Customer Reviews

Quicken Rental Property Manager [Download] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I have been the happy owner/user of Rental Property Manager v2, for several years and have recommended that product to associates who also have rental properties.
Last year I considered upgrading to Rental Property Manager 2009, but after I read the reviews from users I decided to wait a year so that the product could be refined. I recently purchased Rental Property Manger 2010.
To say that I am disappointed is a big understatement. Version 2 is a great product, it is simple and straightforward and does everything that is needed. Quicken Rental Property Manager 2010 is simply a disaster. I do not want or need a product to track my other investments, or checking accounts or anything else.
One could overlook the fact that this application has too many functions, and you could simply turn them off. The real issue is that this product is completely lacking in basics. I can't transfer data from my version 2 to the new program, I have to re-enter all the data. Further, while attempting to do that I can not simply add a tenant. When I attempt to do that I get a drop down box that says I have to set up an account to receive the rent. When I follow those prompts I get a choice of all sorts of accounts, none of which allow me to complete the tenant account. These are only two of the many issues I've found with this application.
For the record, I have a BA in Business Administration and several years as a Systems Manager. If you want to manage your investments, pay bills on-line, or update your grocery list this may work for you, however it is NOT a rental mangement application. In short this product is not user friendly, it's a nightmare to try to configure. What I, and I'm sure many other small landlords would like is a simple upgrade to version 2.

I am one of those customers forced by Microsoft to consider an alternative to MS Money 2007 Deluxe edition.
So, because I just bought a rental property, I tried my luck with Quicken 2010 - Rental Property Manager. Most of my comments here are applicable to all versions of Quicken 2010 though.
First, I tried to follow the quicken instructions to convert from the MS Money (with roughly 8 yrs worth of data). I found that quicken did a good job overall, but it created these crazy cash accounts for each investment account, which I found annoying and had a hard time working with. As a software professional, I recognize that there are fundamentally different data structures in place in both programs that make a clean conversion challenging. Therefore, I tried to setup Quicken again - this time from scratch. I also recognize that once you're used to one system it is difficult to get used to another, so I am giving myself about five weeks to run things in parallel before deciding whether or not I should give Quicken back and stick with Money. So, here are my observations:
Display of account balances: In the account overview pane, Quicken will show account balances as of "today", while MS Money shows the balance as if all entered transaction already occurred. For example, if your credit card payment is submitted for a day in the future, MS Money shows that fact in the account balance, which I prefer. In Quicken, I have to go into the specific account to notice that some transactions are already submitted for a future date.
Online Account updates: After setting up the connection information (painless in both Money and Quicken): Quicken will ask for additional security questions (first time PC registration) over and over again. For example, I have ING Direct savings accounts (6 of them for different budgeting purposes) and quicken will ask 2 verification questions for EACH account and doesn't store the answers to those questions. Each time I am running online updates, it asks again. That's poor design.
Quicken should also allow a user to setup the account and NOT download existing transactions. The transaction downloads have challenges associating things to the right categories, so I preferred to start from scratch and had to manually delete the transactions and adjust the starting balance.
Foreign Currencies: Quicken needs to be enabled to support foreign currency support. Once that is done, the exchange rate to the dollar lives in a STATIC table that must be updated manually. Money updates currency exchange rates automatically
Categories and entering transactions: In MS Money, one can type the name of a category and the system will find it - even if it's a partial name or a sub-category. In Quicken, one must type the leading characters of a category name correctly - sub categories are not found that way, which leads to a lot of scrolling through the list. The Quicken Rental Property manager contains categories that look like they could belong to personal expenses (Such as mortgage interest), which could be distinguished better.

