Customer Reviews

Quicken 2008 Home & Business [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

I recently upgraded to Quicken 2008 from Quicken 2005. I did this since the online downloading capabilities for Q2005 would end in April 2008.
(Quicken's policy is to support the current version, plus the prior two years)

I've been a Quicken user & fan since 1994. Quite frankly, I'm not overly impressed with 2008. It has a new navigation bar, a new look and feel, and some (very minor) enhancements. Underneath the look and feel, it acts just like Quicken 2005.

If you're familiar with Q2005, you'll feel (almost) at home with Q2008. Obviously, Intuit is having a challenging time making a great product even better.

Overall, I can't recommend upgrading to Q2008 if you're not forced by Intuit. There aren't enough compelling new enhancements to justify an upgrade. It's still a great product, but the upgrade to Q2008 isn't a major improvement.

As a long time Quicken user who upgrades to the latest release nearly every year I approached the 2008 version with great expectations. Integration with Paypal & personal cash flow tab amongst other touted enhancements.

First off, let me say that I have been using this software for nearly 3 months. I am up to Release 5. I would classify the problems with the 2008 version as follows:
1) Performance problems
2) Download woes
3) Data integrity /bugs

1) Performance problems - the program will go into spasms when trying to do anything as complex as adding a single transaction to the register. It will blink, sometimes for as long as 30 secs, before adding the transaction & returning control of the program to you. It is so slooooooooow that it can literally drive you crazy, that is if the flashing spasms of the program haven't sent you into epileptic shock first.

2)Download woes - Paypal integration? Not if you use their security dongle. Other downloads fail routinely with HSBC about 50% of the time due to "Quicken server issues" & with other financial institutions about 5-10% of the time. Much higher than I experienced with Quicken 2007. On the plus side I am now downloading from Janus, but that may have been possible in the 2007 version as well and I didn't realize it.

3)Data integrity & bugs - I'll only report my most frustrating here and that is in the tax planner. Enter a number manually & magically it disappears & defaults back to a Quicken estimate. After much trial & error I found a workaround - you need to exit the planner after entering a manual number, then re-launch it for that number to "stick". Totally unacceptable & unbelievable that in 5 releases it's still not fixed.

This stands in stark contrast to Intuit's arguably greatest software achievement ever - Turbotax 2007 - this years edition is the most perfect, elegant combination of interface simplicity, intuitiveness & functionality I have ever experienced in a software product. Note to Intuit - no more enhancements needed - it's perfect! Just repeat next year & the year after please. Can't the Quicken team borrow a few of the Turbotax programmers to fix this Quicken baby?

If you are running an older version of Quicken this may be worth the upgrade in order to get the cumulative enhancements made over the years. But for Quicken 2007 users who are satisfied, since there is no apparent way to revert your Quicken 2008 files back to 2007 format, upgrade at your own risk!

I upgraded to Quicken 2008 Home & Business from the 2007 version on a Friday. I subsequently spent all Saturday and Sunday trying to recover from that disastrous decision. The bugs were numerous: unable to print invoices and some reports (others worked fine for some reason). Help file system was completely screwed up. It took me until Monday to get my accounts somewhat functional (on different accounting software), though I'm not out of the woods yet. Much more work ahead to recover from my Quicken nightmare. Oh, and you can forget about customer service. Their phone support system is an endless maze where you get to speak with NO ONE. Their LiveChat support never seems to connect with an agent. Email support is non-responsive. Don't let this happen to you.

You should ask yourself - "how can a piece of software be capable of generating so much hostility from its user base?" If you can't think up a good answer, go ahead and install Quicken, and you'll have an answer before long.

Some of my favorite quirks from Quicken 2006 & 2007 that I'm glad to see survived the upgrade to Quicken 2008:

Basic arithmetic errors: sometimes, if you edit transactions in the register, every subsequent transaction will get confused about the running total (e.g., change a $10 debit to a $20 debit, and instead of changing the running total by $10, watch in delight and amazement as the running total leaps by thousands, literally thousands, of dollars).

Basic reporting errors: go ahead and open the category list, and click the (very unintuitive) button to generate a report for the category _DivInc. If, like me, you have several years of investment transactions, you're sure to have dividend income, but Quicken will tell you "no transactions for this category." Funny, if you type _DivInc into the global search window, it will bring up all those transactions the report couldn't locate.

