After having a bad experience with Microsoft Money 2006 that caused me to recreate 9 months of data, I decided I would give Quicken 2007 a try. Doing some quick research, it seemed to be relatively popular and also fit my requirement that it work with Windows Vista (although it was not certified at the time of purchase). I generally had moved away from using Quicken due to what I deemed to be clunky interface and poor usability. That being said, after the problem I had with Microsoft Money, I decided I could not care less about usability if the product actually worked and I could track my data. After all, what good is a pretty product if it does not work?
After purchasing Quicken Home & Business 2007 I began entering the required information, including that needed to take advantage of the much touted online banking. As described in the feature list:
With over 5,124 participating partners, download your business and personal banking, credit card and investment information directly into Quicken
My first experience with this feature led to numerous errors stating the Quicken server was temporarily down or issues not unlike those described here and here. Once I actually got the connection to work however, a new more disturbing problem reared its head and led me (and perhaps you should consider doing the same) to switch back to Microsoft Money.
Once I started downloading transactions into my accounts, I noticed something strange. Once the download was complete, Quicken would report I had x transactions I needed to reconcile, but no such transactions were listed in the register. For example, I would click to update my checking account, Quicken would begin the process and then state it was completed. I would be given a message that, as an example, 7 new transactions were downloaded and needed to be checked. The account balance had been updated, but no such transactions were listed to reconcile. In other words, I had no way to categorize, update, or reconcile the downloaded transactions; they were completely invisible.
Given the problem, I began searching for this error which led me to the Quicken user forum. What I found there was not only disturbing, but really outlandish, given the type of software Quicken is. I found post, after post about this issue, and a host of others.
In this January 19th, 2007 post, a Quicken message board representative asks for help solving the missing transaction problem:
We are trying to locate and correct this problem with Quicken 2007 permanently for all users--if you are having this issue, please send your contact information to the forum "Feedback" button. Someone may contact you shortly to discuss the possibility of sharing your data files with us.
If you can contribute to a solution for this issue, we would very much appreciate it--
As of today, the problem is still ongoing. Furthermore, there has been no update regarding the progress of a fix or the status of of progress made towards one… Quicken has simply left its users with broken software for months. One poster stated that Quicken now is telling users to install Quicken in a base drive directory such as C:\Quicken rather than the correct Program Files directory. While no one has tried it yet, Quicken is apparently telling people to now install the software in a non-best practices fashion and in a completely outdated fashion? Further, if that is indeed the correction, why has there been no new service pack in months – if all that is needed is to change the default installation directory?
I strongly recommend anyone thinking about purchasing Quicken 2007 to take a look at the user forums for problems that you might encounter. After what I read, and the problems I encountered, there is no way I can trust using Quicken 2007. How can I possibly trust a financial software package with disappearing transactions, consistently failing servers and poor communication? The answer is, I cannot. At least with Microsoft Money, the issue I had dealt with features I can now disable… The same cannot be said for Quicken 2007, which I have disabled period.
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