Review: Quicken 2002

Organize your finances with the latest version of Quicken. Review by Kai Chandler

Product	Quicken 2002
Company	Quicken
Web	www.intuit.co.uk
Price	£29.95 Deluxe £49.90 Deluxe and Business £69.95
We like	Comprehensive features and easy to use
We don't like	Investment view lacks crucial data. Emergency Records Organiser poorly integrated.
Rating	9/10
Requirements

Every year a new release

Anyone with a yen to organize their finances will be tempted to make the most of their PC by using a personal finance tool to get control. Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Money are the two leaders in this sector. They've been jockeying for pole position for years but Quicken was recently reported to be winning the race with 59% of the personal finance market.

What can a personal finance tool do for me?

A personal finance tool allows you to see a snapshot of your financial position including bank accounts, credit cards and mortgage. Of course it's only as accurate as the data that you enter. The first step is to define accounts such as bank, building society, mortgage and credit card. Then you set up your regular payments and credits. Next, enter any cheques and credit card transactions as they are made. This lets you see at a glance what the balance should be on each account and flag when bills need to paid or when you might need to transfer funds between accounts. Categories can be set up to identify income and expenditure for example "groceries" and "motoring" so you can also spot trends over time.

An essential part of the process is to reconcile the information you've entered against the statements to identify any gaps and errors. This is best done as soon as they arrive. Special tools let you download statements from your bank's internet site but currently this is only offered by certain banks.

Anyone with investments will find the support that such a tool offers invaluable. You define a number of investment accounts containing equities and unit trusts and then track dividend payments and other actions. PEPs and ISAs can also be handled in this way. A portfolio view tells you the current value and performance of all your investments so you can quickly see how they are performing. An internet connection will allow you to update their prices at will.

Other functions are aimed at the small business, for example the generation of invoices.

In every case, alerts, graphical and tabular reports help you to keep in control.

So what's new?

Intuit has just brought out the latest release called, appropriately enough, Quicken 2002.

This year, there are three versions:

Quicken 2002 has all the basic functions to track bank accounts, credit cards and investments.

Quicken 2002 Deluxe adds an Emergency Records Organiser, Quicken Home Inventory which will help if you need to make an insurance claim, savings and debt planners, share option tracking facility, employee stock purchase tracking and faster setup of your investment accounts.

Quicken 2002 Deluxe and Business adds functions for small business such as vehicle mileage tracking and accounts payable. Note that many small business functions such as invoicing that were available in Quicken 2001 Deluxe are now only available in Quicken 2002 Deluxe and Business.

Some of the highlights are:

The Emergency Records Organiser: this is a new function to record important information to help your household run smoothly, especially in the event of an emergency. For example it prompts you for information for a contact list of doctors, dentists, medical history, wills, insurance policies and emergency contacts. It also uses lists of accounts that you have set up in Quicken. A selection of reports can be created for example the Survivor's report which lists all your bank and investment accounts with contact details. The idea is that you print this periodically and leave with your spouse or perhaps with your will for when the worst happens. In common with the Home Inventory, however, it lacks an export function so you can't send the data to an external program such as Excel. It's not very well integrated with the rest of Quicken, so you may end up having to rekey account details which is a pain.

Improved online banking - this is now said to function with HSBC, LloydsTSB and MBNA. No doubt Intuit are trying to persuade other banks to adopt their file formats which are called QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) or OFX (Open Financial Exchange) but at the moment you shouldn't expect too much of online banking unless you are a customer of one of these banks. Where supported, you should be able to download statements ready for reconciliation, thereby avoiding doing a manual tickback.

Investment Research provides information on investments by linking to selected web sites. For equities, Quicken takes you to the Motley Fool at www.fool.co.uk while for unit trusts it uses www.trustnet.com. This is helpful but you don't need Quicken to use these sites.

There is some improved support for small businesses but if you run a business you should also consider Intuit QuickBooks 2002. That said, the new Accounts Payable feature will help you track payments to suppliers while the Vehicle Mileage function helps track vehicle expenses for business. Support for creating invoices has been improved by adding on-screen editing. You can now also create estimates which can be turned into invoices when accepted.

You can see a full list of changes at www.intuit.co.uk/quicken/historical_comparison.html

Some of my old gripes about Quicken's support for investors remain valid. There are still a myriad of data items such as Open, High, Low, and P/E that are not populated for UK shares. If you need that sort of information then Sharescope or one of the personal finance websites such as the Motley Fool or MoneyExtra would be more useful. Nor does the portfolio view display average annual return on your investments. However it is available from the performance report. Also, price downloads are not supported for all unit trusts, for example Schroder US Smaller Companies.

And to sum up...

To sum up - Quicken has always been an excellent choice for anyone wanting to get their finances and investments under control. Quicken 2002 has some minor improvements making it even more attractive to first time users but unless you need the new functions such as the Emergency Records Organiser, there's little need to upgrade. If you do buy and find it's not for you then Intuit's 60 day money-back guarantee will come in handy.

 

Kai Chandler