File corruption: sometimes, I like to imagine Quicken's routines as a bunch of angry little gnomes running around the traces of my processor and through the registers of my memory. This is because, every so often, the gnomes demand a sacrifice, and offer up burnt offerings of your data integrity to their terrible god of woe. I can't otherwise imagine how downloading QFX data from Hewitt Associates confused Quicken so - in the online center, it shows "number of outstanding transactions: -65,536" Yep, negative 2 to the 16th power of transactions outstanding.

Probably the worst part about Quicken, however, is trying to free your data. If you've got any kind of complicated financial picture (i.e, if you're over 25 years old), you won't be able to free yourself from Quicken's grasp, since the only way to get data out of the program is in QIF format, one measly account at a time. Funny, they don't support _importing_ QIFs, claiming, and I quote, "QIF technology is over 10 years old and was designed for technical support purposes . . . QIF Data Import requires many steps to download, is a poor customer experience and can lead to duplicate transactions and errors." That old technology is good enough for you should you dare to _export_ data from Quicken, however. They're going to make darn sure that you have a "poor customer experience" and suffer from "duplicate transactions and errors" if you try to take your data anywhere else.

I've been a Quicken user for almost 20 years, and have always loved the product. But this upgrade is, for me, a huge downgrade. I upgraded from Q2005 because Quicken has a policy of sunsetting online services after three years, effectively forcing you to upgrade. Rather than waiting until forced, I bought this in a discount bundle with TurboTax 2007. Big mistake.

I bought it at the same time I bought a faster new PC. But the subjective performance is awful -- much, much worse. I'm sure I'm pushing it hard, with almost 20 years of financial data in my data file, but it shouldn't be this much slower than Q2005 (on a system that is so much faster.) It is absolutely painful to use.

There are probably cool new features, but I haven't found them, mostly because doing anything is so painful. I'd downgrade (at least until absolutely forced to move back) if the file formats weren't incompatible.

I've been succeassfully using Quicken for over 10 years and want to upgrade to 2008, but the online banking function recently scared me. I use online banking and bill-pay all the time without problems. Recently my grown daughter used my laptop to access her own separate savings account in another institution. Her account was not listed in my Quicken accounts, and she has never used Quicken. After she logged off I opened Quicken to do some banking and was shocked to see my daughter's savings account integrated into my accounts and included in my assets! There was even a full register generated .showing all of her transactions! This was quite a surprise. Her bank account is in Italy (on a US Naval base) and mine are in a different bank in California. I tried to delete her account from Quicken but couldn't. I called Quicken customer service which is headquartered in New Delhi, India, and spoke to a young woman capable of only broken English. She fixed the problem, thankfully, but charged me $[...] to do it! I had to provide proof of identity to this person, including name, address, SS#, etc. Outrageous! I'm a subscriber of [...] and recommend this service to anyone fearful of identity theft or using online banking and bill-pay. I'll still buy Quicken 2008 . . . but not without taking precautions.

I do not normally write negative reviews, but this product instills a level of rage in me that nothing else can approach. My 84 year old father chooses to use this product; he has been a Quicken customer since it first came out (when it was a decent product). It has caused me endless heartburn because with each new upgrade or internal hiccup, I spend hours of time trying to repair the damage to his records. Unfortunately he purchased this new version of Quicken and he forgot to backup the files he has that go back YEARS. His goal was to do his taxes with the latest software. A reasonable decision unless you choose Quicken 2008. So, what happened?

After he installed the disk using the automatic install, the system cheerfully said it was finished and then asked to be restarted. When restarted it simply hanged, never to get past the Quicken 2008 logo. He called me asking how he can get customer support that Quicken promises on the box. I had to (via remote PC, because he lives 7 hours away) go through a veritable thicket of Intuit web pages to get to the point where I could submit a request via webmail to have someone call him. There is no customer support phone number, just the cheerful advice on the Intuit web page that this puzzle palace approach to accessing customer support "is a new feature!"

He spent two days, for a total of over 4 hours, talking to a number of customer support reps in Mumbai before he finally found someone who could speak standard English. That person was helpful, but the best she could do was get the program running and then restore his corrupted files to somewhere around 2001 (I kid you not).

