Customer Reviews

Quicken Personal Finances Deluxe 2007 [OLDER VERSION]

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(59)

 

 

I just migrated from MS Money 2007. I've been a user since 2002 (versions 2002 & 2004). I was very happy with Money 2004, but was forced to upgrade to 2007 to continue online services. Some features that were important to me were removed (bill multi-selection with immediate account balance projection and Money Express as a bill reminder). So I decided to finally make the jump to Quicken.

The bad: My first impression, after coming from Money's clean interface, is the busy clutter of the home page. Money didn't use windows (how ironic) like Quicken does. If you keep opening reports, and jumping to other areas, you'll find yourself with piles of windows at the bottom of your screen. I found the navigation clumsy and it was difficult to see the whole screen at my preferred screen resolution of 800 X 600. And, why no option to keep Frequent Flyer Accounts for the very common rewards programs that are out there?? It can be done with an "Asset" account, but I thought there would have been an option for it. And I think the cash flow projection can be improved. Although I like the calendar that shows my upcoming transaction and the impact on my checking account, in the last version of Money (NOT 2007-it's why I left) in the Bills screen I could multi-select several bills and get a projected outcome of my balance. That was a GREAT feature! I hope Intuit considers something like that on its calendar or in the bill screen (I've already written twice to suggest it).

The good: Reports, reports, reports. You can print from practically any screen. Beautiful reports. And you can attach files to your transactions. And, far more customizable than Money. I like the weblinks right on the bill pay screen so I can go right to my payee's website. (Money made that a two step deal to try to get you go with its MSN Bill Pay service. Why should I if I get it from Citibank for FREE!??)
And, the Bill Reminder is okay (Money did away with its "Money Express" for security reasons, yet another useful feature that I grew to depend on). But, I don't like that the Bill Reminder program does not require a password and will show anyone who cares to click on it all my upcoming transactions. Why no password protect?? And, it doesn't run on the taskbar, so once you close it after startup, it's gone until you (or anyone else at all, as I already said) cares to open it again.

And did I go through hell to convert my Money 07 file! I had already researched the reasons why the data converter that Quicken provides on its website would not convert my Money file and what my options probably were before contacting Intuits "Live Chat" support. After being annoyed by having to repeat everything I already typed to the techie and finding he was just going to the forum and doing the reading I had already done, I made a request to be elevated to higher tech support. After reiterating what I had read on the forum, the tech gave me a link to get the Quicken 02 version that I knew I needed. I then had to shorten all my Money account names and categories, export the .QIF files for EACH account. Install Quicken 02. Import each .QIF account. Start Quicken 07 and convert the Quicken 02 file. My data was a little quirky because I some categories became payees and detached from their transactions, but so far my balances look right. I downloaded my transactions from my bank and credit card companies in little time.

Overall, I think I've decided to keep Quicken. I sure went through a whole day or two trying to get the data converted and looking right, so I already feel commited. It does seem to be ahead of Money somewhat and I'll get used to the interface. Anyone looking to try either product, don't forget to backup your data file somewhere that is not in the original directory, so it is not over-written. Several backups are wise.

Hope this helps.

Update: January 12, 2007

I am sticking with Quicken for sure. After constant "tweaking" I have become accustomed to the home screen and the navigation and would not switch back to Money even if it was free. I love the "go" links that are on my bill page making it easier to go to my payee's website. The only convenience Money provided in its update centered on you signing up for its online bill payment service. The calendar with the optional running balance is very handy at-a-glance, especially the ability to add notes to it. I am glad I took the time to convert my file. It was worth it and I would now give this product 4 stars (because of the difficulty with the data converting).

Updated 01/23/07:

My earlier review was premature. Although I do like the customizability of the software, it has alot of problems downloading transaction. Sometimes it will get your transactions from your financial institution and bring them home, and sometimes they just disappear. Even importing files is difficult. It is very quirky. And I am computer literate. I went and downloaded an MS Money 2007 trial (I was originally running Money 04 and upgraded to Money 2007 on January 1st with 30 days money back refund. Not being thrilled with it, I tried Quicken a week later and liked Quicken better so I got my money back from Microsoft). Although I had issues with Money 2007 removing some features, it at least was dependable and kept my accounts up-to-date. I am giving Quicken another 30 days (and have spent hours on its forum) to figure out its issues (it has a 60 day return policy). In the interim, I am updating my transactions in both programs. (I should add that to convert my Quicken file to Money took all of a minute. Not so to convert my Money file to Quicken -- that took over two days and required downloading a prior version of Quicken!) I will update one more time. Hope this helps someone.

Updated 2/3/07:

Last update. I have come to a complete understanding of Quicken. One not so immediately apparent difference between it and Money is when you download your transactions via web connect (when you go to your bank's website yourself, as opposed to direct connect, where your program does background banking for you) Quicken will NOT let you re-download transactions that it already imported. Even if you deleted a transaction something by accident. It "remembers" it had already imported that transaction. Money will let you import as many times as you want to. If you really had to re-download to Quicken, you would have to delete your cookies first. Overall, this is not a problem. Quicken allows you to very easily manage your data files with backup, copy, rename options right from the program. I find it a far superior product than MS Money 2007.

