Review by Bobby R. Treat

Unlike many other reviewers, I bought this product in April, after Microsoft had plenty of time to fix the bugs – which means they’re not bothering to fix them at all – and I have spent three months using it, not just a couple of days. Also, I have a PhD in Mgmt Science and Information Systems and was a long-time Quicken user, so I’m not exactly stupid, I don’t think, when it comes to personal finance software. Here are just a few of the problems I’m seeing:nnDefault settings, almost without exception, are the worst possible settings.

Advanced budget reports don’t work at all. Actual amounts for transfers out appear as positive, but budgeted amounts appear as negative numbers, so the difference is huge precisely when you’re saving a lot of money. In some other cases, the budgeted amount in a report has no relationship to what was entered, and there’s no visible way to correct it.

Cash flow charts assume all monthly budgeted amounts are subtracted on the first of the month. That makes projected balances very pessimistic - nearly useless.

After downloading transactions online, the program does a lousy job of matching payee names with previous transactions. It’s bad enough to make ANY reliance on automated balancing impossible.

If you have a 2002 or earlier copy of Quicken, you may as well keep using it, even though online banking no longer works.

How could there be NO software company out there who wants to take this business away from Intuit and Microsoft, who apparently don’t even WANT it?