Review of Quicken 5.0 "Quicken--A TRIPLE THREAT!! by Leonard Grossman July 3, 1992 Do you have a spouse who hates computers? Know someone who needs to become "computer literate?" or simply hate balancing your checkbook? Quicken can solve all three problems, and even more. Quicken 3 was the first software I actually paid for with my own money (not counting the WordSearch Bible I got at CACHEFest when the minister dropped out of the bidding). So when I got the opportunity to upgrade to the latest version and to write this review I jumped at it. Way back during law school, Sally started doing the checks, since I was teaching all day and in school all night. When I graduated, I left well enough alone. But, as a result, I never had any idea where our money was going. All I knew was that my paycheck was electronically deposited and sometime every two weeks Sally would announce we were out of money. Thank God for over-draft protection. From time to time we would sit down with pencil and paper and try to see where it was going but, it never really worked. Then I heard about Quicken. "Why not put the checkbook on the PC?" I asked. Sally, though, hated this machine (when the menu comes up it reads "Daddy's Addiction"). Still, she agreed to try. Within weeks, she was happily writing checks without bothering to balance the checkbook. Every few days, she would enter the data into the Quicken register. No more check book to balance. It happened automatically. The monthly checkbook rectification became a joint project. We would take turns reading entries to each other and marking them on the screen. After a few tries, we even figured out how to find mistakes. And I was beginning to see where the money was going. I started generating reports, created by Quicken. I organized them different ways. By category, by payee, all kinds of ways. We soon learned to use separate categories for her cash withdrawals (ATM's) and mine. How pleased I was to observe, in a gentlemanly fashion, that her cash withdrawals were about twice mine. We couldn't understand it. Then we noticed that we were hardly spending anything on groceries. A light dawned. Sally used to go to the cash machine at Dominicks before buying the groceries. Her ATM's included all of our groceries. Mine only covered lunch. After we noticed that I started eating in the Federal cafeteria more often. We learned many things. But most of all that we don't do anything unreasonable, but we do many reasonable things. Quicken helped in many ways. At tax time, it provided neatsummaries of deductible items (but be careful to check them- just because you put it in a deductible category doesn't mean it will fly). We even created a separate account for my mother to help her keep track of her charitable deductions and expenses on her rental property. It was annoying, though, to find her expenses mixed with ours when I wanted to generate reports. It seemed that each time I would have to be very selective when I designed reports to avoid the problem. Of course, Quicken's data can be imported directly to Turbo Tax, another advantage if you like that program. I have learned not to say anything if I can't say anything nice, so although I may be in the minority, I won't say anything about TT. Then I decided I wanted to use CheckFree to make many of my payments via modem instead of writing checks. But Quicken 3 wasn't compatible with CheckFree. I could have used CheckFree's own software, but we were used to Quicken's flexibility and, besides, even with Stacker, I'm running out of disk space again (closets, too.) Sally wasn't convinced it was worth the service charge to use CheckFree. Then one day, around the 17th or 18th of the month, I found an envelope addressed to the bank that holds our mortgage. "What's this?' I asked. Sally's face grew red. She had written out the mortgage check around the first of the month to have it ready to mail for or five days before the mortgage was due (the 15th) but it had gotten mixed up on the dining room table, with the Pizza Hut flyers and other essential mail. The late fee was nearly 40 bucks!! Why don't we use CheckFree?" I suggested again. With CheckFree you can set up payments in advance and they are automatically made on the day you choose, provided you leave the required lead time. There is only one advantage in using CheckFree's software over Quicken (well, maybe two, but who's counting?) Using CheckFree, you only need to allow 4 business days lead time before checks will be issued--with Quicken its 5 days. I don't understand why the service requires such a long lead time, but that's for another review (one I probably won't write, since, if you can't say something nice . . .) In any event, we upgraded to Quicken 5 which has CheckFree compatibility built in. The upgrade installation was easy enough. I figured out how to import my old data (although I remember being frightened to discover that, one mistake and I would have trashed it. So follow the manual closely if you are upgrading) and were up and running. In fact things ran so similarly, I never looked at the manual again. I pay my mortgage using CheckFree, but few other bills, since knowing where its going still doesn't create more money and cash flow is important. (Overdrafts go onto a charge card you designate--if that isn't already up to its limit. That's why its so frustrating not to be able to make electronic payments in real time-- so you can be sure of your balance.) BTW--The second advantage to the CheckFree software is that you can leave E-Mail inquiries for CheckFree and receive messages back. Using Quicken you can leave E-Mail for CheckFree but they get back to you in writing using snail mail. They say they will get back yo you by Compuserve if you leave your ID number, but I never heard from them that way. With the exception of CheckFree, we are using Quicken 5 exactly as we did before. But last night, in preparation for this review, I learned a little more. Things I wish I had known!! Quicken has a number of built in tutorials, including a Quicken overview that takes about 10 minutes and a "Quick Tour" which is an interactive program of seven lessons that takes about an hour to complete. Other tutorials help you set up, create a new file, create a new account, and create payroll support. I strongly recommend taking the quick tour. After using Quicken for nearly two years I learned valuable shortcuts and hints. (When I mentioned it to Sally, she said, "Isn't it great, I went through it just after you installed the upgrade...saved hours!!") The Quick Tour covers "Getting started," "Using the Check Register," "Recalling a Memorized Check" (a great time saver), "Creating Reports," " Adding New Accounts (in which I learned the difference between an account and a file-- now I can keep my mother's accounts separate and stop creating those confusing reports i spoke of earlier), "Transferring Money Between Accounts" for those of you with all that money stashed away in Switzerland and Berwyn), and finally, "Balancing Bank Statement" (No-it won't tell you where to find the money, just how to make the numbers come out even). Finally, I should mention that a few months ago Sally quit her job and asked me to help her create a resume. At the bottom i wrote "Computer Literate." She looked at me quizzically. "What do you think you've been doing up there with Quicken all these months," I asked. Today she has a new job. She spends a lot of time doing data entry. . . .I'm not so sure she's grateful.