UPDATE: 07/25/08
Still with Quicken Deluxe 2007. No complaints. I will be upgrading when they tell me my internet services have expired, which will probably be 2009.

I've been a very loyal quicken user since 1998. I've been generally happy with the product. However, similar to Microsoft Office, Quicken hasn't really added additional useful functionality for most users the past several years. I rate this one star, although I would give zero if it were an available option.

I invest heavily in equities and options plus use have a variety of online accounts. The online services for Quicken 2007 are slow, buggy, don't work sometimes, and occasionally cause spontaneous shutdowns. I work for a software company and this looks like a product rushed out the door because some VP had bonus money at stake.

Quicken 2007 adds absolutely nothing useful for most people using Quicken 2006. After patch release #2 the product is still just as bad. As a public service please stick with Quicken 2006 - skip Quicken 2007 and hopefully Intuit gets it right in 2008.

Quicken 2007 has become a walking billboard as Intuit looks for any way to make an extra buck from a relatively loyal user base by advertising Quicken credit cards, mortgages, etc. In my opinion Intuit is moving away from their core mission of providing excellent financial management software for the home user.

I have used Quicken since the first version - and been a bigot in their favor. Not right now. 07 version is horribly bug ridden.

Tells me I am out of memory, but when I do a memory dump I have over 600meg free of physical memory, tells me I have low space on a hard drive with 40gbytes free. Ok, so the warnings are wrong. I can handle that.

When I download, most accounts work fine. But one account of 3 I download from my bank suddenly does not work correctly. It downloads transactions - they show in on-line center and match what is online at bank, but when you go to the account register to accept them, it says no transactions exist, but account list shows flag for transactions and mouse over says I have new ones to accept.

Ok so some problem, and if it weren't my main checking account I might be more tolerant, but it is and I need it to work. So I go online and search FAQ's - do all the recommended clean-ups - works once kind of - at least finally got things done. Then it stops again (mind you 10 others work fine but are smaller in transaction volume by one or two magnitude.) I try to do email support, but they require order number which when I take it off their email confirmation is one digit longer than field on form, so it won't submit. Try the chat feature, it won't go thru, try feedback, it abends. Tried each of these during workday, at night, and on weekend - same result. Makes one think they want you to use the pay by minute call line? Very frustrated with them right now. Have sent them actual screen shoots of problems - hope they fix, but getting very doubtful of results.

I am a CTO of a major company and have a lot of understanding for bugs - these are complex systems to be sure, but this is unacceptable to have bugs and poor support functions; and sell me an 07 version that is not much better than the 04 version I had been using successfully for years.

I am trying Money 07 trial version!

I'm embarrassed to face any of the dozens of people I've recommended Quicken to over the past 18 years that I've been using Quicken.

This is the worst release and most unecessary set of changes they've made since the disastrous 1996 release.

The beautiful crisp and clean interface that we've always associated with Quicken is gone and replaced by a muddy, unreadable mess that looks like the worst of garage-based shareware. The background has been switched (with no user option to change it) to a dark blue on which you're supposed to be able to read black and thin, red text. You can't.

The calendar, once a besacon of simplicity has become bloated and unreadable (somehow only about 1/3 of the payee's name now fits, so everything is swimming in ellipses and "More..." links).

The software, even with R2 is among their most buggy releases. Make sure you backup plenty and keep them rotated, because you never know when you're going to lose data. I've also been unable to use their built-in web browser for just baout anything (which is important as lots of Quicken features depend on the web browser). What made them think they were a browser company anyway.

I have recommended Quicken to so many people over the years, and I've already started to email them to make sure they don't downgrade to this version. If this isn't fixed by a complete overhaul, then you can be sure there will be class-action lawsuits the next time they try to extort people to leave their stable versions and move to this mess.

Why is there no zero star option?

Buyer Beware: Intuit will use your "registration" information for aggressive marketing purposes, and refuses to remove customer name/addresses from marketing lists. Intuit cannot be trusted with customer information, therefore be very wary of trusting them with any information. This is especially problematic because the software company is also aggressive about insisting that you send them ALL of your financial information as an "online backup." Since they cannot be trusted with such basic information as name/address/phone/email they cannot be trusted to keep-secure more sensitive information. If a business will not respect customer privacy with regard to advertisements, how can one trust them to keep bank account numbers, credit card numbers, bank account passwords, etc,? If you do buy this product it would be advisable NOT to provide them with accurate personal information (most especially an email address). Again, buyer beware.

Background - senior IT professional. I have been a Quicken user for well over a decade and have always been very happy with the product until the 2007 version. First, let me point out a couple of things to like about this version:

- the interface; seems to depend on the eye of the beholder, but I for one find it pleasing and useful.
- the ability to append notes and check images to a transaction. I love this feature.
- the Cash Flow dashboard and the Calendar

Now for the caveat: if you depend a great deal on downloading transactions using WebConnect, prepare for a great deal of frustration and disappointment. This feature used to work reliably in all other versions. In version 2007 it is prone to quit with a notice that there has been a "Quicken Server Outage" that prevented the download from succeeding. These occurrences are sporadic.
Scores of users are reporting this on the support forums and elsewhere; I have seen no hint of a response or explanation from Intuit. Horror stories about tech support at Intuit have kept me away from that venue, though at some point I'll call just to see what happens. I upgraded to 2007 from a very solid and dependable Quicken 2006, and this issue alone has made me wish that I hadn't.
Weighing the new features against the new bugs I would have to say that I do not recommend purchasing this version at this time.

