Introduction

Quicken

Quicken is a personal finance program that works on Macs, OS/2, PC/Windows and DOS. It can perform management of checking accounts as well as credit cards, assetaccounts, liability accounts and investments.

Features

Getting More Information

Printing Report, Graphs and Checks

Utilities and Data Conversion

Investment Handling

Common Problems and Solutions

Known Problems

This document was created by Andrew DeFaria (defaria@cup.hp.com).


Features
What's New in Quicken 4 for Windows

Quicken 4.0 for Windows is currently the latest version of Quicken.

The following summarizes everything that's new in Quicken 4 for Windows, and tells you where to look in the Quicken User's Guide for more information.

• Snapshots

Snapshots provide an instant overview of your finances. Display your most commonly used graphs, budget and savings goals, and calendar notes, all on a single Snapshot screen. See Chapter 16, Displaying Snapshots of your financial picture.

• Forecasting

Create a forecast graph of your future cash flow and account balances. Base your graph on known items (like scheduled transactions) and estimated items (like budget amounts). See Chapter 22, Creating a forecast.

• Tax Planner

Estimate the amount of taxes you will owe at year-end, based on tax-related data you've already entered in Quicken. See Estimating your taxes with Quicken Tax Planner in Chapter 18.

• Budgeting

Improved Budget window now lets you easily drag and drop budget categories, group categories into supercategories, collapse and expand categories and supercategories, and display your budget in category or supercategory view.

QWIN3 and QDOS users: if you created a budget with subcategories displayed in Quicken 3 for Windows or Quicken for DOS, click anywhere on a category row to show its subcategories in Quicken 4's Budget window.

See Chapter 21, Creating a budget or savings goal

• Savings goals

Savings Goal status bar shows your progress on setting money aside for important goals, without actually moving money into a real savings account.

Contribute money to or withdraw money from a savings goal with one simple form.

See "Creating a savings goal" in Chapter 21

• Progress bar

If you've created a budget or savings goal, display your progress no matter where you are in Quicken with the progress bar. See Tracking your goals with the progress bar in Chapter 21.

• Account register

The account selection bar lets you move between all your bank accounts with a single click.

Transfer form lets you transfer money between accounts with one simple form.

New options let you switch the date and number columns, and switch memo and category columns.

Open a split or clear all split lines for a split transaction with a click of a button.

Recategorize multiple transactions at one time.

Enter a date by clicking the Calendar button in the Date column, and enter an amount by clicking the Calculator button in the Payment or Deposit column.

See Chapter 3, Using the register

• Find and replace

Change the details of multiple transactions at one time. See in Chapter 3.

• Financial Calendar

Choose to display register transactions, scheduled transactions, or both on the Calendar.

Print the Calendar.

New Manage List button displays the Memorized Transactions List, where you can choose exactly which memorized transactions you want to show in the list to the right of the Calendar.

QWIN3 users: If you used the financial planning graph in Quicken 3, your data and worksheet can now be found in Quicken 4's forecasting feature. (Choose Forecasting from the Plan menu).

See Chapter 5, Using the Quicken Financial Calendar.

• Memorized transactions

"Lock" a memorized transaction to preserve all details of the transaction whenever you recall it. For example, suppose you recall a memorized transaction for a $40 ATM withdrawal and then change the amount to $60 in the register. If the transaction is locked, the next time you recall the transaction, the amount remains $40. If the transaction is unlocked, the next time you recall the transaction, the amount is $60. See Chapter 4, Memorizing transactions.

• Scheduled transactions

When Quicken reminds you of scheduled transactions that are due, record them in your register all at once instead of one at a time. See When scheduled transactions are due in Chapter 5.

• Reminder

Each time you start Quicken, Reminder automatically reminds you of notes for the day, checks due/to print, scheduled transactions due, investment reminders due, and electronic payments to transmit (if you use CheckFree). See Using Quicken Reminder and Billminder in Chapter 5.

• QuickFill

QWIN3 users: If you used the option "QuickFill from register" in Quicken 3, all QuickFill from register transactions are converted into memorized transactions. See Chapter 3, Using the register.

• Investments and Portfolio View

Track tax-free securities.

Set any time period for a security's price history graph.

Show or hide the market value on a security's price history graph.