He was about to start keying in all that data again, going back years when I suggested he let me try bring back the data I last backed up on a USB drive late January this year. (I use Acronis 11 Acronis True Image Home V11.0, I highly recommend it). I managed to get the file back from late January 2008 via Acronis and Quicken 2008 appears to have converted it successfully to 2008 format (BTW, why the hell does Quicken have to convert files to some new format EVERY YEAR!!!).

So my advice is this, do not buy this product. If you do, be sure to make a backup of your 2007 (or earlier) Quicken files, and burn it to a CD. DO NOT simply backup the files using Quicken and expect Quicken 2008 not to try convert them. Although I cannot swear to it, it appears to try convert all your backups automatically to 2008 format during install. The result? You lose it all! Hold on to that CD backup and keep your old Quicken install disk on hand, just in case.

Intuit should be ashamed (or better yet, sued).

1) data damaged during update (transactions lost)
2) online account login information lost (must reenter, reactivate)
3) any other program running and Quicken freezes, CPU utilization jumps to 100% and stays there. Even Ctrl-Alt-Delete won't run. Power off only solution.

This the worst Quicken update I've ever encountered - been a user since early DOS days. This release is entirely unusable. I'm rolling back to Quicken 2007.

What serious and professional company would release software that has not been tested to run correctly when you have a Mircosoft Brand mouse?

If you use a recent microsoft mouse and have Intellipoint drivers installed, Quickbook 2008 will exhibit screen flickering that will make it impossible to use.

Intuit has been aware of these problems on their forums for months.

UPDATE 5/15/08: PayPal downloads still do not work consistently. I've been unable to download any PayPal transactions for over 2 weeks, and all the Quicken web site says is they're working on a fix which should be available shortly. I've had this product for well over 6 months, and PayPal downloads haven't worked with any regularity for the entire time. I hardly think 6 months qualifies as "shortly". Updates from other financial institutions also only work sporadically, though they are a bit more consistent than PayPal. This product simply doesn't do all it's advertised to do, and the company should be ashamed of themselves for misrepresenting its functionality.

UPDATE 12/31/07: In my first review (below), I stated that I had decided against upgrading due to the inability to download itemized PayPal transaction fees. I later changed my mind because I decided I could at least get my general PayPal data into Quicken and use PayPal's own reporting to get an itemization of fees. The PayPal downloads initially seemed to work fine, but now I'm rarely able to import any new transactions. Sometimes, the program will tell you the account update was successful even though no new transactions were imported. Other times, the program claims there's a Quicken server outage.

The last time I was able to import any new transactions was 12/27/07. The Quicken support technician I chatted with insisted I must have a corrupted file. Ironically, creating an entirely new Quicken file and PayPal account only resulted in the same problems. Quicken now acknowledges there's an issue on their support site, but there's no information on when a fix will be available.

If you're an eBay seller hoping this is the answer to your PayPal accounting needs, I'm afraid you're in for a big disappointment. At this point, I wouldn't waste my money on an upgrade.




I'm an eBay PowerSeller, and I currently use the 2006 version of Quicken Home and Business. I was excited to see that the 2008 version adds the capability to import PayPal transactions, but my enthusiasm was quickly dampened after I visited the Quicken support site and found the following statement:

"When PayPal transactions are downloaded using One Step Update, the PayPal fee is not separated out and does not appear as a Split line. In prior versions of Quicken, you could import a QIF file, which updated the information. However, Quicken no longer supports the QIF file, and PayPal does not download the required information in the supported QFX format. You must edit the transaction and enter the Split manually."

So, if you're looking to keep track of how much you're paying PayPal in fees, you'll have to manually edit every single imported transaction, a process which was unnecessary with QIF imports. That doesn't sound like much of an upgrade to me. I've decided to stick with the 2006 version. I have my PayPal account set up as an Asset account, so I can still download my history files from PayPal with the split information intact since QIF imports still work with Asset accounts. It's not a perfect solution, but it's certainly preferable to manually updating every single transaction.

Does Intuit really expect us to pay $70-$80 for the privilege of making accounting chores more time-consuming and tedious?