I have been using Quicken for 9yrs now and have found it to be a good solutions for keeping track of finances etc. I've upgraded several times over 9yrs and had problems a few times but generally it has worked fine. I just received a notice in the mail indicating that Quicken 2004 will no longer be supported by April of 2007. Given the number of legitimate bugs in the 07 release this company has some nerve driving customers to upgrade from versions as new as 04. Given the amount of time and pain it could take to make the conversion and hours spent on the phone dealing with some tech support guy that speaks broken english in India I think this company is going to cut its throat. It's pretty clear based on all the feeback that they have big issues with the initial release of 07 and are forcing good customers to make the leap. I'm going to upgrade to 06 and see how that goes

Finding a way to adequately express my disappointment with this program is a task that is beyond the capabilities of the best writers this country has ever produced. This program has produced nothing but misery, resentment, frustration, and irritation. The only thing saving Intuit from certain bankruptcy is Microsoft's similar inability to engineer a competent program. I would have started using open source financial software long ago if it were able to direct connect to my financial institutions.

I was perfectly happy with Quicken 2004 until they decided to "sunset" the program by cutting off the direct and web connect features. So I upgraded to to Quicken 2007. I would write a review of the features of this program, except that I've been beset by a plague of bugs that have kept me from using them. I've installed the software 4 times, lost endless numbers of transactions (always keep good backups!) which I've spent hours recovering.

I makes changes in one account, and for no reason, it completely messes up all of my other accounts. I have no idea why. I don't want reports. I don't want to attach PDF files to transactions (although I can see why some people might want to). I don't want to rate my merchants. I want a basic program that works and keeps track of my financial transactions without problems or fusses.

If you're not directly connecting to your banks to obtain financial information, do yourself a favor and go with a free open-source program (of which there are many).

I have been a Quicken user for 13 years. I upgraded to 2007 and it lost some of my data during the conversion. After several hours with support (live chat) they never found a solution.

Then they say to call them and Intuit wants to charge me twenty four dollars to get assistance for their bug. Sorry Intuit, you have gotten too big and have forgotten the customers who made you. Over the last few years your customer service has gotten worse. You just don't care anymore. I think it may be time for me to move on to other vendors.

If you are happy with your current, reliable, Quicken version stick with it. I was on 2002 and am going back to it. However, I think I will try out some of Quickens competitors. Never thought I would say that as a huge Quicken fan.

This is the first review I have written in probably a few years. Normally, I don't feel strongly enough about any product, good or bad, to bother entering a review. With this new version of Quicken, I have something that I feel strongly enough to write about.

I have been using Quicken for close to 20 years. I have built all of my finances around it. For the past 6 years, Quicken has been going steadily downhill. This latest version, I hope, represents rock bottom. I don't see how the product could possibly get any worse.

Words cannot describe how bad this product is. No functionality has been added in the previous 6 years. What has happened is that the screen has become more cluttered with more links to Quicken's "financial partners", and more redundant links to other, old, program features, and more white space. In return, the user has to page through tab after tab after tab to view the same information that previously fit on only 1 screen. Further, each screen refresh now takes seconds, whereas in older versions a screen refresh was instantaneous.

Entering a simple transaction may require this bloated sofware to generate 2, 3, even 4 complete screen refreshes, each one taking maybe 1 to 2 seconds. That means, once you hit the "enter" key to complete a transaction, you can be waiting as long as 8 seconds before you can move on to entering the next transaction. As little as 3 years ago the same step required less than a second. Obviously, time required will vary with your computer - but it is bad enough that Quicken now requires you to "downgrade" your Quicken software every few years - it is also necessary for you to replace your entire computer system at the same time just so you can realize the same performance level as you had in the previous version. All of this with NO additional features or functionality.

There is a new kid on the block that I am switching to. It is called "Moneydance". It can import data from Quicken, it is fast, compact, and runs on any platform, Windows, Linix, Unix, Mac, even OS/2. It is easier to use than Quicken and the support is great. It is available for download - a functional evaluation version is free and the full version is only $30. You can actually speak to a person to get help w/out having to pay. Since I have been using Quicken for years, it will take a while to test Mondeydance out to make sure it works properly. I am running the 2 side-by-side for a while to make sure the numbers agree. So far, things are going well. Then I plan to dump Quicken forever. The well has run dry at Quicken; everyone who made the product great has apparently left the company.

Obviously the people at Quicken are free to make their product as bloated and as cumbersome as they want. But they should not be allowed to force people to downgrade. Yet, that is what they are doing. I am absolutely positively through with Quicken, and I am not coming back.