Scheduled Bills: MS Money supports editing any future occurrence of a bill individually, including split amounts. Quicken can only edit ALL occurrences of a bill at that level of detail. A selected occurrence lets you edit only the dollar amount, not the splits, which makes no sense at all.
Social Security Payroll Taxes: Neither program is smart enough to edit paycheck occurrences based on reaching the contribution maximum for the SS payroll tax. That would be a nice to have!
When returning a purchased item and booking the refund into an account, Quicken counts this as income, instead of counting it as a negative transaction in an expense category. Money does this correctly.
Stock price updates: MS Money has difficulties updating stock prices associated with employee stock option grants, although the ticker symbol is knows. Quicken does this correctly.
Budget: The Budget was one of my favorite features in MS Money. It automatically took care of all scheduled transactions and correctly counts transfers to a savings account as a budget expense so long as the savings account itself wasn't marked as a budget account. Quicken's budget is a complete failure. It doesn't recognize scheduled bills and transactions, but only gives the choice of either entering budget values manually or letting Quicken calculate them based on historic averages. If you bought a car or had real estate closing costs (purchase, refinance, whatever), the automatic budget will be completely out of touch with reality. I do like the way Quicken displays the "budget" categories in the planner though. It's just not as detailed as the one in MS Money.

Overall, MS Money wins hands-down in my comparison. Quicken is decent, but a couple of things I mentioned can clearly be attributed to using outdated controls and the remaining points I mention are either sloppy design or simply stupidity. I think I will continue with MS Money for a while and then figure out if another alternative emerges for me. $149 for poorly designed software is simply too much. Although I am not happy with MSFT's decision to discontinue MS Money, I am not inclined to pay for an inferior product.

I have been using Microsoft Money for about 10 years and decided to convert to Quicken when Microsoft gave notice it would stop supporting the Money program. Quicken claimed it could import my Money file, which it did. Considering it took me many hours to clean up the import, it might have been easier to start from scratch at the beginning of a new year. None of my customized reports made it trough the import and other sections needed a lot of reworking.
My biggest issue so far is the lack of import and export functions in Quicken. Some of my banks do work well with Quicken and Quicken can automatically download transaction data from them with just one click; I love that function. But for other banks and credit cards, for example Citycards, the bank only exports csv, pdf, qif formats. Quicken 2010 will not import any of these, not even its own qif (Quicken Interchange Format). Quicken claims I have to go back to the 2004 version to import qif. It does export qif and qtf as well as pdf, and CSV for report data.

For the rental property section, I have not yet found a way to send invoices, late notices, or any other communication to tenants using the program. The "Rental Property Manager" seems to be a place to store all the financial data needed for tax purposes (and as you might expect from the Turbo Tax people - it does this well) but it does very little with other day to day management of rental properties.

For those that have been using Quicken there should be no surprises. This is my first time downloading software through Amazon and everything worked great, pretty much just like installing from a CD. I didn't like having to install the Quicken Software Downloader (a 3MB application) it's yet another installation I don't want; yes I can un-install it, but for any PC literate person you know that means redidual entries in your Registry that build up over time, not enough to deter me from the convenience of getting the software when I was ready. If you really hate that concept order the CD version. Who knows, it probably leaves install entries too.

In reference to the previouse feedback, none of my banking institutions charge for automatic account updates, I find it surprising that any bank would charge. But then again, I don't do business with any bank that charges me to use my own money or any technology that they offer, it's one of the first questions I ask. As for those desktop shortcuts they are not installed files and can simply be deleted off the desktop, Quicken and other vendors often do that. I can understand the concept that you only want what you pay for and nothing else.

Regarding the install process: Quicken took my 07 files and updated them quickly and smoothly. This is my first time getting the version with Rental Property and at first glance it looks like there are some neat tools to identify transactions as "Rental" related. Also, just a note (I'm sure quicken wouldn't advertise this) but if you buy quicken direct, you get Willmaker 2010 for free. After downloading this I realized I didn't get that bonus, so I hopped onto Quicken Live Chat assistance and within 10 minutes I had a link to download Willmaker for free. To me the benefit is that I was able to support a retailer (even if Amazon is a discounter) and get the free goods.

