface over the years that some have, and generally the product works pretty well for me for my *personal* finances.

HOWEVER: there are two big caveats.

First, Intuit's support is really quite ghastly. I am a computer professional- my business is troubleshooting computer problems for other people, and I often end up speaking with tech support. I recently encountered a problem with Quicken that I needed support for, and had to call their "live" support number. The only good news is that I didn't get charged, most likely because I had a "real" issue and wasn't just asking to be walked through something that's covered in the online help. Don't get me wrong- nobody should pay $1.95 / minute for that service.

But even as a really expert user, I was very quickly frustrated with the support staff. First of all, Intuit seems to have "offshored" their level 1 support to India, at least during the times I called. At least, that is my impression, based on the fact that the agent I spoke with wasn't certain whether the state of Virginia was abbreviated "VI" or "VA", and her english was just marginally sufficient to be doing this job. The biggest impact is that the staff know *nothing* other than what is covered in the support knowledge base you can search on the company website. If you have a *real* problem like I did that isn't covered by that material, you will be forced to go through very time-consuming scripted troubleshooting (re-install the software several times), and then most likely be punted to someone else (it's Microsoft's fault), or finally escalated to "tier two" support. "Tier two" is so backed up that up-front, they tell you it takes *two weeks* to respond to requests. That's what they told me four week ago, and I've yet to hear from them.

OK, offshored L1 tech support is becoming more common in the industry, but failing to follow up on escalated support is absolutely, completely, wildly unacceptable. Unprecedented, in my experience with computer products.

Second: Beyond the support issue, the business features are just plain broken. As another review has mentioned, the reports are totally bogus and don't follow accounting standards. Another problem I'm having is related to receiving customer payments... When you enter payments in Quicken, they are shown as individual deposits in your bank account register. However, since I typically deposit several payments at once, the bank enters it as a single deposit in my account. Quicken doesn't know how to handle this... which I found out the hard way.

If I manually match the individual customer payment entries against the single downloaded deposit, Quicken consolidates all of them as a "split" into the bank's single deposit entry, which I initially thought was clever. Unfortunately, Quicken also (without telling you) blows away all records of the payments in your accounts receivable (without asking), so suddenly every invoice is marked as unpaid, and the check numbers associated with the payments are lost. I had to restore from a backup to set things straight after reconciling a number of deposits without discovering what was happening. To me, this indicates to me that nobody at Intuit has actually tested this program with real-life use.

So my advice is: beware. The software is OK for personal finances, but you're pretty much on your own if you have any problems, and the business features are completely FUBAR. I'm switching to something else for my business ASAP.