Customer Reviews

Quicken Rental Property Manager 2009 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Quicken came out with a rental property program a long time ago. It was called Quicken Rental Property Manager. I used it to manage my properties for many years.

This update is awful. You can't do half of the things you could do with the old program.

You can't split expenses between your rentals. You can't update certain fields once you have set them initially. Full of other bugs as well.

An awful experience. Now I am going to be in a lurch come tax time.

I was surprised by what this software didn't do. At first, while entering property info and tenant info I was encouraged. All that good info..but what could be done with it? Nothing really except look at it. No real reports other than a list of properties with truncated fields. No ability to note additional charges such as utilities that might be charged on a monthly basis, unless added as a note on the tenant file. No generation of invoices (I thought that would be a given. Isn't sending monthly rent notices out a basic function of this type of business?) I wanted to be able to list the monthly mortgage payment so I could look at my income vs. expense per property in a given month. Nope. Also in the three days I spent with it, it crashed 4 times and ran extremely slow. I have a new computer, so it is not my processer that is the problem. From the standpoint of real estate property management, it really was just a step above excel from a storage standpoint, but at least with excel I can generate invoices through mail merge. This software seems geared at someone that is analyzing their entire personal and business portfolio, with a place to store rental info and net worth of assets. But it doesn't help with the day to day operations of this type of business. I have decided to seek other software for the function of managing our real estate business.

I have used Quicken Rental Property Manager (QRPM) for over six years and found it to a valuable asset. It was pretty much intuitive and easy to use. It was such a great program I decided to update to the new and improved QRPM 2009. BIG MISTAKE!!!!

QRPM 2009 has lost many of the features that were part of the now outdated original version. It is a BEAR to work with. It will not allow you to import your past records from the original version. It cost considerably more than its predecessor.

On the PRO side - It installs easily.

I'm going to go back to the earlier version but I understand that it will not be updated and will not work with TurboTax come the end of 2009.

So quicken finally decided to integrate the Rental Property Manager into it's main Quicken Product. It's a shame they removed so many feature from Quicken Rental Property Manager 2.5. This is a cheap product, that doesn't give you a full suite for a person who has rental properties. It's just another niche they want to sell to. There are many competitors that have better packages with more features. They made us stay on 2.5 for over 3 years, to give us this product. If your rental property management is really simple then quicken will do, but it lacks in many areas. On top of that the old program was light and quick to run, now this feels like a waste of time. They are trying to sell you quicken also, so you will have to do a lot of navigating between the menus.

I purchased this item from Amazon, it did not work in my laptop and started to shake in the screen. It crashed each time I tried to get it to work. I bought a new Acer desktop and it would not even load. Amazon replaced it, and the replacement did not work. Finally I called the Intutit help line (which I liked to never have found), My call was routed to India or Pakastan, the woman told me it was a compatability problem with Acer computers which I replied it didn't work on my 1,000.00 Lanovo laptop eather. Finally after after a great deal of effort she finally talked me through a back door processes to get it to work. If I knew an upgrade from Quicken home and Business to Quicken Rental Property Manager was going to be so difficult I never would have purchased it. I personally feel that maybe it was put on the market before it was ready. It works ok now but I hope it never has to be reentered into my computer for any reason, I do not think I could go through the process again. PS I was not happy with my calls to Amizon and Intutit (Quicken) being sent to a foreign country for customer service. I like to talk to someone who I can understand. OK you asked for my review and I was honest. I am not just venting, It really was a very unpleasant experience.

I purchased QRP about a year ago and set up my first properties with it. I only have 6 properties so I figure this would be perfect for something small. The user interface is pretty good and it is easy to use. However there are a few things that I can not stand.

I sold two properties at the end of 08. I want to adjust this for 09 and not show the two properties when I enter everything in. Some things are spread across all properties and it will still show for the two I no longer posses. The only thing I can do is delete the properties. When I delete them they are also deleted for 2008 and all data associated with those properties. Good thing I backed everything up before doing this. I could not find a way to remove the two properties without affecting the previous year. There should be an option to do this, call the property sold or something and from that date forward they are no longer in the system.
I contacted customer support I basically got what seemed to be an automated response with a link to a page showing me how to delete the property. That part is simple, I still want the data saved before the date of deletion!!!!

I tried getting around this by saving my backups on a usb drive and starting 2009 fresh. I found I had to go back to 2008 to look up some data for tax purposes. When I tried to do this the data was not the way I left it. Some months were completely blank and others had half the data gone. I had to start all over and enter everything again (no longer using QRP). I dont know why I had trouble going back to the backup this time. The only thing different is I had already entered data in for 2009 and only had 4 properties. I assume that messed things up somehow.

This program in only useful for property owners, it supplies places for tenant information but nothing for owner information. Property management software implies it works for managers this is not the case. There is no way to track paymnets to the property owners in fact the program never even considers the fact that people handle propertys they don't own.

I've used previous versions of this program and found them very easy to use and helpful. This version is aweful, completely unintuitive and too complex. I am a Usability Analyst professionally and this is one of the worst interfaces I've seen in a while. I'll probably either go back to a previous version or use spreadsheets.

Sorry MS, you tried to do too much with this version...

Beware - apparently you can only use your Quicken software for 2-3 years, then they discontinue the online download capability of the software...

I just found this out today: I'm using Quicken 2006 and anytime I click on Account Update to download transactions from my banks, I get a window that pops up saying I have until April 30th 2009 to upgrade to Quicken 2009 or else I'll no longer be able to download my transactions using the current 2006 software version.

Now, I started using Quicken 2002 back in the day, and I used to upgrade every year because you could get a "free" version after rebates by purchasing it with Turbotax. I stopped upgrading because every time there were no new features that made the investment worth it, and new bugs were annoying, so I prefered to keep the version I had rather than debugging yet another version.

Seems to me that this is really just a hidden "subscription" to Quicken that allows you to download your financial transactions. I mean, without downloading transactions, what's the use of Quicken?

I have to start looking at other financial software to replace Quicken, since I don't appreciate getting ripped off - why doesn't Quicken warn users that their programs are only good for two years? Seems like fraud to me...

I Beta Test Intuit products and this year I tested the Quicken Property Manager 2009. I found it so easy and useful I have recommended it to my clients with multiple rental properties (which will make my job so much faster when preparing their taxes). Keeping your personal finances, rental properties, investments, household assets, everything you pay for has been simplified either by entering into a register or a easy walk through. Although, I use many different financial products (whatever a client uses)I keep my personal finances in Quicken and recommend my clients change to Quicken so when they have a question I can walk them through it.I really liked the Property Management Edition.