Review by H. Wang

I have been using Quicken since 2000 to manage my personal accounting, my trading business accounting and accounting for multiple rental properties. Before 2000, I was using Excel for accounting, but Excel was just not the right tool for that. I could not image how I could handle all these accounting needs without Quicken. Any time when I want to review how my business is doing, I just need to run a report with Quicken. At tax season, I just need to print a year-end tax report from Quicken, then I have all the data I need for tax filing purpose.

I did try Microsoft’s Money for one year, but Microsoft closed out the Money product later. With Microsoft’s leaving, Quicken is now the only brand-name consumer-level financing/accounting tool in the market.

I did update my Quicken every other year in order to be able to download data from Quicken. For the 13 years using Quicken, I could not recall running into any stability problem. I am very surprised to see all the stability issues complained by other reviewers, because I never had one, including this Quicken 2013 version.

I download stock/mutual fund quotes on daily basis for my trading business, but I don’t download transaction records from my bank accounts or my credit card accounts. I see a lot of complaints in other reviews are relating to downloading transaction records from bank accounts. I can not comment on that, but I never run into any problem in stock/mutual fund quotes downloading.

I also never run into installation issue as reported in other reviews. I guess I am lucky on this.nThough Quicken keeps releasing new version each year, but I really don’t see many new functions lately.

All in all, Quicken may not be the best accounting tool, however it does deliver good value at this consumer-level price. Though I am stuck with Quicken, I am happy that Quicken solves my accounting headache.