Product Description

Plan, save and control your finances with Quicken Deluxe 2008. Quicken lets you see your finances your way, instantly. Now it's easier than ever to manage a personal budget, pay bills on time, track your investments, maximize tax deductions - and find more ways to save. Quicken Deluxe 2008 gives you all of the features of Quicken Starter Edition - plus additional tools to help you manage spending and savings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2217 in Software
• Brand: Intuit
• Released on: 2007-09-09
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Features

• Includes all the features of Quicken Starter Edition plus additional tools to help you and your family better manage savings and spending
• Make online banking even better--bring all your online accounts together in one place
• Connect to your banks, 401(k)s, brokerage or mortgage accounts with a single password
• Get suggested spending limits and set savings goals based on the day-to-day information you enter--and then check your progress through the month
• Let Quicken help you accurately track and categorize expenses for simpler tax preparation

Amazon.com
Start saving for what you and your family really want--vacations, better day care, a new home--by staying on top of your everyday spending. Quicken Deluxe 2008 replaces the old-school concept of "personal money management" with a smarter way to keep track of your money and set longer-term savings goals.

Bring your online accounts--including banking, credit card, loan, 401(k), and investing accounts--together all in one place.

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

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.

Store important documents and statements in one place.

Save for the bigger things you and your family really want.
Quicken Deluxe 2008 gives you all the tools you need to help you manage spending and savings

View all your finances in one place
Bring your online accounts--including banking, credit card, loan, 401(k), and investing 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)

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. Quicken shows you what you have coming in, going out, and most important, what's left over each month to spend or save.

Pay your bills on time
See a monthly calendar of your paychecks, bills and expenses to help you schedule bills, set reminders and--most important--help avoid late fees. Easily pay bills from within Quicken using Quicken Bill Pay or a third party bill pay service.(2)

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. You can quickly see where you have room to spend or save more. Set flexible spending targets on regular expenses like gas and groceries and then easily check your progress throughout the month.

Save time at tax time--Works with TurboTax
(3) Quicken Deluxe makes it easy to mark expenses as tax deductible through the year, so you have everything ready come tax time. Quicken Deluxe also exports your data directly to TurboTax, so you won't have to re-enter the same information twice.(3)

Store important documents and statements in one place
Not only can you bring your online data into Quicken Deluxe, you can scan in bank statements, checks and receipts for easy reference. No more time wasted looking for receipts and statements--everything is stored in one central place.

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 Deluxe 2008 through December 31, 2008.

What's New in 2008

Make saving as easy as spending

• New! See where you can save more
  The new "My Savings Plan" instantly shows a summary of your actual spending and compares it to what you planned to spend for the month. You can 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! Now it's easier to categorize your expenses
  A reorganized and redesigned menu makes it easier than ever to categorize your expenses. You can also add extra details to any expense to help jog your memory--i.e., the specific restaurant for a dining expense or the trip destination for an airline ticket.
• Improved! Smarter navigation makes it easier access the tools you need
  Easier navigation makes it faster to get around and discover the features and tools that work best for you. Clickable tabs let you 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.

Track everything in one place

• New! Track your 529 contributions
  Include 529 contributions as part of your overall net worth. See how you're progressing on your college savings goals.
• Improved! More connections to more financial institutions
  Quicken Deluxe 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 payments or income--or both--Quicken can now import your transaction data directly from PayPal.
• 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.

(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

Quicken 2008 Deluxe on Win XP SP2
I am a long time Quicken user, dating back to 1993. Lately I have used Quicken 2002 Basic ever since August 2001. Sitting on the fence post for several years, looking and listening to the horror stories that others have had with Quicken upgrades made me reluctant to upgrade. So what were my options with a program that is quickly becoming extinct and technical support that is now 3 years since evaporated?

First, I took Microsoft Money up on their trial offer - downloading Microsoft Money Deluxe and took a test drive of the program. 35 Megs of download file later, I installed the program. Installation was a snap. The program found my Quicken 2002 data file and converted it to Money - NO data errors as a result of the conversion (I had only 8 months of data in that file). After playing with it for 20 minutes, entering in several transactions, I didn't like the feel of how the program took my data - it felt like an older program that needed a major amount of work to get it up to date. It reminded me of my Quicken 2002 program with functionality. Needless to say - I dumped it - right then and there.

That left me with Quicken or a full blown accounting package (like Peachtree) as my remaining upgrade options. Quicken became my next choice - taking Quicken up on their 60 day guarantee - what did I have to lose?

Here are my experiences with Quicken 2008 Deluxe thus far:

Installation: For me, this was an upgrade from Quicken 2002 - the only version on my present computer. The installation program found Quicken 2002 and backed up the Quicken 2002 data files in a separate BACKUP file directory in Quicken. The program then uninstalled 2002 and installed 2008 - 10 minutes total time. The end of the CD install, the program looked for patches and program updates on Quicken web site and automatically downloaded and installed these patches - without problems. NO reboot required. NO freeze ups/crashes in the installation process.

Registration: I could not register my program on-line - I am using IE 7.0 and for some reason, even disabling my firewall, shutting off Norton anti-virus and accepting all cookies that Quicken recommends in the error message, I still couldn't connect to register the program. There is a service bulletin of how to disable registration screen that will nag you each time you start the program - I did that and to this time (two days now) - NO registration prompts.

