Product Description

Quicken Home & Business 2008 brings your personal and business finances together for a complete view of your financial picture. Get smart business tracking tools to track expenses you paid for with a personal account. The redesigned Business Center gives you an overall snapshot for what's going out from your accounts, what's coming in during the month and what's left. Quicken remembers the first time you enter a business transaction to avoid needing to enter the same data twice. This applies to similar entries in the future to help identify transactions you enter as business or personal, income o

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #562 in Software
• Brand: Intuit
• Released on: 2007-09-09
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: 6.00" h x 1.00" w x 8.00" l, .19 pounds

Features

• Perfect for home business owners and self-employed professionals
• Track personal and business expenses in one place and see how your business is doing
• Capture all your possible business deductions and see your tax deduction status throughout the year
• Connect to your bank, credit card, 401(k)s, or brokerage accounts with a single password
• Make online banking even better--bring all your personal and business online accounts together in one place

Amazon.com
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.

Easily see your total financial picture -- including your business and personal finances.

Quicken helps you identify transactions you enter as business or personal, income or expenses, with a single click.

See a monthly calendar of your paychecks, bills and expenses.

Scan in and attach related documents to particular accounts or projects, so you have everything you need in one place for easy reference at tax time.

Because, for you, business is personal.
Quicken Home & Business 2008 gives you the personal financial features found in Quicken Premier plus smart business tracking tools.

Manage both your personal and business finances together in one place
Easily see your total financial picture--including your business and personal finances. You can manage them together or separately--and view them as you wish.

Manage your business expenses from personal accounts
Because Quicken Home & Business tracks both your personal and business finances, it's easy to track business expenses you paid for with a personal account--i.e., office supplies on a personal credit card or dinner out with a client you paid for with personal cash.

Instantly see how your business is doing
The redesigned Business Center gives you an overall snapshot of your business and personal finances--what's coming in for the month, what's going out, and what's left over in your personal and business accounts. A new Profit and Loss view helps you see how your business is doing overall for the year.

Easily track and categorize business expenses
Quicken helps you identify transactions you enter as business or personal, income or expenses, with a single click. Avoid having to enter the same data twice. Quicken remembers the first time you enter a business transaction, then applies the same information to similar entries in the future.

View all your finances in one place.
Bring your personal and business accounts--banks, 401(k) or other IRA, online brokerages--together in one place. Avoid the hassle of going to multiple web sites and trying to remember multiple passwords.(1) With Quicken you can you can see it all in one place with just ONE password.

Maximize deductions so you can minimize your taxes
Quicken Home & Business makes it easier than ever to categorize deductions. What's more, the business tax deduction summary lets you instantly see your tax deduction status throughout the year to help maximize your deductions and help avoid any April 15th surprises. Easily import data to TurboTax.(2)

Pay your bills on time
See a monthly calendar of your paychecks, bills and expenses to help you schedule bills, set reminders and--most importantly--help avoid late fees. Easily pay personal or business bills right from within Quicken with Quicken Bill Pay or a third party bill pay service.(3)

Keep important documents together and protected
Just scan in and attach related documents to particular accounts or projects, so you have everything you need in one place for easy reference at tax time.

Get free support when you buy, install or upgrade Quicken(4)
If you need help purchasing, installing or upgrading your new software, free phone support is available for Quicken Home & Business 2008 through December 31, 2008.

What's New in 2008

Get what you need to stay on top of your business

• New! Get help finding deductions you may have missed
  Clearly see your business tax deduction summary to date in the Business Center--and see other possible deductions that Quicken has found to help make the most of your tax return.
• New! Easily track your business' profit or loss
  The new Profit and Loss view in the Business Center lets you check in anytime to see how your business is growing.
• New! Get a total picture of where you stand
  The Cash Flow Center gives you an overall snapshot your business and personal finances--what's coming in for the month, what's going out, and what's left over in your business and personal accounts.

Clearly keep track of expenses

• Improved! Categorizing your expenses is easier than ever
  A simple drop down menu makes it faster to categorize your income and expenses as business and personal--right from your register. You can also add extra important details to any transaction, so you can assign it to a particular business, client or project.

