Quicken

What do you like best?

I like the ease of downloading transactions from financial institutions. It makes budgeting and accounting easy. My categories are automatically loaded. It allows you to store your asset information so that you can monitor your stocks and mutual funds. This is useful to see how you are doing in your financial performance and get that daily number on your net worth $$$. But what is most helpful is the budgeting reports. These let you toggle back and forth between your category totals and your detail transactions so that you can see how your spending compares to your yearly budget. The reporting function allows you to build annual budgets and monitor your performance against them. Another great thing, you can download tax related information from Quicken to Turbotax, since they are both owned by Intuit. This is a big time-saver around tax time, and let's face it, that's a busy time for everyone!

What do you dislike?

I have used Quicken both for Mac and for Windows. I think the Mac platform is a not quite as slick, and I wish it would be easier to transfer information between the two platforms, as I do work for someone with the Windows version. I also would like the reports to be a little easier to customize. I wish Quicken had an insurance policy organizer, as I'd like to use it to organize all of my insurance policies.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

It is very good for small business or especially for home budgets and personal use.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Keeping all of my banking accounts in balance on a continuous basis. Managing cash flow for all my personal needs. Accumulating information for my annual tax filings. Reminders are helpful. Generally saving a lot of time.