Quicken 2003 Basic :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Not User Friendly

2003-08-23
I guess I am just too dumb, but I did not find Quicken easy to use. The help menu is useless. The screens are hard to understand and the menu names do not make sense.

I used to use an Excel spreadsheet and I think I will just go back to this.

One upgrade that I regret. 2003-08-17
I've used Quicken since it's first windows based version (and even a dos version before that). I upgraded from Quicken Basic 1999 to the 2003 version because of the hefty rebate when purchasing Turbotax. The basic register works well, and I got to like the scroll down account list to the left, but reconciling is more of a hassel, and for me the straw that breaks the camel's back is the reports. In my contracting business I use a variety of reports to track job expenses to various clients using categories and classes to sort them out as needed. The reports frequently lock up, so you have to reboot when you use the "customize reports" feature. They display on a small screen so they are difficult to read, they do not print out as cleanly, and the program memorizes and saves your reports in a totally crazy manner. If you quickzoom on an item you have to restart the original report when you go back. After 6 months of aggrivation I put my old version of Quicken 99 (itself not without some flaws)back on, but I cannot get it to recognize my data. I'll call for technical support sometime, but it seems that they work the same hours as I do (except I'm out in the field, not in front of the computer). Also, since my work computer does not have an internet connection, the frequent prompting for internet services and the constant display of the useless internet buttons is annoying.

At this point,however, I wish that I had not smashed the Quicken 2003 CD up and thrown it into the ... can.

Quicken is the best home finance program 2003-08-05
I've been using Quicken for about 13 years. Quicken is easy to use and gives good snapshots and graphs of your finances in one centralized place. Don't take the negative reviews too seriously, Quicken is the best personal finance program on the market. While I've had my beefs with Quicken over the years, the negative comments here are WAY off base and ill-informed. The ability to download transactions directly from your bank is awesome. Not all banks support it, but when it is available, it's great. To use Quicken properly requires personal committment, you get out of Quicken what you put into it. Quicken has a MUCH easier and more intuitive user interface than Money. I tried Money a couple years ago, and was totally lost. If you try Quicken and find your head swimming, then go buy a Quicken instruction book, possible "Quicken for Dummies", something to explain it in simple terms. It's a great product.

Quicken 2003 Stinks !!! 2003-07-26
After using Quicken for 8 or so years, I'm sorry to say that buying Quicken 2003 is buying aggravation if you want to do anything besides basic addition and subtraction.
The manual ? It stinks.
Online help? It stinks.
Chat help ? Not on weekends or evenings after 7:00.
Telephone support ?...not available evenings after 7:00 or weekends.

I've wasted way too much time trying to get online accounts to run, etc. I'm very disappointed. Once upon a time I respected Intuit, but no more. It seems most of the product now is geared to get you to put stock trading information into Quicken's system...

Great product; not so good if you don't want online accounts 2003-07-19
This review is written from the point of view of someone who does not use the online features of Quicken. I'm sure those features have value, but if you want to use them I recommend you find a reviewer who can tell you about them. If like me you just use Quicken to record your financial transactions then read on.

The fundamentals of Quicken haven't changed much between this version and 1999, which was the previous version I used. However, I think users of older versions will find this one irritating in several ways. First, Quicken tries very hard to make all your accounts online. This means that you can't create an account that does not refer to an online institution without a bit of extra trouble; and once you've created the account, every time you try to reconcile, it wants you to download information from the web. If you're tracking the downloaded information in any other way, as I am, this is just an irritant.

A second irritation is that once you do set up an account online, you are forced to change your password for each account. I actually agree that this is good security practice, but the user should be notified ahead of time that this will happen.

The screen area devoted to the actual Quicken layout is smaller. Much of the extra area is devoted to what are essentially advertisements for more Quicken products and functionality. With a bit of work I was able to figure out how to increase the area displaying transactions, but it's still less than it used to be.

The old tabbed layout, with right hand tabs for open accounts, has been changed to a left hand menu that is not shrinkable beyond a certain point. The bottom inch of the screen is reserved for clickable icons for your online accounts; this menu can't be removed -- a tremendous irritation as I never use it. There is no way to mark an account as "not an online account any more".

Reconciling is much as before, but the old facility whereby a carriage return would mark a transaction as reconciled and also move you down a line is gone. This is the single most annoying change for me; it more than doubles the time it takes to reconcile.

Overall, Quicken is a wonderful program, and I strongly recommend it -- it does great things and will save you time. But this version is, for me at least, a real step backwards. If, like me, you don't plan to use the fancy online features, I would recommend buying an older version if you have confidence it will run on your computer.

Great Financial Program 2005-07-11
Great program. I have been using this for 2 years and I am extrememly satisfied with it. Downloading transactions is ridiculously easy and saves me tons of time. No more balancing the checkbook! You can create reports with just one touch of a button and create a budget in a flash!

Problems With Quicken 2003 Are Now Overcome 2004-02-18
In the spring of 2003, I upgraded from Quicken 2000 to Quicken 2003. I have used various versions of Quicken since the DOS days. Immediately after this upgrade I had many problems running the reports. My entire computer would freeze and I would need to shutdown and restart Quicken. I most cases I was unable to get the information I need from Quicken. Recently, I purchased a new laptop with Microsoft Money was installed on it. I moved the Quicken 2003 data file onto the laptop and used Microsoft Money to gather some of the detailed information I needed to prepare my tax return and the financial aid application for my kids. I was about ready to trash Quicken and use Microsoft Money until this week when I upgraded the operating system of the computer that the Quicken 2003 was installed on. After upgrading from Windows 98 second edition to Windows XP Home edition, all of the reports work and work well, apparently the functionality of Quicken 2003 on Windows 98 is not as compatible as desired or expected based upon the wording on the Quicken 2003 product packaging. Since all is now working well I am going to stay with Quicken for now.

this software sucks. 2004-02-09
This software does a terrible job to match the short sale and cover short transactions in my brokerage account. I have to manually specify those transactions to the right types ONE BY ONE and it still couldn't calculate the trasaction proceeds correctly. It is so frustrating. It wastes both money and time to use this software to track capital gains.

Ok So Far 2004-01-28
I am all too familiar with software disasters. I have developed a philosophy of staying away from new releases because of this. I decided on Q3 B because my bank advised that they were no longer supporting Q2k. I went with the basic version due to in the past not really using the features from the deluxe packages. I am running a 1.8 Gb, 512mb ram, W2K machine. The install went well although it took a while to convert the files. Apparently there is an encryption process that occurs which I will research later. The interface is a little more cluttered, but overall I was up and running in about 90 minutes. Also, the online update downloaded a software patch (expected) to update the app with the latest an greatest. Problem was, it turned my screen grey and did not give me any notice or status of what it was doing or the progress until completion. I worked with another machine for a while and when the drive settled down and the CPU utilization was at three percent, I rebooted. Everything came up fine. Hopefully by the time I have to upgrade again they'll have Quicken 2006 fully debugged. :)

Risks Using Quicken 2003-10-03
Before you give Quicken such a favorable review, you might want to check the 4 month problem they have had with Credit Card downloads. These have compromised the integrity of customer financial records. Their final solution has been to have customers manually check 4 months of statements and enter missing transactions by hand.

In the course of this problem they gave out incorrect information stating how soon the problem would be fixed, and stating that when fixed one would be able to download the missing transactions. For months they did not even inform customers that the problem continued past the original June 24 deadline.

Howard Sloane