Let Quicken do the heavy lifting

• Improved! More connections to more financial institutions
  Quicken Home & Business 2008 connects you to over 5300 banks, brokerages and other financial institutions--including PayPal. It's easier than ever to truly bring your accounts together in one place.(1)
• New! Import your PayPal account transactions into Quicken
  Whether it's personal payments or business income--or both--Quicken can now import your transaction data directly from PayPal.
• New! See where you can save more
  A new "My Savings Plan" instantly shows a summary of your actual spending and compares it to what you planned to spend for the month. Quickly see where you have room to spend or save more. Set flexible spending targets on regular expenses like gas and groceries and then check your progress as you go through the month.
• Improved! Smarter navigation makes it easier access the tools you need
  A more intuitive navigation makes it easier and faster to get around and discover the features and tools that work best for you. Tabs let you quickly switch between Quicken's main pages. And a new interactive account bar makes it clear which of your accounts you are working with at any given moment.
• New! Get reminders of scheduled bills and transactions--without opening Quicken
  If you're using Windows Vista, our new Quicken Billminder Gadget can remind you of scheduled bills and transactions directly from your desktop.

Customer Reviews

Upgraded from Quicken 2005
I recently upgraded to Quicken 2008 from Quicken 2005. I did this since the online downloading capabilities for Q2005 would end in April 2008.
(Quicken's policy is to support the current version, plus the prior two years)

I've been a Quicken user & fan since 1994. Quite frankly, I'm not overly impressed with 2008. It has a new navigation bar, a new look and feel, and some (very minor) enhancements. Underneath the look and feel, it acts just like Quicken 2005.

If you're familiar with Q2005, you'll feel (almost) at home with Q2008. Obviously, Intuit is having a challenging time making a great product even better.

Overall, I can't recommend upgrading to Q2008 if you're not forced by Intuit. There aren't enough compelling new enhancements to justify an upgrade. It's still a great product, but the upgrade to Q2008 isn't a major improvement.

Stick with Quicken 2007
As a long time Quicken user who upgrades to the latest release nearly every year I approached the 2008 version with great expectations. Integration with Paypal & personal cash flow tab amongst other touted enhancements.

First off, let me say that I have been using this software for nearly 3 months. I am up to Release 5. I would classify the problems with the 2008 version as follows:
1) Performance problems
2) Download woes
3) Data integrity /bugs

1) Performance problems - the program will go into spasms when trying to do anything as complex as adding a single transaction to the register. It will blink, sometimes for as long as 30 secs, before adding the transaction & returning control of the program to you. It is so slooooooooow that it can literally drive you crazy, that is if the flashing spasms of the program haven't sent you into epileptic shock first.

2)Download woes - Paypal integration? Not if you use their security dongle. Other downloads fail routinely with HSBC about 50% of the time due to "Quicken server issues" & with other financial institutions about 5-10% of the time. Much higher than I experienced with Quicken 2007. On the plus side I am now downloading from Janus, but that may have been possible in the 2007 version as well and I didn't realize it.

3)Data integrity & bugs - I'll only report my most frustrating here and that is in the tax planner. Enter a number manually & magically it disappears & defaults back to a Quicken estimate. After much trial & error I found a workaround - you need to exit the planner after entering a manual number, then re-launch it for that number to "stick". Totally unacceptable & unbelievable that in 5 releases it's still not fixed.

This stands in stark contrast to Intuit's arguably greatest software achievement ever - Turbotax 2007 - this years edition is the most perfect, elegant combination of interface simplicity, intuitiveness & functionality I have ever experienced in a software product. Note to Intuit - no more enhancements needed - it's perfect! Just repeat next year & the year after please. Can't the Quicken team borrow a few of the Turbotax programmers to fix this Quicken baby?

If you are running an older version of Quicken this may be worth the upgrade in order to get the cumulative enhancements made over the years. But for Quicken 2007 users who are satisfied, since there is no apparent way to revert your Quicken 2008 files back to 2007 format, upgrade at your own risk!

How Quicken Ruined My Weekened
I upgraded to Quicken 2008 Home & Business from the 2007 version on a Friday. I subsequently spent all Saturday and Sunday trying to recover from that disastrous decision. The bugs were numerous: unable to print invoices and some reports (others worked fine for some reason). Help file system was completely screwed up. It took me until Monday to get my accounts somewhat functional (on different accounting software), though I'm not out of the woods yet. Much more work ahead to recover from my Quicken nightmare. Oh, and you can forget about customer service. Their phone support system is an endless maze where you get to speak with NO ONE. Their LiveChat support never seems to connect with an agent. Email support is non-responsive. Don't let this happen to you.