QWIN3 users: Securities are initially displayed in the Portfolio View, whether they are open or not.

See Chapter 12, Tracking investments

• Reports

Preview how your report will look before you print it. See Printing reports in Chapter 17.

Use the Profit and Loss Comparison business report to compare profit and loss for month to date vs. year to date, or year to date vs. last year to date. See Business Reports in Chapter 13.

For comparison reports, you can specify Prior Year Period as the second date range.

• Graphs

Memorize and recall graphs. See Memorizing and recalling graphs in Chapter 15.

• Fiscal year organization

Define a fiscal year instead of a calendar year, and then create reports, graphs, and budgets based on that fiscal year. See Appendix A, Customizing Quicken.

• Options

Options buttons in the register, Calendar, Write Checks window, Graphs window, Reports window, and Reminders window now provide access to options right where you need them. All options can still be accessed by choosing Options from the Edit menu or choosing Options from the iconbar.

The "Save Desktop" option is now found on the File menu.

The "Fonts" and "Colors" options are now found in Register options.

The "Qcards" option is now found on the Help menu.

See Appendix A, Customizing Quicken.

• Online services (requires a modem)

Update security prices with Portfolio Price Update. See Chapter 25, Updating your portfolio prices online.

Order checks, software, and other items through Intuit Marketplace. See Appendix C, Ordering supplies and other Intuit products.

Register as a Quicken user. See Registering your software in Chapter 1 of the Getting Started Guide.

• Check backgrounds

Display checks onscreen with a variety of colorful backgrounds. See Chapter 6, Writing and printing checks.

• Other improvements

HomeBase provides an easy way to access the most common Quicken menu items.

When you create a new account, select Guide Me to be guided through step-by-step.

Improved Qcards help you perform more tasks, even easier than before.

Copy and paste results from the Calculator.

Explore other Intuit products on the Add-Ons menu.

The Quicken User's Guide index now indexes keywords to useful online Help topics such as setting up a 401(k) in Quicken.

• Electronic Payments

In Quicken you can pay all your bills using CheckFree. You can also use Intuit's IntelliCharge Credit Card.

• Quotes

Quicken allows you to update your mutual fund and stock accounts using Quicken Quotes.


Getting More Information

Contacting Intuit

This section covers where you can get more information for Quicken. Naturally you can contact Intuit at:

Intuit Corporation

P.O. Box 51470

Palo Alto, California 94303

Technical Support:	(415)-858-6003

Ordering Supplies:	(800)-433-8810

Order Software:	(800)-624-8742

Other channels

Depending on your access, there are also these electronic channels available:

• Discussion Groups: Quicken is most often discussed in the Usenet News group comp.os.ms-windows.apps.financial and CompuServe.

• FTP and BBS File sources: Updates and patches to Quicken can be obtained from here.


Printing
Printing Reports, Graphs and Checks

From Quicken you can print out financial reports and graphs, however you may find that it is easier just to view them on your screen. Quicken supports most printers that are supported by Windows.

Printing Checks

You can have Quicken print your checks complete with Payee address. You even have room to include a message, usually your account number, thus eliminating the need for the remitance advise. These checks can then be signed (I've even managed to digitize my signature which I then print on my checks) and stuffed into a windowed envelope, stamped and mailed!

I recommend using checks with stubs on them. By using this you can completely eliminate the need to carry a checkbook! I haven't had a checkbook for over three years and let me tell ya - I don't miss it. I simply carry a couple of Quicken checks with stubs. When I write a check I also fill out the stub and enter that information into Quicken when I get home.

Pre-printed Check Sources

Here is a list of places that pre-printed checks compatable with Quicken.

Logos

If you order checks from Intuit you can choose from a couple standard logo artwork designs or send in your own artwork and have Intuit put your custom logo on your check. Quicken allows you to put your own logo on your checks. The requirements are:

• Artwork for a logo must come from a Windows bitmap file (*.BMP).

• Logo artwork can be no larger than 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch square.

• Logos cannot fit on Laser Wallet Checks.

Printing Your Own Checks

While difficult, it is possible to print your own checks instead of buying them. The difficulty lies mostly in the fact that those numbers on the bottom of normal checks need to be printed in magnetic ink so that check reading machines can read your account number. You also need to find blank check stock.

