First thoughts on Quicken 2008 Home & Business

It's really not very different from Quicken 2007.
I find the constant reminders to tag all of my transactions for one business or another very annoying. Especially when very few of my transactions are business expenses attributable to my personal business - most are work expenses from my employer.

The tabs across the top let you select general categories, you had similar functionality in 2007, without the convenient access of the tabs. But it's not such a big improvement.

2008 adds 529 acocunts which is great - i had to set ours up as ira accounts to apply the tax deferred attributes. Unfortunately, there's no documentation on how to convert an ira account into a 529. I have a bad feeling that I'll need to create a new account, ,move the transactions over, delete the old account and re-connect the new account using on-line download.

I do like the idea of the savings goals - it's now part of budgetting. I'm wondering if these are the old savings goals from so many years ago - I found them difficult to use as they were really phantom accounts that hid contributions from other accounts. The challenge was that the contributing accounts no longer aligned with their actual balances (due to the contributions made to the old savings goals).

I really would like to get the budgetting functionng working in Quicken 2008 - something I haven't done in years. I alwasy pre-enter several months of anticipated transactions. It simulates cash flow, but is a bit of work.

I also receive funny errors saying it can't read my data file. I can get around it by opening the file manually. This error bothers me alot. If it doesn't shut me down I'mgoing to have to pursue this matter.

Otherwise the program operates just like 2007. it may have been a needless upgrade.

Regards, makingourway

Quicken 2008 better priced at Costco and tales from the Quicken Community

Costsco's selling Quicken Home & Business for $64.99 - a better deal than Intuit - even with the $10 off coupon.

I looked at the Community discussion boards for Quicken 2008. It came out early in September 2007. Like the prior version, Quicken 2007, it had several serious defects that disabled productivity for quite a few people. I lost weeks of Quicken 2007 use until the first patch came out.

This time they're at patch #3.

I'm glad I've waited (more out of ignorance), but it seems safe to upgrade now.

Here's one tip - don't convert a data file with long file names.

Regards, makingourway

PS the features I like are the savings goal feature.
EBay types would like the integration with paypal. I have one, but not much money there, so it's of uncertain current value.

Quicken 2008 $10 coupon

There's an in-program coupon for $10 within Quicken 2007 if you want to upgrade to Quicken 2008.
I'm stymied as to the benefit.
Any thoughts?