Quicken 2006: Official Guide (Quicken: The Official Guide) [Paperback]

Maria Langer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072261625 | ISBN-13: 978-0072261622 | Publication Date: July 27, 2005 | Edition: 2

“Intuit-approved and loaded with secrets, Quicken Press books provide you with recipes for financial success.” --Scott Cook, Co-Founder, Intuit, Inc.

Here is the new edition of the only authorized guide to the top-selling personal finance software. Quicken 2006: The Official Guide offers you the time- and money-saving help you need to organize and manage your personal finances, use online tools for everything from bill-paying to investments, and master Quicken’s efficient automated features. Reviewed and endorsed by Intuit, makers of Quicken, this best-selling official guide provides complete details on all the product’s features and includes plenty of financial information and online resources designed to assist you in financial decisions. With full coverage of Quicken Deluxe and Premier editions, the book is organized to closely follow the software so specific topics can be found quickly and easily.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Manage Your Finances with the Only Official Guide to the World’s #1 Personal Finance Software!

Get help reaching your financial goals! Quicken® 2006: The Official Guide offers the time- and money-saving techniques you need to organize and manage your personal finances, use online tools for everything from paying your bills to tracking your investments, and master Quicken’s efficient automated features. Reviewed and endorsed by Intuit, makers of Quicken, this official guide provides full coverage of the features that make Quicken the top-selling personal finance software. Manage your money and investments—including spending, savings, budgets, banking, and more. Discover financial tools, information and online resources to assist in all your financial decisions. The chapters closely follow the software to help you find information quickly and easily.

Inside, you’ll find out how to:

• Track income and expenses to see where your money comes from and where it goes
• Reconcile checking, savings, and credit card accounts
• Schedule payments, payroll deposits, and other regular transactions
• Use online tools for automating data entry and tracking your investment portfolio
• Manage property, loans, and investment accounts
• Master Quicken’s new reporting features to create custom reports and graphs
• Build accurate budgets and utilize savings tools to help you save money
• Simplify document filing by attaching check images and statements to transactions and accounts
• Learn time-saving techniques for doing your taxes
• Get valuable resources and advice from Quicken.com

Maria Langer is a freelance writer, pilot, and long-time Quicken user. A former financial analyst with a degree in accounting, she is the best-selling author of Quicken 2005: The Official Guide and other books.

About the Author

Maria Langer (Wickenberg, Arizona) is a freelance writer, computer consultant and trainer, and the Owner/President of Giles Road Press. She divides her time between writing computer books--19 so far including Quicken 99: The Official Guide, articles, and software documentation; developing training material; teaching software applications and hardware troubleshooting; and designing and creating World Wide Web pages for clients.

Product Details

• Paperback: 450 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 2 edition (July 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072261625
• ISBN-13: 978-0072261622
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maria Langer has been a freelance writer since 1990. She has written more than 75 books and hundreds of articles about using computers, software, and online services. She provides support for her work, as well as new content, on the Maria's Guides website. These days, she also writes about aviation and travel for a variety of print and online publications.

Maria is also a commercial helicopter pilot and owner of Flying M Air, a helicopter tour and charter company based in Arizona. Her company offers tours, day trips, multi-day excursions, and aerial photography services throughout the southwest.

And if that's not enough to keep her busy and out of trouble, she's also a serious amateur photographer. She shows off her best work on her photo gallery, Flying M Photos.

Maria blogs at Eclectic Mind, her personal journal of thoughts and experiences.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good guide for first-time users, October 7, 2005

By 

C. M. Evans (Colorado) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicken 2006: Official Guide (Quicken: The Official Guide) (Paperback)

I really like this book. The author seems to be unbiased in her opinions, and has experience in writing many of these kinds of (technical/software) books. She uses her real-life examples to help explain different aspects of the program, and uses humor to keep the reading interesting. I am a first-time user of Quicken, but I found the book very helpful and I would recommend it to new Quicken users.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not for mac users, May 5, 2006

By 

Zona Pellucida (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicken 2006: Official Guide (Quicken: The Official Guide) (Paperback)

I wish I'd known when I bought this that it is exclusively for Windows users. Even though my version of Quicken is 2006 for mac, you'd think, by the way this book reads, that there is no such thing! Be warned!

1.0 out of 5 stars Look elsewhere, July 17, 2008

By 

A. Leonard (West Coast) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicken 2006: Official Guide (Quicken: The Official Guide) (Paperback)

While exhaustive, the book is poorly organized, VERY wordy, and filled with sales pitches.

Do we really need 500 pages? Does anyone want to spend that much time studying Quicken? Yes, you can find information on every single Quicken feature, but my complaint here is the author's sheer verbosity.

If the author was concise and she organized the material more effectively, we could all save some time. I appreciate her exhaustive effort, but this is a technical manual, not summer reading.

There are numerous plugs for other Quicken products in the text. No thanks, please spare me the time. Chapters are spent selling the reader other premium Quicken services as if they're necessary, when they're not. Instructions on using the premium services are sprinkled in everywhere in the book. It seems to me they try to slip these things in there to make them appear necessary. It also makes it that much harder to find what you need.

Maybe the program will grow on me, but right now I have a negative opinion of this software, largely because of my introduction to it through this book. Yes, the book tells you all you need, but it takes too long.