Here is information about how to print your own checks


Utilities and Data Conversion
Utility Programs

• Getting Stock Prices From Prodigy

According to Robert Huff (rhuff@netcom.com):

I have uploaded to SimTel, the Coast to Coast Software Repository (tm),  (available by anonymous ftp from the primary mirror site OAK.Oakland.Edu and its mirrors): ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/win3/finance/ezq01s.zip EZ-Quicken for Prodigy Windows automatically downloads stock, bond, mutual fund, and index quotes and gathers the latest Company News on the stocks you are interested in. It then automatically updates the portfolio values in Quicken Windows (v3 or v4). It does this through the Prodigy Service which charges nothing extra to "Value Plan" members for quotes or news after market hours.

Requirements:	DOS 3.2 or later

Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later

Quicken for Windows v3 or v4

Active Prodigy membership

ShareWare. Uploaded by the author.

Other Utilities

Here is a list of other utility programs for Quicken.

Importing and Exporting Your Quicken Data

Quicken provides and import/export facility that works on an account by account basis.

Converting data from the Macintosh to the PC

QConverting from Managing Your Money to Quicken

Password Cracking

If you forget your password then you can send in your data file to Intuit and they will return you your file unpassworded.


Investment Handling

Under Construction...(hard hats required)

Handling investments can be tricky but well worth the effort. Using Quicken to track your investments can give you valuable information as to how you are really doing with them.

401(k) Plans

Many people participate in 401(k) plans through their employer, often contributing via a payroll deduction. To do this you should

• Create your 401(k) account(s) as investment accounts.

• Itemize your paycheck including transfers into your 401(k) investment accounts

Note that there is a lot more information about how to do this in the Quicken Online Help.

If you create separate 401(k) accounts and mark them as containing a single mutual fund then transfers to these accounts will be recorded as BuyX's rather than Xin. This is useful if you are dollar cost averaging.


Common Problems and Solutions

(aka FAQ)

Under Construction...(hard hats required)

Introduction

While Quicken handles many peoples financial needs, personal finances are, well... personal and therefore it's hard to satisfy everyones needs. Quicken tries to follow sound financial practices. Individuals sometimes have their own ways of doing things, sometimes to their own disadvantage. If you feel strongly that Quicken should be enhanced then please submit your description of this enhancement by sending Email to Andrew DeFaria (defaria@cup.hp.com).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How should I record my paycheck?

How do I convert Quicken data on my Macintosh to Quicken data on my PC?

How do I convert from Quicken to MYM?

Where can I get pre-printed checks?

How can I print my own checks form blank check stock?

Where can I pick up Quicken 4.0 for Windows patch for OS/2?

I just added a new category. Why doesn't it show up on my Budget Window?

How can I change the frequency (or eliminate entirely) the automatic backup dialog that Quicken puts up when I exit?

Why does Quicken create a BACKUP directory and how do I get it to stop that?


Paycheck
Frequently Helpful Answers

How should I recorded my paycheck?

One way to record your paycheck is to simply enter the net amount and categorize it as Salary however doing so will not allow you to take advantage of Quicken's ability to help you with your taxes.

A better way is to "itemize" your paycheck. Here's what you do:

Create a memorized split transaction for your paycheck. Enter your gross pay as the category "Salary". Make sure that "Salary" is an Income category and is tax-related with the tax form being W-2:Salary. Next enter your various deductions like Federal Tax, FICA, etc as negative numbers or deductions. Make sure these categories are tax-related to the appropriate tax form lines as necessary. Quicken's Tax Link Assistant (deluxe version only?) can assist you with this. If your company offers Pretax Medical Insurance then you should categorize your pre-tax health insurance uniquely (mine is "Pretax Ins") then edit the catagory to be tax-related and assigned to the form W-2:Salary. This makes it appear as a negative amount in the Tax Schedule report for W-2:Salary that other programs, such as Quicken Tax Estimator and TurboTax use, reducing the overall total. Also, for IRA/401(k) plans, make sure that the Tax-Defered Account - IRA, 401(k), etc is checked and Transfers In is set to W2:Salary in the Edit Account screen for each of your IRA/401(k) accounts. When you get your paycheck, check your Quicken entry. Occasionally things will vary by a few cents due to rounding in things like FICA. Use the Financial Calendar to add your Paycheck transaction as a reoccuring event.