I have had the 2.0 version for years and have been greatly successful with it. I recently upgraded my computer systems to Windows 7 64 bit. 2.0 did not work without establishing a virtual PC. Tech support said I need to get 2010 which is similar but better. What a lie, after purchasing 2010 and loading it which kept prompting me to enter and reenter passwords, I finally got it starting to work, tried inputting data which kept trying to automatically merge and compile net worth, and various other so called features, It is overly complex for something that use to be very clean and straight forward. It also does not allow you to easily seperate different accounts for ease of accounting. I have close to 20 properties with nearly 12 different accounts. I started with 2.0 when I had 4 and it easily evolved with me. After trying 2010 for 5 weeks I am giving up. Lets see about their 60 day money back guarantee. If I could have chosen to give the system no star at all I would have. If you are looking at this product dont buy it. If you want a good rental property program find 2.0 version and try that, it is great unless you are managing alot of properties. 2.0 also is a fraction of the price of 2010 or maybe only a few dollars since it is old.

I just got off the phone with a Quicken Customer Care Representative who confirmed the problems I have had with Quicken 2010 Rental Property Manager. Funny thing is I usually heed the advice of other reviewers but wanted to find out for myself and sad to say I had the same results. I have been a very happy user of Quicken Property Manager v.2 for many years, i.e. a very simple to use, i.e. user friendly, application and made my job as a land lord very easy. Then I purchased a new lap top for the business and found that v.2 could not work with Windows 7.0 and since I had also upgraded to the newer version of QuickBooks Pro, I would need the latest version of Property Manager to do all my business on my lap top. Not so. I was not able to restore the previous backup up file from v.2 with the new 2010 Rental Property Manager. The only piece of transaction that was transferred was the name of my tenant the address of a rental unit. I contacted Quicken Customer Care via e-mail and the feedback did not resolve the problem and I was able to personally talk to a customer rep today who confirmed that this is a problem and that I would have to manually input all the data. Manually !!! Shame on you Quicken for placing this software out there. I agree with another reviewer as to how much more complex Quicken developers have made this application. Users want transparency in the application and what Quicken had with v.2 was a very solid, intuitive, and friendly application software for us property owners who do not want or need to be accountants.

I have been using Rental Property manager 2.0 and was very happy with it. Qicken Rental Property manager 2010 seemed even more flexible and also offered personal finance software too. Lo and behold, the 2 programs do not talk. I tried to open my 2009 files that I created in Rental Property Manager 2.0 with this new program and it would not read them.
The 2.0 had a nice graphical interface and you did not need to be an accountant to set it up. You do with this one.
I tried returning it to no avail and have now written to Intuit to see if they will remimburse me.

I am a perennial naysayer when it comes to Quicken's "upgrades". Yes, I agree with everyone who complains about Intuit's business model of introducing mandatory upgrades periodically that one is forced to take because older versions become obsoleted. But ultimately, time marches on and software does need to be upgraded. Once having accepted the inevitible (Intuit notified me they would no longer be supporting Premier 2007 come April 2010), I sighed a deep sigh and purchased Quicken 2010 Rental Property version. Sorry Amazon, this was one purchase I made directly from Intuit. Had you had this directly available through Amazon, you could have had the sale, but I digress...

After installing Quicken Property Manager 2010, I checked every account and report that was critical to me. Apart from the usual cosmetic user interface differences, I found nothing amiss. The migration of data files went very smoothly and for once, there's an aspect of Quicken's upgrades worth the hassle. Now instead of 4 or 5 separate Quicken files, Intuit manages to keep everything in one - albeit larger - file. In terms of keeping track of backup files, this is a significant improvement.

Also, all settings and functionality remained intact. Downloading transactions from several brokerage accounts continue to work flawlessly. (I don't download transactions from banks or credit card companies. I tried this once for an existing credit card account and ended up with hundreds of unwanted transactions in the upload. If starting with a new credit card or bank account, I imagine it would be nice to simply upload the transactions from the financial institution. Doing so into an existing account proved more hassle than I wanted to deal with, so I continue to hand enter the couple dozen credit card transactions a month I deal with.)

