Software Review

Quicken Deluxe 98 from Intuit

by William LaMartin, Editor, Tampa PC Users Group

Quicken is another program that I have been with since almost day 1 in personal computer time. I started with the DOS version, switched to the first Windows version when it came out, and have updated to about every other successive version. You know that the program must have served me well all these years or I wouldn’t have stayed with it. I can remember only one time I had some trouble with it. That was when converting data for the DOS to Windows upgrade or from the Windows 1 version to the next Windows version. In the conversion, some of my splits (the different lines you can break a transaction into if you want to specify the separate items, for example, that make up a single deposit) had the correct amounts but incorrect descriptions. Since this concerned only a few entries and they were several years old and the amounts were correct, I didn’t worry too much about it. But that was the only time I have had cause to really complain about Quicken.

Of course, Quicken is much more now than a simple checking register. It is a place to track anything financial in your life. Most of what Quicken has added (at least for the deluxe versions) starting with version 4, I believe, are the investment features that I really don’t use. I mainly use it to track the disappearance of my money instead of its growth. My accounts and different categories of expenses (and a few categories of income) easily reach 50 in number. Just think, before the personal computer and Quicken none of this would be possible. It is another example of how the personal computer has made us more productive. Now I track 50 different items, where as in the past I only struggled to balance my checkbook and a few savings vehicles with pencil and paper.

Seriously, Quicken has been a bookkeeping life saver for me. A couple of years back I let it take over more of my life when I ordered sheets of checks to feed into my laser printer so that Quicken could not only record my expenses, it could also pay my bills. This way, I save time by letting Quicken print the check and record it in my checking register at the same time.

But, enough of how wonderful Quicken has been in the past. What is new for Quicken 98? Well, as might be expected, there is more of a tilt toward the Internet. You can now get all sorts of investment and other financial information from the Quicken site. If you use any of the online brokers like Charles Schwab & Co.., E*TRADE , Fidelity Investments or Waterhouse Securities, they will let you interface with them directly from the program. And in the works is the ability to download all of your credit card data (recent charges, etc.) directly into your Quicken credit card register for card issuers that team up with Quicken. This is intended to keep you from having to input this data yourself, but, to me, if you don’t enter it yourself you have no check on whether the charges when you get them are valid.

Of course, they also are forging alliances with various banks to allow you to do online banking using Quicken and connecting to these banks over the Internet. Local banks that I saw listed were Barnett and Sun. Of course, Barnett is about to be gobbled up by NCNB, so that may no longer be available since NCNB was not on the list.

Banking is definitely moving to the Internet. But the problem, as I see it right now, is that we are getting many different groupings of banks, using different software, so that at this point services like those Quicken is offering will only be of use to a select few of us potiental Quicken and Internet users. If my bank or credit card company is not allied with Quicken, then all bets are off. Additionally, many banks, like Barnett, want to charge you about $10 /month for accessing your account via the Internet. I think it should be free, since such service is keeping me out of their buildings and away from their human tellers. And indeed some banks offer such services free. Huntington Bank, for example, offers free Internet access to your account with them via a secure Internet server if your browser is Java enabled, as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are. So Quicken gets cut out of deals like this one, and my bet is that this is the direction banks will go in the future (although they may offer some sort of Quicken compatible download of your transactions).

Other than access to financial information on the Internet and more investment help, what else do you get with this new version? Since I skipped two versions before this upgrade, I cannot say what is completely new, but to me the most noticeable changes involved the "small" things. It is now just a lot easier to move around my different accounts in Quicken. The appearance of the program on the screen is more pleasing, and they seem to get more information and options presented in the same space than in the past.

When I open the program I am presented with a week’s worth of bills to be paid or scheduled deposits to be made. That way I know what lies ahead and hopefully I won’t miss any payments this way. On my right I have tabs that list the various account registers that are open, and this allows me to move between them easily—a big improvement over older versions. In brief, it just has a more polished look than past versions—not that there was anything really bad about the previous versions. Of course, there is extensive help, including tutorials. Finally, this version also takes you on the Internet (again) to a Quicken site, which allows you to search for the best car insurance rate or home mortgage deal. It also allows you to do minimal tax planning.

Quicken Deluxe sells for around $59 with a $20 rebate for previous Quicken owners. If you are happy with the basic Quicken package, which omits much of the investment material and tax planning material but really does everything that I want out of the package, you can probably get that for around $20. u