Setting up your paycheck this way minimized what you need to do to track your income and allows Quicken to export accurate data to tax preparation software such as TurboTax. Doing this should make your Quicken Tax Schedule report, W2-Salary total figure match your W2 that your employer sends you.


Quicken to Mac
Frequently Helpful Answers

How do I convert Quicken data on my Macintosh to Quicken data on my PC?

According to John Faughnan (jfaughnan@medinfo.labmed.umn.edu):

To tranfer to or from Mac/Windows you must export all data in QIF format, and transfer as ascii files (Mac Apple File Exchange will do Mac ASCII to PC ASCII translation). Then import. Beware the import process; the description in the manual is poor. Do not include classes, categories etc. It is best to allow Quicken to generate those from transactions. Beware "special handling". It may not work at all for financial transactions. Experiment with a small subset of your accounts first to see what works best. Expect some hands-on adjustments. Print out account balances and work to get all values equal.


Quicken to MYM
Frequently Helpful Answers

How do I convert from Managing Your Money to Quicken?

According to David Morton (dpm@best.com):

There is a utility that helps you convert your Managing Your Money files to Quicken files at ftp://shell.best.com/pub/dpm/mym2qkn.zip.


Preprinted checks
Frequently Helpful Answers

Where can I get pre-printed checks?

Pre-printed checks are convenient and available from Intuit. Intuit's prices are pretty high. Here are some other places that you can get pre-printed checks from:

According to (sohn@apple.com):

I asked for information about two weeks ago about alternate sources of Quicken checks. Here is the information I collected. I did not check on continous feed checks, but give them a call if that's what you're interested in. (All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.) The two best deals are from Checks in the Mail and American Check Printers. However, some stores carry a package from American Check Printer that contains a disk to place your order on and a coupon for $20 off of your purchase. Since this package costs only $13, you save $7.)

Company                    Phone #         500        1000         2000

Intuit                  800-433-8810    $58(.116)   $78(.078)   $113(.0565)

Checks in the Mail      800-733-4443    $45(.090)

American Check Printers 415-617-8899    $45         $65

CompUSA, EggHead ($13 w/ $20 coupon)

Deluxe Check Printers   800-328-0304    $65(.130)

Viking Office Prod      800-421-1222                $65(.065)

NEBS Business Forms     800-225-6380    600-$60(.10) 1200-$84(.07)

Inmac (Only Continous)  800-547-5444

Cheque Techonologies    800-582-3396 (ask for sky, from Carl Epstein in Tor)

Local Printer (Kwik Copy)

In addition I found a company called Aatrix Software that sells you everything you need to print you own checks: check stock, a magnetic toner cartridge, the font, and software. It costs $300 for 1000 checks. However, the toner should last 6000-7000 checks and costs $169 and check stock costs $25 for 1000 checks printed three on a page. (This works out to $.053 per check if you assume toners lasts 6000 checks.) It is compatible with Quicken and accounting packages. The phone number is 1-800-426-0854.

A few comments from other neters:

(sgoldr@netcom.com) on Deluxe:

They sell personal size laser compatible checks for about $65/500, which I think is slightly higher than Quicken. I ordered some of these (quality of paper samples seemed better than Quicken), but have found that they have some problems in that every 20th check or so cannot be machine read by the bank due to misalignment of parts of the OCR character string printed at the bottom.

According to (faigin@acm.org):

Designer Checks

P. O. Box 13387

Birmingham, Alabama 35202

Customer Service:	(800)-239-4087

FAX Orders:	(205)-328-3815

Prices:

    Continuous                      Single  Duplicate

             Business Size:  250     $24.95  $39.95

                             500      37.95   54.95

                             1000     57.95   89.95

                             2000     89.95  149.95

             Business w/voucher

                             250      29.95   44.95

                             500      41.95   62.95

                             1000     64.95   99.95

                             2000     99.95  169.95

             Wallet

                             250      24.95

                             500      37.95

                             1000     57.95

                             2000     79.95

     Laser

             Business Size:  250     $29.95

                             500      42.95

                             1000     59.95

                             2000     88.95

             Business w/voucher

                             250      39.95

                             500      57.95

                             1000     79.95

                             2000    128.95

             Wallet

                             250      24.95

                             500      39.95

                             1000     62.95

                             2000     89.95

     Checksavers

             Continuous      7.95

             Laser           7.95

     Deposit Slips           12.95

     Envelopes

             Business        Wallet

     250     19.95           18.95

     500     29.95           28.95

     1000    44.95           43.95

     2000    89.95           87.95

 Colors for checks: Blue, Tan, Green, Maroon

This is from an order from printed 1/94 and included in my last check order from them.