Having recently acquired a rental property, I opted for this version over Quicken Premier 2010. Whether or not the additional functionality of keeping a data base of rental properties is useful to you may depend on how many you have. I only have the one and I already set up the transactions in the earlier version. I'm not sure its even worth my while to investigate this functionality, but if you have many investment properties, this might be a better way of keeping track of properties, tennants, income flow, mortgage payments, and tax related transaction. This is the only funtional difference I see between Quicken Rental Property 2010 and Quicken Premier 2007.

I have investment accounts, some with transaction going back to 1982 (e.g. a mutual fund that I've been dollar cost averaging into since then), so for managing my investment portfolio, Quicken Premier is minimally a necessity. On that front, my only beefs are that:

1) a graph that used to be available many versions ago, is still sadly missing. They used to have the ability to chart stock price history and market value on the same graph. Quite useful to see at a glance how well (or poorly?) you timed the market with your purchases or sales. Luckily, I get close to this functionality in Fidelity's Active Trader charting.

2) investment performance reporting continues to be problematic under certain circumstances. Performance statistics are annualized, so at the beginning of a calendar year you could be looking at some grossly exaggerated performance numbers. The same holds true for positions you only held for a short period of time. What seems to be missing is a simple report that gives you the actual percentage gain or loss on a specific trade. For example, let's say you bought 100 shares of XYZ corp at $10 per share today and you sold it tomorrow for $11. This is a simple 10% actual gain (ignoring transaction costs). In quicken, this is annualized to some phenominally large percentage, as if you had earned 10% per day for the entire year. When analysing individual security performance, this can be problematic.

3) exporting to excel has never been a strong suit. You can indeed export an account to Excel but, you can't subsequently update an existing Excel spreadsheet. This is a pain. It would be nice to develop reports in Excel that Quicken simply does not provide. If you go throught the effort of exporting data to a spreadsheet, it would be nice if you didn't have to start from scratch every time. Now, if I'm simply undereducated in the use of Excel, then PLEASE someone out there direct me to the appropriate feature that would allow me to append a new month's worth of data to an existing spreadsheet via Quicken Export.

Now for the biggest improvement in the Quicken Experience since my last upgrade! Quicken actually has telephone support staff that call you when you have install or program issues!!! I thought I found a bug in the Net Worth Reporting in 2010, I followed the support links under Help and opted to have a Quicken Tech Support person call me on the phone. Within minutes a very knowledgable support rep called me back and spent about an hour helping me debug the problem. This included having me upload Quicken Premier 7, uninstalling Quicken 2010, reinstalling the 2007 program to see if the bug predated the 2010 upgrade. To make a long story short, the problem orininated last year and had nothing to do with Quicken 2010 or the upgrade to said program. (Now, ultimately, I did need to find the single transaction that hosed the report myself. I deleted the transaction and reentered it - bingo! problem solved.) Today I reinstalled Quicken Rental Property 2010 and am getting on with my life. Still, I can't say enough how stunned I am merely to know that, after all these years of non-existant customer support, Intuit has finally delivered!

All in all, I'd say you need not be afraid of upgrading to Quicken 2010. None of the horror story events reported elsewhere (Amazon's reviews of Quicken 2010) happened. If you check my reviewer history, you'll see that I've been highly critical of Intuit in the past. This upgrade, has enough in it for me to justify the upgrade.

Good luck

WARNING! Many banks (including ours) will not pay the charge that Quicken imposes on them to download and share data. This software is useless to us. We are stuck for about $120 unless someone at Amazon takes pity on us. I will edit this review if they make an adjustment.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing since I'm venting. Along with the software they sent all kinds of shortcuts to our computer desktop for ordering free credit reports and a lot of other stuff we don't want. This was a very unhappy experience.

UPDATE 1/15/2010: I called Amazon after they did not respond to my emailed request for help. They agreed to refund our money and to put a note on the website warning potential customers to check with their banks before downloading the program. Thanks also to the two people who replied to my post with another route for a refund.

