Quicken Premier 2006 [Old Version]

by Intuit

Product Features

• Comprehensive personal financial management software
• Optimize investments and maximize return; receive investment alerts
• Monitor spending with quick reports, charts, and graphs; stay on budget
• Find ways to save and invest; optimize returns and avoid April 15th surprises
• Investment-management tools for defining goals and balancing portfolio

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0009XB15G
• Item model number: 283652
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,713 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Optimize your investments and maximize your return with Quicken Premier 2006. You'll get all the features of Quicken Deluxe 2006 plus powerful tools to help you invest, monitor, and prosper.

Features:

• See where your money goes. Quicken Premier 2006 gives you instant insights into your spending with quick reports, charts, and graphs so you can stay on budget and find more ways to save and invest.
• Optimize returns and avoid April 15th surprises. Stay on top of your investment tax situation throughout the year by using updated Schedule A, B, and D Tax Reports. Plus, you can attach important tax documents, like receipts, so you always know where to find them.
• Plan and control your investments. With powerful investment-management tools you can define your investment goals and conduct research. Then balance your portfolio with the right mix of investments so you can meet your goals. With Quicken Premier 2006, it's easy to stay on top of it all.
• Receive investment alerts. Get the latest news on your favorite stocks and funds so you can make informed and timely decisions. Intelligent and tax-smart investing insights alert you to more tax-efficient investments, opportunities to offset capital gains or losses or when taxable events occur.
• Evaluate your investment strategy. Compare your portfolio to market averages so you can see how you're doing. Exclusive investing tools in Quicken Premier 2006 help you evaluate stocks and make smarter investing decisions.
• Save time by downloading your data. With over 2,700 participating financial institutions--and more being added all the time--downloading your banking, credit card, and investment information directly into Quicken lets you manage your finances quickly and easily.* Find out if your financial institution participates.
• More power with more ease. Convert reports into PDFs. Edit directly in the Investment Register. Make global changes faster. And more!

Product Description

Quicken Premier 2006 helps you invest, plan and prosper in minutes. Quicken Premier contains everything in Quicken Basic and Deluxe plus tools to monitor your net worth, optimize your investments, and save time on taxes. Quicken Premier 2006 lets you track your accounts and investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRAs and more) all in one place. Download your credit card, banking and brokerage transactions. Quicken Personal Finance Software works with over 2,500 financial institutions.* Plus: compare your investment performance to the market indexes; get alerts on tax-saving opportunities to help improve after-tax returns; explore more tax-efficient investments; and make tax time easier with Schedule A, B, and D tax reports. See your complete financial picture in minutes! *Online features require Internet access and are subject to change. Services vary among participating financial institutions or other parties and may be subject to application approval, additional terms, conditions, and fees. 2,500 participating financial institutions as of 8/1/05. TurboTax and Quicken Bill Pay subscription sold separately.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quicken Much better than Money?, August 13, 2005

By 

G.R. "gara56" (Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2006 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

First lets not compare apples and oranges. I've used Money since it first came out but I think Quicken is a much more comprehensive application. Heck--they've been around a lot longer than Money. There's even a guide for it--that more than I can say for Money. Unfortunately, the program is not for your casual user. For example, if you use the converter to convert money files, it can complicate/mess-up your categories in Quicken. Quicken comes with its own set of categories and the converter puts them on top of the existing ones creating confusion. In some cases it doesn't even attach them to the correct category. That means you have to clean it up yourself. I know because I've been working on it for the past two days and I'm still not satified with the results. I even bought the 482 page guide to help me in the process. Each program has its pros and cons. Quicken has much better report/charts/graphs. That's why I'm trying to change over. If you're just starting and don't have a lot of historical information I would swap to Quicken. On the other hand, if you have a lot historical information (at least 4+ years) like loans, credit cards, etc. I wouldn't make the switch. A lot of things can go wrong and you'll spend hours trying to figure out what happened. Don't buy this software if you're not willing to spend hours trying to learn it.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Investment functionality and customer service stink!, March 20, 2006

By 

PM "paula" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2006 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I just bought Quicken 2006 (Premier). I had been using Quicken 2000 and wanted to update my ability to manage my investments. I was dismayed by the bad reviews here, but couldn't find a product that looked any better, so I bought it and hoped for the best.

So far, I've been very disappointed. I have had nothing but problems with the investment management functionality. When I set up my accounts initially, each time I went through the setup wizard I got different choices for no good reason that I could see. Even though I own the same mutual fund in more than one investment account, the wizard wouldn't let me do this and I had to set up with the accounts with zero balances then go back and enter my transactions outside the wizard. When I liquidated one investment account and tried to transfer the cash to a new account, Quicken asked me whether this was a contribution to a 2005 or 2006 IRA, and there was no way to say that this IRA was ten years old. Then, when I tried to set up to download my account activity, the main reason I bought this product, Quicken would only let me set it up on some accounts, even though the accounts that don't work are all with Fidelity, Fidelity tells me these accounts can be downloaded to Quicken, and I have other Fidelity accounts that I have been able to download in Quicken. I suspect that the problem is that my husband and I have four separate accounts with Fidelity with different customer IDs and PINs, but I can't verify that. In fact, Quicken has a "PIN Vault" to let you store your PINs for downloading, but it only lets you store one PIN per financial institution, not one per account.

I've tried to figure out all of these problems, to no avail. I started with Quicken's help. No help. I went to their web site and searched the knowledge base. When I have found documents that looked relevant, they were missing. Then I tried live help. Their web site lets you type in questions for the investment center and submit them, but then you get a message saying that investment center questions are too complicated for live help and to try email. In the meantime, the question you typed in has disappeared, and you have to re-enter everything. Then, every time I've asked one of these questions through email, I'm told that I have to call their technical support line, which costs $25 per call.

This product and the so-called support that goes along with it are a disgrace!

Addition: I've been using the program for a while now, and found something that I cannot believe. One of the most important functions of investment management is to track your performance, but Quicken (2006 and the past few versions) don't track the performance of any investment that you didn't own as of the end of last year. I confirmed with Intuit that they used to have this feature, but it often had problems, so they just got rid of it. So don't expect to track your performance correctly if you've purchased any investments this year!

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware of this product, February 24, 2006

By 

MrMostly - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2006 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I used and was happy with Quicken 2003. After being nagged into upgrading, I bought the 2006 version. What they DON'T TELL YOU is that it installs a proprietary version of QIF called OFX that will not work on many of your accounts. They charge the financial institutions for the privilege. They expect you, the customer, to pester your bank into using it!

What if Ford called your car in for a free upgrade recall but after you got it home you find that it will only work with a special FORD GAS? Would you feel a little ripped off?

This is what Quicken has done.

Worst of all, Quicken 2006 can no longer import some of my credit cards statements. I have to enter them by hand! With 2006, Intuit has removed the ability to import QIF for most accounts. Apparently, they want to lock in their customers and financial institutions to using their proprietary flavor of OFX (the replacement of QIF). This requires financial institutions to pay Intuit some fees and not all financial institutions agree. Why not use standard OFX? Note that Microsoft Money seems to not have this problem, because Microsoft uses standard OFX. I am no fan of Microsoft, but by being less greedy than Intuit they made a smart move here, and Microsoft Money now looks more attractive than Quicken, because it is more open.

I will be switching to MONEY.

Buried in the help data (where only a tiny fraction of displeased customers will find it) is the offer to accept the product back for a refund. I encourage everyone to do so. Duplicity should not be rewarded.