Data Import: I have 8 different data files with data going back to 1/1/94. The oldest (and largest) has 15,000 transactions in it. All of my data files were imported into the Quicken 2008 format without any noticeable data errors. All of my files passed integrity and validation by Quicken before data was converted to 2008.

Bank Download: This was something I have not experienced in Quicken 2002. The banks were not really hot on this point back then when 2002 was released. I was with Wells Fargo bank at that time. Wells charged a monthly fee (like they did on everything) to connect with the Wells computer to transact any business through Quicken - I passed - the cost/benefit was not there for me.

That is not the case today. Banks and credit card companies encourage it! What I did fined were some entries of mine that didn't exactly match the banks entries were downloaded and added in to the accounts directly. More so in the credit card transactions area since who you buy from and the name of the entity processing the charge is different. I manually entered these items for years! Duplicates had to be removed and the accounts had to be reverified for accuracy. Now - I have set the download parameters to receive my approval of any changes first before automatically posting to my accounts. Two hours to straighten out that mess! Called: Learning curve.

Stability: I have not experienced any Quicken program loader issues, switch file issues, Splash screen logo issues, data corruption issues that others have experienced when installing and using Quicken 2008. The printing of reports works fine.

I had one crash with 2008 already, but the crash was of my doing. I tried to back out of an on-line transaction too quickly and the program couldn't release my Internet connection before I requested Quicken to perform the next process. After recovery, I went back and reperformed the task, this time being patient. When performing these tasks - be patient - the program eventually responds and releases control back to the user. If not - Quicken will crash! I didn't lose any data as a result of this crash.

In all - this version appears to be stable, or at least as stable as my Quicken 2002 version was.

Backups: ALWAYS! I backup each and every time I exit a Quicken session. The attachments also get backed up in a separate file directory for backup. I don't like the creation of separate file folders for each attachment file, since the program is not generating a separate file name for each attachment. The program does generate a separate file folder name each time an attachment is created. Seems odd to me, but that is the program.

Thus far - Quicken 2008 Deluxe was a good upgrade for me.

Don't Buy Quicken 2008
I have been a Quicken user since the DOS days. In April I upgraded from 2005 to 2007 without too much fanfare. Everything converted fine and I was really pleased with the new attachment feature where you could scan or attach existing files to individual transactions. I began scanning all of my invoices and bank statements and shredding the originals. Then I bought a new computer and decided to order Quicken 2008 along with the new software to ensure it would function well under Windows Vista operating system. That's when all hell broke loose. Like other comments in this forum have pointed out there are many glitches in 2008 that they can't seem to resolve. Technical support is absolutely AWFUL. I have spent hours upon hours speaking with their support staff (I assume from the accents they are in India) and cannot get a resolution to my printing issues. When I try to print attachments they now print so large that two inches or more are lost on the right hand side and the bottom of the document. Also if the document is multi-pages there is no way to access anything except the first page. So all of my work scanning documents into transactions has caused me to basically lose the originals. The technicial attempted to charge me $24.95 saying it was not a conversion issue. That is until I pointed out I had no problem printing the same attachment in 2007... so how could it NOT be a conversion issue. Two technicians tried to tell me it was a printer issue and I should contact HP. I informed them I had already done that and since ALL other programs printed fine HP technical support had taken the stance that it is a Quicken issue. I further pointed out I have both an HP and a Canon printer and it doesn't print properly on either one. And FINALLY if you go directly to the scanned document and print from Windows it is also fine. The final solution from the last of five conversations I had with their technical reps was to uninstall 2008 and re-install 2007. Of course then I would have to re-enter and re-download everything from the past 3 weeks since 2007 can't read the 2008 data format. Then there is the issues with downloading from my banks. It brings in transactions that have been already reconciled from months ago. In most cases it matches it up with the original but you have to accept it to get it out of the lower window. I didn't have that issue when I went from 2005 to 2007. There are also some transactions where it doesn't see a match and you have to do a manual edit to match it up; or in some cases delete it. So I fully understand why many people are complaining about both the latest versions of the software and the absolutely HORRIBLE technical support available from Intuit. Like others here I think I will try MS Money and see how well it converts. I do not want to deal with Inituit technical support ever again.

Nothing new - same old problems
If you already own an earlier version of Quicken within the last couple of years, save your money and don't bother with this. Quicken has added a lot of stupid "enhancements" that are cosmetic, and often make it worse - for example, the new way they highlight the transaction you are looking at, which partially blocks the neighboring transaction, or the "renaming" function, which is way too aggressive. This, for example, renamed a restaurant named Bay Ridge to ebay, and a parking facility called avistar into avis. This caused me much time on the phone with the merchant trying to resolve the charge until I figured it out.

Meanwhile, they have completely failed to repair some of the key problems that have existed for several versions, and have failed to add any meaningful or useful enhancements. I returned this version to Quicken. I would suggest that, unless you have a strong reason to switch, or are a new Quicken user, you save your money and work with the version you have.

The old days of Intuit being a customer focused organization which really understands the customers' needs and develops their software accordingly are long gone. Evidently, Intuit is internally focused and is not paying attention to their users any more.