By Max Lockie
You might say, “Why does Intuit need to upgrade its outstanding product again? It seems like it was only last year that Quicken 2001 came out. It vastly improved many areas over Quicken 2000—particularly in the area of the Tax Planner and the Account Overview Pages. I received from Matt and Richard (Quicken evangelists) a copy of Quicken 2002 Deluxe along with a sample database that I used for this article. I look forward to moving our own family finances to Quicken 2002.
This year, some of the over a dozen major improvements are in the area of Investments, Taxes, Reconciliation and Budgeting. Budgeting is always a difficult issue. Now Quicken 2002 has the ability to set up multiple budgets. No, this is not one budget for normal and a second if you win the Lottery. This might be one if your child or grandchild goes to USC and the other budget for Orange Coast College attendance. Budgets can be automatically based on past transactions or can be built from scratch. The new capability allows for easy modification of the budgets.
Also updated is the “My Finances” setup screen, which is the heart of the new, easier setup process in Quicken 2002. Here you will find it easy to select the items to be watched as your financial life moves along. Another newly improved item is the “Never Miss a Bill.” Here Quicken finds past repeated bills that you have entered and can alert you when these bills are due. Needless to say, Quicken can download your account information from many banks, credit card companies and brokerage houses.
Another new service is Automatic Categorization. Quicken recognizes thousands of company names and automatically categorizes a transaction. I am not yet sure if this is what I want but it sure is a good start. Finally, several new investment features have been included. Three of the features are the addition of the Portfolio Analyzer, The Tax Implications View in the Portfolio View and the ability to track more types of investments such as IRAs, Employee Stock Purchase Plans, individual bonds and short sales.
After all of this, I look forward to bring information down to my Palm Pilot. As I understand it, this is a subset of Quicken but should put at my fingertips a lot of information.
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