Printing your own checks
Frequently Helpful Answers

How can I print my own checks from blank check stock?

The main problem with printing your own checks is that you need to print the account information on the bottom of the check in MICR (magnetic ink) so that automated check reading machines can process the check.

According to Sal Cambareri (71763.3252@compuserve.com):

Here are some of the other vendors of laser MICR check technology for Quicken:

Check Factory Unlimited         800-749-2335

Create-a-Check                  800-947-6872

Blank Checks.

As shareware I know of two: Check Designer Mike Hart (75450.3705@compuserve.com) and LaserMax Sal Cambareri (71763.3252@compuserve.com) still available on Compuserve HP Forum and AOL.

All of the software can produce blank checks that can be used with Quicken, and all can provide checks for less than a nickle each. There is a problem with this technique: Hewlett Packard among other laser printer vendors strongly recommends that you never put a laser printed page through a second time. My guess is that it's supposed to hurt the fuser.

The better technique that my shareware provided is to print the whole check in a single pass. Besides protecting the laser this has a couple of additional benefits: If you have several checking accounts you don't ever have to change the check stock and you can't accidently print a check on the wrong check stock. Also you don't have to keep a supply of preprinted checks lying around as they are always printed on demand.

The vendor you discussed provided only 3 per page checks. Most of these vendors provide several styles. LaserMax provides 9 including wallet style & personal size (4 per page), as well as deposit slips.

The last versions of LaserMax support Quicken for DOS 4 through 8 and Q4W 2 & 3.


Patches
Frequently Helpful Answers

Where can I pick up the Quicken 4.0 for Windows patch for OS/2?

According to Gerald W. Wilkins (gwilkins@unl.edu):

Intuit has a patch. You can get it from ftp://software.watson.ibm.com/pub/os2/os2fixes/qw4fix.zip.

This patch supposedly fixes the following problem reported by Dana Dominiak (dominiak@dis.anl.gov):

When I try to do a backup in Quicken 4.0 for Windows while some other application is running in the background I get a dialog box that says:

Quicken for Windows

Invalid File Handle


New Budget Category
Frequently Helpful Answers

I just added a new category. Why doesn't it show up in my Budget Window?

Any new category that you create has a $0 budget amount to start with. To seethem in your Budget Window select Budgeting from the Plan menu then select Layout and remove the check from the Hide Zero Budget Categories. This should make your $0 categories show up. Next budget them as normal and turn on Hide Zero Budget Categories (unless you prefer to see them).


Backup Frequency
Frequently Helpful Answers

How can I change the frequency (or eliminate entirely) the automatic backup dialog that Quicken puts up when I exit?

From the on-line help:

Change the frequency of automatic backups

Because your Quicken data is so important, Quicken regularly prompts you to back up the current file when you exit the program.

To change how often Quicken prompts you to backup:

1. Quit Quicken.

2. From the Windows Program Manager File menu, choose Run.

3. On the command line, type NOTEPAD, then click OK.

4. From the Notepad File menu, choose Open.

5. Open the QUICKEN.INI file. It's located in your WINDOWS directory. Include the directory path if the file is not in the currently is diplayed directory. For example: c:\windows\quicken.ini. To display the files in a particular directory, double-click the directory name in the Directories list. To select a particular file, click its name in the list under the File Name box.

6. Locate the AutoBackup line in the QUICKEN.INI file. The number following the equal (=) sign indicates how often Quicken will prompt you to backup your data. For example, a 3 means that you'll be prompted to back up every third time you quit Quicken; a 7 means every seventh time.

7.  Change the AutoBackup number to whatever you would like. If you change the number to 1, Quicken will prompt you to back up every time you exit the program; if you change the number to 0, Quicken will never prompt you to back up.

