Product Description

First-time users:  Get ahead of bills andmanage money easily Product Information See what you're spending so you know when you can splurge.  Get a better handle on your finances, so you always know where you stand.Quicken Starter Edition shows you where your money is going for the month -- soyou can see what you have left over.  Ideal for first-time Quicken users. (Does n

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2181 in Software
• Brand: Intuit
• Released on: 2007-09-09
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .15 pounds

Features

• Designed for first-time users only, Quicken Starter Edition will get you up-and-running quickly
• Make online banking even better--bring all your online accounts together in one place
• Quickly see where you are spending your money--and what's left over for you at the end of the month
• Say goodbye to late fees. Pay your bills on time--and right from Quicken--using Quicken Bill Pay
• Make tax time easier by categorizing deductible expenses as you go through the year

Amazon.com
Designed for first-time Quicken users, Quicken Starter Edition 2008 will help you get a better handle on your finances, so you always know where you stand. Quicken Starter Edition shows you where your money is going for the month--so you can see what you have left over. NOTE: Does not import existing Quicken data.*

Check in anytime to see exactly where your personal finances are at for the month or year.

See a monthly calendar of your paychecks, bills and expenses to help you schedule bills, set reminders and help avoid late fees.

See what you're spending (so you know when you can splurge).

See where your money is going (a.k.a. "money management")
Check in anytime to see exactly where your personal finances are at for the month or year. Quicken shows you what you have coming in, going out, and most importantly, what's left over each month to spend or save.

View all your finances in one place
Bring your online accounts--including banking, credit card, and loan accounts--together all in one place. Avoid the hassle of going to multiple web sites and remembering multiple passwords. With Quicken, you see it all in one place and you need just ONE password (1).

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 bills from within Quicken using Quicken Bill Pay or a third party bill pay service (2).

Save time at tax time
Mark expenses as tax deductible throughout the year, so you have everything ready come tax time. Quicken Starter Edition also exports your data directly to TurboTax, so you won't have to re-enter the same information twice (3).

Take advantage of more connections to more financial institutions
Quicken Starter Edition 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).

Import your PayPal account transactions into Quicken
Whether it's payments or income--or both--Quicken can now import your transaction data directly from PayPal.

Get free support when you buy, install or upgrade Quicken(4)
If you need help installing or upgrading your new Quicken Personal Finance software, free phone support is available for Quicken Starter Edition 2008 through December 31, 2008.

(1) Online features require Internet access and are subject to change. Services vary among participating financial institutions or other parties and may be subject to application approval, additional terms, conditions and fees. More than 5,322 participating financial institutions as of 6/05/07.
(2) To pay bills in Quicken requires Quicken Bill Pay (sold separately) or a third party bill pay service (fees may apply)
(3) TurboTax sold separately
(4) Email, Forums and Chat technical support provided 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Phone technical support provided Monday--Friday, 5:00 am--5:00 pm PDT. Additional fees may apply.

Customer Reviews

If you're considering jumping into Quicken
You should ask yourself - "how can a piece of software be capable of generating so much hostility from its user base?" If you can't think up a good answer, go ahead and install Quicken, and you'll have an answer before long.

Some of my favorite quirks from Quicken 2006 & 2007 that I'm glad to see survived the upgrade to Quicken 2008:

Basic arithmetic errors: sometimes, if you edit transactions in the register, every subsequent transaction will get confused about the running total (e.g., change a $10 debit to a $20 debit, and instead of changing the running total by $10, watch in delight and amazement as the running total leaps by thousands, literally thousands, of dollars).

Basic reporting errors: go ahead and open the category list, and click the (very unintuitive) button to generate a report for the category _DivInc. If, like me, you have several years of investment transactions, you're sure to have dividend income, but Quicken will tell you "no transactions for this category." Funny, if you type _DivInc into the global search window, it will bring up all those transactions the report couldn't locate.

File corruption: sometimes, I like to imagine Quicken's routines as a bunch of angry little gnomes running around the traces of my processor and through the registers of my memory. This is because, every so often, the gnomes demand a sacrifice, and offer up burnt offerings of your data integrity to their terrible god of woe. I can't otherwise imagine how downloading QFX data from Hewitt Associates confused Quicken so - in the online center, it shows "number of outstanding transactions: -65,536" Yep, negative 2 to the 16th power of transactions outstanding.

Probably the worst part about Quicken, however, is trying to free your data. If you've got any kind of complicated financial picture (i.e, if you're over 25 years old), you won't be able to free yourself from Quicken's grasp, since the only way to get data out of the program is in QIF format, one measly account at a time. Funny, they don't support _importing_ QIFs, claiming, and I quote, "QIF technology is over 10 years old and was designed for technical support purposes . . . QIF Data Import requires many steps to download, is a poor customer experience and can lead to duplicate transactions and errors." That old technology is good enough for you should you dare to _export_ data from Quicken, however. They're going to make darn sure that you have a "poor customer experience" and suffer from "duplicate transactions and errors" if you try to take your data anywhere else.

Don't waste your money
Quicken has come out with yet another in a parade of buggy, incrementally underwhelming releases.

I've stuck with Quicken 2006 which has quite a few bugs, but I know what they are now after using it for 2 years. There are vast reaches of every Quicken release that will just not work right. Those are usually the "nifty/cool" features they tout on the box and in the ads. They just slap those features in and then ship the product, even with the code not completely tested and working correctly.

The check register and so forth is pretty solid -- most of the time. Even so, once you get a lot of transactions in your database, things start to go a little nuts and you can't reconcile anymore, without putting in "Balance Adjustment" entries. Believe me, I have sat there with printouts and hardcopy statements in hand, and there is no discrepancy. Just a bug somewhere that pops up every 3-4 months or so.

If you own a previous version of Quicken, don't bother upgrading. If you are looking to buy something new to get started, try Microsoft Money first.

Buyer Beware
Don't believe the description which states you can track your investments with this version. It only supports checking, savings, and credit cards. Looks like you need to spend an extra $60+ for the Premier Edition to support investment tracking.