I was very nervous buying this software after the really poor reviews it got but there was not a superior alternative so I took the plunge. I looked at Money Dance but it’s just too basic for what I wanted. I switched to Quicken after MS retired Money. I don’t have time to list all the issues I’ve had, but I will say I spend at least 3 times more time managing my money.

Love the tracking feature for monthly expenditures. Well worth the money. I am not happy with this version. I sent an email and the response I got from them was incorrect.

The deck chairs on the ship get shuffled around, forcing you to find your favorite pathways again, but the useful features are still the same. Maybe that isn’t all bad, since the software is pretty robust. After searching for various alternatives, both online and standalone, I ended up selecting Quicken Home and Business 2011 (being self-employed I need the business module). At first I was quite nervous about Quickens ability to load almost 10-years‘ worth of history and be able to make sense of it. They graciously sent me link to download 2008 Home & Business for free. I’ve always been happy with their customer service, and they listen to the ‚voice of the customer.‘ So if there’s a method/feature you think could make the product significantly more valuable, or if you just have a question, please feel free to tell them. They have made it harder to use and removed some functions altogether. If you don’t download transitions from your bank then don’t bother with this. Quicken stacking the deck, it seems to me. I am just getting into it, so I may change my opinion later, but right off the bat there were some serious problems with getting information from my banks.

Most financial institutions will let you download the past ~90 days of information into Quicken. If you want any information earlier than that Quicken has NO easy way to enter this information in bulk, and suggests that you get to manually entering info one transaction record at a time. I’ve been using Quicken since the DOS days, have been a software analyst working with corporate ERP software, been around the software block a bit in my day. I had great expectations for Quicken 2011, after reading some of the glowing reviews from alleged beta testers, touting the „best Quicken ever“. Now, as I open my computer today and open my 2008 Home and Business, it gives me that nice warning that they will cut off my transaction downloading ability by the end of this month unless I upgrade, isn’t that wonderful! Based on the reviews of the upgrade, I am probably in for a big expensive disappointment!

It also converted all the old transactions/downloads from the old data, which took a while as well. I’ve been using Quicken since 2001, so I had plenty of data for it to convert.

You could say that I’m an exception and that normally their support is stellar but you’d be wrong. Still no one has attempted to contact me to help me solve my problem. Down loading data from various companies did not work the same and eventually broke and I had to do a reinstall to fix the problem. They changed the options for reviewing downloaded transactions and it is not intuitive compared to the earlier product.

It’s good for tagging and setting aside my occasional business expenses, and once I managed to wrangle the interface I’ve found it useful for organizing my business clients and invoices. Mexican Blankets.