8. From the Notepad File menu, choose Save.

9. Quit the Windows Notepad, then restart Quicken.


Backup Directory
Frequently Helpful Answers

Why does Quicken create a BACKUP directory and how do I get it to stop that?

From the on-line help:

Why does Quicken create a BACKUP directory?

Because your Quicken data is so important, every seven days Quicken makes a copy of your current file. It places this copy in a subdirectory named BACKUP in the directory where you keep your Quicken data files. If the BACKUP directory doesn't exist, Quicken creates it. Quicken keeps five historical copies of your data in the BACKUP directory. If you want to change the number of copies Quicken keeps in the BACKUP directory, or turn the feature off completely, see below.

What happens

Each time Quicken copies your current file, it renames the historical copies as follows:

Original file name      Copied file name

MYFILE                  MYFILE1 (always the most recent file)

                        MYFILE2 (renamed MYFILE1)

                        MYFILE3 (renamed MYFILE2)

                        MYFILE4 (renamed MYFILE3)

                        MYFILE5 (renamed MYFILE4)

To change the number of copies Quicken keeps in the BACKUP directory:

1. Quit Quicken.

2. From the Windows Program Manager File menu, choose Run.

3. On the command line, type NOTEPAD, then click OK.

4. From the Notepad File menu, choose Open.

5. Open the QUICKEN.INI file. It's located in your WINDOWS directory. Include the directory path if the file is not in the currently displayed directory. For example, c:\windows\quicken.ini. To display the files in a particular directory, double-click the directory name in the Directories list. To select a particular file, click its name in the list under the File Name box.

6. Locate the AutoCopy line in the QUICKEN.INI file. The number following the equal (=) sign indicates how many copies of your data Quicken will keep in the BACKUP directory.

7. Change the AutoCopy number to a value from 0 to 9. If you change the number to 0, Quicken will never copy your data to the BACKUP directory.

8. From the Notepad File menu, choose Save.

9. Quit the Windows Notepad, then restart Quicken.


Known Problems

The following list is maintained by me, Andrew DeFaria. If you wish to submit a bug or enhancement then send Email to (defaria@cup.hp.com).

Quicken 4.0

Quicken 3.0


Quicken 4.0
Known Problems

Quicken 4.0

• Sometimes when I start Quicken it somehow forgets that I have the Warn before recording uncategorized transactions switch on and I have to go into Options and turn it on again.

Reported by: Mike Merrill (mike.merrill@dseg.ti.com)

• Ηome Inventory fails to work. Trying to open an old home inventory file that I created with Quicken Companion elicits the following dialog box:

The database C:\SYSTEM\DATA\QUICKEN\HOP.IDB is from an older version of Quicken Home Inventory. Would you like to convert it to the current version?

Which I answer Yes only to be confronted by the error "Unable to copy data file" and "An error occured converting the file to this version. Please contact Intuit Technical Support".

• I have a number of 401k Investments accounts. There are times when I've noticed previously reconciled transactions become unreconciled. Here is one such example: I have a complicated Paycheck. It is itemized and one such itemization is a transfer of money to my Credit Union for payment of my car loan. I have not configured my car loan as a "loan" mostly because I have not figured out how to may an amortized payment in the splits window (bug/enhancement?) but also because my Credit Unions amortization formula doesn't seem to match up with Quicken's formula. As such, when I get my Credit Union's statement I go back to my paycheck and adjust the split transaction to accurately reflect the actual transfer to my car loan and the amount of principal. So initially I have:

             Salary

             ...

             [Car Loan]      Chevy Astro (Prinicpal)       -188.00

             Finance Charge  Chevy Astro (Interest)          -0.00

             ...

             [Magellen]      401k Contribution (25%)        -30.37

             ...

which I update from my Credit Union statement to look like:

             Salary

             ...

             [Car Loan]      Chevy Astro (Prinicpal)       -148.81

             Finance Charge  Chevy Astro (Interest)         -39.19

             ...

             [Magellen]      401k Contribution (25%)        -30.37

             ...

the problem, or the bug is that the transfer to Magellen has already been reconciled so an X appears in the cleared column. My changing the Car Loan and Finance charge figures causes this, and other transfers to Investment accounts to become uncleared!

