Entered CNET Catalog: 08/26/2007
SKU: 403616
Manufacturer: Intuit Inc.
Manufacturer description
If you have a home business or are self-employed, you need Quicken Home & Business 2008. It is the only Quicken software that brings your personal and business finances together - while letting you manage them both separately - for a complete view of your financial picture.User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5
User Rating: 
5/10
Beware of Bugs
Pros: The product is perfect for personal or professional use. I have been a user for over a decade and love how easy it is to manage my finances.
Cons: For the last three years Quicken and MS Windows have had conflicts. Look up "Quicken screen flickers" and you will see many unhappy customer comments. The solution offered by Quicken basically requires that you down grade your machine. Unacceptable.
User Rating: 
4/10
Makes tracking your finances more difficult!
Pros: Tracks multiple credit cards and bank accounts...if the bank/credit card company is compatible. Multi account update is a breeze. Planning software makes paying off debt or saving for an expense easier. Tracks where you are spending your money.
Cons: Mismatched transactions leads to inaccurate account balances.
Setup is tedious and frustrating, even for simple accounts.
Confuses you about how much money you really have.
Displays assets in a confusing manner.
My problems started with getting all my accounts set up initially. The current version will not allow the download of .ofx files which many banks still use to provide a digital copy of your bank records. This wouldn't be a big deal if all my accounts were compatible with Quicken?which they aren't. When you encounter an error logging into your account through Quicken it tells you to call the bank and get a special Quicken access code...two of my banks had absolutely no idea what I was talking about despite transferring to several different departments. So I decided to just try it with the accounts that would update properly and manually enter the accounts that wouldn't. After a whole day of gathering and entering data I thought I had everything setup. Then I tried to do some planning for upcoming bills and such and realized that if I wanted to do that I needed to set up the accounts differently. There wasn't a suggestion regarding how to select the proper account type when initially adding an account or how the account type would significantly affect planning purposes and it was counter intuitive to logical thinking. So then I tried to change the account type but it wouldn't let me. Then I tried to delete it and add it again as a different account type and it wouldn't let me because I had planned transactions for that account. Then I tried to cancel the transactions and delete the accounts and in order to add them again. No go. So I started all over from scratch with all the accounts?I wasn?t amused. This only took a few hours and afterwards I thought everything was good to go.
This is when I got really really irritated. I had setup anticipated transactions for our salaries and various bills in the upcoming months in order to determine the daily, weekly and monthly cash flow so I could pay off some debt as fast as possible without causing overdrafts. The problem I experienced is when you try to ?schedule? a paycheck/bill Quicken adds/deducts it from your checking account on the date you specify. This seems great until you try and sync with your actual downloaded account statement. It will not match transactions even if they have the same name and dollar amount on the same date, which totally screws up your account balance. This seems like a pretty basic function to me so not getting that right is simply unacceptable. I even tried to tweak it so that it wouldn?t actually enter the transaction into my checking account and would just appear for planning purposes but was unable to do so. What good is financial software if you can?t try and plan with it?
On the bottom left hand of the program it displays your total net worth. This makes it difficult to determine your day to day cash value if you also want to track investments....at least for me.
I did like how it displays where you have spent your money. I found the categories automatically assigned to the expenses to be pretty accurate but you can tweak them further to get a more accurate picture. While this is a helpful feature most of my banks and credit cards also offer this feature for free. Quicken really just combines it for all accounts.
Overall I found Quicken to be overly complicated and confusing. The bottom line for me is that it just didn?t work like I thought it should. If you just want to track a few basic accounts and not do any planning Quicken may work for you, then again, most banks offer pretty detailed records online so you could save some money. For me it was as a simple choice to uninstall this program and look for something else.
User Rating: 
2/10
Doesn't do what it advertises.
Pros: Interface with banks for transaction download, Invoicing, Statements, business accounts can be kept separate from personal accounts, interfaces with Tax software to make tax time less effort.
Cons: Lack of support and support people who don't understand the product. Features that don't work, cost for upgrade software which doesn't really upgrade anything.
User Rating: 4/10
I tried to change column widths and from then on it was disaster. Many emails/calls achieved zilch
Pros: Same as older versions
Cons: Would not update stock prices and caused no end of grief
User Rating: 
3/10
H&B is Poorly supported by Intuit, No Books yet, Buggy
Pros: Offers a lot of potential
Cons: Evidently not tested. Tax line items incomplete
Also, the investment module is buggy and support is very poor. It evidently relies on a server that is down without any graceful alternative.
