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 - EssentialQuicken Home & Business 2008 is one of my most essential and used software applications. It manages my multiple saving, checking, investment, and trading accounts for me and, so far, I have had no issues with it. As a precaution, I keep the Quicken data files under a version control system on another hard drive that I periodically backup, encrypt, and dump to DVDs for secure local fire-safe and remote offsite storage along with other data for disaster recovery purposes. Though Quicken has the ability to manage scanned data, I prefer a separate package for that and for my encryption needs as well. This allows for a more general data management solution, for me anyway. There is a lot to like about Quicken, such as its ability to define categories and local accounts. This is handy when you decide to track expenses pertinent to, say, a relocation or vacation. The tool also offers you a subsequent forecast as to where you might be come tax time. Then there is Quicken's immensely useful and easy to setup, manage, and use online account transaction reconciliation features. I do not use its online bill-pay feature, preferring instead to create Internet browser icons to respective accounts payable sites. This avoids single-point-of-failure scenarios that would arise if any one of my packages or computers handled all financial operations. Another nicety is Quicken's ability to `skip' bills. This allows you to set estimates of future expenses such as weekly auto fuel and dining out, and observe a very accurate end-of-month balance for as far ahead as you care to view. This is especially helpful when managing a monthly or quarterly income, where its especially important to know where you stand between pay periods. Properly managed, this software can truly become a crystal ball for your financial present and future. I spend about ten minutes a day with Quicken, and in return I know, to the penny, exactly where I stand on multiple accounts. The software is intuitive enough that I personally never bothered reading any books or manuals about it. Just use it, I would suggest, and keep backing up to handle any newbie goofs. For me personally, Quicken is just a component of a larger paperless home data-management picture including version control, cryptography, backups, secure storage, UPS, cascaded firewalls, intrusion detection, etc. In this regard, so far, it has proven to be a five star component indeed. Rating:  - Even worse than 2007For some reason, I had no problems with Quicken 2006. I upgraded to Quicken 2007 and have problems with multiple transactions that I can't "match", basic arithmetic errors (can't calculate asset % in my 401k), and random date changes that cause problems. I hoped that 2008 would be a good upgrade to fix the problems. I was wrong. All the old problems are there, and downloads from my financial institutions worked even less than before. As a result, I took advantage of the 60 day money back guarantee and got my money back. It's a shame that this software has degraded this far. I know one thing: I'll be trying out Money 2008. :) Rating: - Buyer Beware!1) data damaged during update (transactions lost) 2) online account login information lost (must reenter, reactivate) 3) any other program running and Quicken freezes, CPU utilization jumps to 100% and stays there. Even Ctrl-Alt-Delete won't run. Power off only solution. This the worst Quicken update I've ever encountered - been a user since early DOS days. This release is entirely unusable. I'm rolling back to Quicken 2007. Rating:  - Quicken 2008Simpler & easier to understand than years past, although some items are not well explained. I would recommend taking a few hours intially to learn the basics, and go from there. Rating:  - eBay Sellers Alert: As of 12/31/07, PayPal Downloads Don't WorkUPDATE 5/15/08: PayPal downloads still do not work consistently. I've been unable to download any PayPal transactions for over 2 weeks, and all the Quicken web site says is they're working on a fix which should be available shortly. I've had this product for well over 6 months, and PayPal downloads haven't worked with any regularity for the entire time. I hardly think 6 months qualifies as "shortly". Updates from other financial institutions also only work sporadically, though they are a bit more consistent than PayPal. This product simply doesn't do all it's advertised to do, and the company should be ashamed of themselves for misrepresenting its functionality. UPDATE 12/31/07: In my first review (below), I stated that I had decided against upgrading due to the inability to download itemized PayPal transaction fees. I later changed my mind because I decided I could at least get my general PayPal data into Quicken and use PayPal's own reporting to get an itemization of fees. The PayPal downloads initially seemed to work fine, but now I'm rarely able to import any new transactions. Sometimes, the program will tell you the account update was successful even though no new transactions were imported. Other times, the program claims there's a Quicken server outage. The last time I was able to import any new transactions was 12/27/07. The Quicken support technician I chatted with insisted I must have a corrupted file. Ironically, creating an entirely new Quicken file and PayPal account only resulted in the same problems. Quicken now acknowledges there's an issue on their support site, but there's no information on when a fix will be available. If you're an eBay seller hoping this is the answer to your PayPal accounting needs, I'm afraid you're in for a big disappointment. At this point, I wouldn't waste my money on an upgrade. I'm an eBay PowerSeller, and I currently use the 2006 version of Quicken Home and Business. I was excited to see that the 2008 version adds the capability to import PayPal transactions, but my enthusiasm was quickly dampened after I visited the Quicken support site and found the following statement: "When PayPal transactions are downloaded using One Step Update, the PayPal fee is not separated out and does not appear as a Split line. In prior versions of Quicken, you could import a QIF file, which updated the information. However, Quicken no longer supports the QIF file, and PayPal does not download the required information in the supported QFX format. You must edit the transaction and enter the Split manually." So, if you're looking to keep track of how much you're paying PayPal in fees, you'll have to manually edit every single imported transaction, a process which was unnecessary with QIF imports. That doesn't sound like much of an upgrade to me. I've decided to stick with the 2006 version. I have my PayPal account set up as an Asset account, so I can still download my history files from PayPal with the split information intact since QIF imports still work with Asset accounts. It's not a perfect solution, but it's certainly preferable to manually updating every single transaction. Does Intuit really expect us to pay $70-$80 for the privilege of making accounting chores more time-consuming and tedious?
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