I've been using Quicken for well over a decade. I typically upgrade to the latest version about every 2 years (there generally aren't enough changes/enhancements to justify upgrading every year), and with the release of 2010, I was due for an upgrade.

I've always liked the Quicken user interface; probably because I've been using it so long that it's simply what I'm used to. Some years ago, I did give Microsoft Money a try, but didn't like the differences in the user interface -- I found it more difficult to use. So, I eventually switched back to Quicken, and I've been using Quicken ever since.

I picked up the Rental Property Manager version because I do, in fact, own a rental property. Prior to this version, I was trying to manage it using Quicken Home & Business (with the rental property operating as a business). I had also picked up the separate Rental Property Manager software (that was ONLY for managing rental properties) but it didn't work very well for me. With the 2010 Quicken Rental Property Manager I was FINALLY able to get all of my finances organized in one piece of software in a manner that actually works well for me.

One caveat I should provide here: When I upgraded to this version, I did decide to start from scratch, rather than updating my data files. That said, I did upgrade the data files initially, and used this version of the software to reconcile all of my outstanding transactions over the course of a month, while simultaneously entering new transactions in a "clean" data file that I started from scratch. One of the reasons I did this was in the hopes of straightening out a long-running problem I had been having with the Debt Reduction Planner in prior versions of Quicken.

The Debt Reduction Planner problem I had was this: some years ago, I had run the Debt Reduction Planner to put together a plan for paying off all of my bills (credit cards, mortgage, car payments, etc). This worked fine, initially. However, at some point, I tried to "recalculate" the plan and, somehow, the payment for one of my bills got converted to a negative number...This resulted in the projected balance for that bill constantly going up (based upon their recommended payment) rather than down. I tried numerous times to correct this, but never could get it straightened out, even after upgrading through at least 2 additional versions (I kept hoping it was a problem with a prior version that got straightened out with a new release). In the end, I decided the problem must have been in the data file; and that's why I chose to start with a fresh data file (rather than the file I've been using since 1994). So far, I haven't had this problem in the 2010 Rental Property Manager version.

As for managing the rental property, this software works much better than prior versions of Quicken. You're able to define your properties, set up records for your renters, schedule and track the rent payments, etc. In fact, you can set up accounts and associate them with the rental property. For example, I try to keep my personal finances separate from my rental property. So, I have a separate checking account that I only use for the rental, and a credit card that I only use for the rental. I also have a mortgage and escrow account for the property. By creating these associations, Quicken is able to provide at-a-glance views of the monthly cash flow for the property. I can easily track maintenance expenses, insurance, rents paid, rents due, property taxes, etc.

There are a number of features I don't use, like downloading transactions from my bank and credit cards. I prefer to enter everything manually, so my records account for expenditures that I've made regardless of whether they've posted to the account or not. I simply sit down with my receipts every night and update the accounts with all payments, income, and expenditures. I tried the download feature, but determined that I prefer to do the entry manually because of the lag in some postings (some purchases would take 2 or 3 days to show up on the account). If you're as meticulous as I am, you'll probably prefer to turn off the automatic downloads; but, if you're like most people, you'll probably like that feature and use it rather than having to enter data every night.

All in all, I'm very happy with this product, and won't hesitate to upgrade again when the 2012 version is released.

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UPDATE: After using this product for more than a year it's still very good. I have run into one problem in dealing with the rental property management portion of the application: it doesn't handle partial payments very well. My renter ran into some financial difficulties and was only able to make a partial payment for several months. When I recorded the payment and tried to apply it against the outstanding rent, Quicken treated a partial payment as payment-in-full and essentially closed out the invoice. I had expected it to simply apply the payment and leave the remainder as a balance due. So, to deal with this, I've had to track my renter's payments myself, and only apply the last payment to the outstanding invoice in order to keep the invoices "open" until paid in full. I'm hoping they'll get this fixed in a future release.