Quicken(R) 2004: The Official Guide [Paperback]

Maria Langer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0072229705 | ISBN-13: 978-0072229707 | Publication Date: August 8, 2003 | Edition: 1

Save time and money, organize your finances, and track your investments with this helpful book! 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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Covers Quicken Deluxe and Premiere

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

Reach your financial goals! Quicken 2004: The Official Guide offers 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 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 plenty of financial information and online resources to assist in all your financial decisions. Chapters closely follow the software to help you find information quickly and easily.

Inside, you'll find out how to:

• Reconcile checking and savings accounts
• Master automated features for data entry and other tasks
• Use online tools for bill-paying, banking, and investments
• Manage property, loans, and investment accounts
• Create reports and graphs using Quicken data
• Schedule payments and payroll deposits
• Track your portfolio with online stock quotes and securities news
• Learn time-saving techniques for doing your taxes
• Get valuable resources and advice from Quicken.com

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: 512 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (August 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072229705
• ISBN-13: 978-0072229707
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,944,256 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

100 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Help Screens, February 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Quicken(R) 2003: The Official Guide (Paperback)

Aside from a few tidbits, I didn't find this book much more helpful than reading the help screens within Quicken itself. I guess since it is in book form it is easier to reference than the screens but I was looking for a book that offered insight into using Quicken, not how to navigate menus. This book follows the ol' "If you want do this, do that" format which I really believe is beneath most computer users these days. I had to re-enter a lot of data having found things out myself rather than through the book. I bought the book specifically for this purpose and found it worthless in this regard. I was looking for something that related Quicken to real life situations e.g., where to find the reams of data that Quicken requests, how a complicated financial statement translates into a Quicken entry, the pros and cons of entering the same transaction different ways in Quicken, and the different ways to set up the same portfolio, to name a few. More examples would have been useful.

68 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars pretty shallow even for beginner, look elsewhere, July 11, 2003

By 

Dave92270 (CA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicken(R) 2003: The Official Guide (Paperback)

I purchased this book to get detailed info on various aspects of Quicken 2003 practical usage. This book offers merely a description of menus and features - no deeper insight how to tackle more serious challenges, which will inevitably arise in the moment you will create multiple checking & credit card accounts, start to transfer funds in between them, run the reports etc.

The problem is that the book tells you not much more then what is obvious from the interface to any computer literate user; if you're in doubt, you can still check online help. In all honesty, I found the basic 70 page long user guide which comes with boxed Quicken more helpfull then this book....

Just a sample of the quality and depth of information offered by this book, randomly opened at the pages below:

pages 210-211: "Another new feature....is that the report window is automatically minimized to the Quicken task bar when you click outside the window...to view the report again, click it's name in the taskbar and the report reappears."

.. I bet nobody would ever figure this out without having to look for info inside this book. I think that giving this book 2 stars out of 5 I'm still doing a favor to the author and the publisher.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quicken 2004 Premier home and business, August 14, 2004

By 

R. Smith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quicken(R) 2004: The Official Guide (Paperback)

This book DOES NOT COVER anything to do with the Small Business side of the program. I was very disappointed in it.