• Ι tended to use the Financial Calendar for Scheduled Transactions and the Autofill from Register options. Quicken 4.0 has lost all my Quickfill from Register transactions!

More info:

If you used to use QuickFill from register in Quicken 3, and move to Quicken 4, it is supposed to put your QuickFill list into the memorized transaction list. This works only if you install Quicken 4 in the same directory in which you used to use

Quicken 3. If you put Quicken 4 into a new directory, and copy over your data files, you loose your QuickFill list.

• Memorized Transaction list allows one to view only locked transactions. It should also allow one to view only calendar transactions.

• I have a transaction on my Financial Calendar that does not appear on the Scheduled transaction list and I can't get rid of it!

• Financial Calendar should allow the user the ability to see more than one month in the graph.

• The Forecasting - Base Scenario window should allow the user to scroll forward by days or weeks or allow the frequency of something like two months. As it is I can't see the critial end of month/beginning of next month period where my income tends to drop (all those beginning of month bills).

• Αllow the user to tack on notes to any transaction so they can explain to themselves things like why this transaction exists. Often I'll "reconcile" something, both from the standpoint of bank reconcilition, but also in my own mind, why this transaction was made. Months later I'll be doing some financial snooping and enivitably come back to this transaction, scratch my head and ask myself the question: "Now why did I do it this way?". If I had a note attacted to the transaction to remind me about it then I could quickly and easily answer the question.

• Ιn Memorized Transaction List, one cannot tell that a memorized transaction is a check if it is also a split. "Spl" is listed in the type field.

• Εdit:Options:General Options has a check box for Turn On Special Effects but the Help fails to describe what the special effects are.

• Amortization formula is too restrictive. It does not match my Credit Union's idea of how to do amortization. Allow the user the ability to specify an amortization formula that fits.

• Provide a way to make a amortized payment inside a split. I pay my car loan to my Credit Union from my paycheck (a split transaction) directly and would like to make it amortized.

• The "balance" reported in the Account window (for investments) is estimated based on whatever price has the latest date, not on the price that was effective on or before the current date.

• Allow the ability to set up a Snapshots page that simply gives account balances in text and graph form for various accounts, including bank accounts.

• Memorized transaction dialog should have a "View calendar items only" in addition to the "View locked items only".

• Provide the capability to easily post *into* the calculator. Then I could go to a $ figure in the register and place it into the calculator easily.

• Quicken 4 now lets you paste from the calculator (which also nicely stays on top of other windows) into a numeric field in the register. However, I can not paste from the calculator into a field in the tax planner window. I should be able to paste anywhere in Quicken from its calculator.

• If you generate a budget report, and want to have the columns grouped by quarter, the quarters will be calandar quarters, rather than fiscal quarters. If you do it by year or half year, it uses fiscal periods. It should use fiscal quarters in this case.

• If you edit a scheduled transaction, and change the contents of the payee field so that it matches some memorized transaction payee, and then push the OK button, the amount of the scheduled transaction is silently updated to the value of the memorized transaction. QuickFill should only update all the transaction fields if you tab out of the payee field, and not if you press the OK button while still in the payee field.

• Allow the user to put both standard and customized reports and graphs into snapshots.

• The snapshot print facility should allow the user the ability to print to a file, preview, etc.

• Better integration with home banking from banks like Bank of American and investment companies like Charles Schwab.

• Αdd support for semi-annual compounding in the Financial Calculators. Semi-annual compounding is supported in the Set Up Loans activity, but not in the financial calculators.

• The Reminders window changes from "This Week" to "Last Week" when the week changes.

• Quicken 4.0 aborts with a General Protection Fault when trying to do a Year End Copy:

Dr. Watson 0.80 Failure Report

Mon Nov 28 11:20:33 1994

QW had a 'Exceed Segment Bounds (Read)' fault at QW 162:05da $tag$QW$

Exceed Segment Bounds (Read) $QW 162:05da$cmp word ptr es:[bx], 00$

Mon Nov 28 11:20:33 1994 $param$,

Last param error was: Invalid handle passed to USER 1:af7c: 0x5830

• My phone company (GTE) uses a different combination of numbers to suppress call-waiting than the Bells do; they use 70# instead of *70. Anyway, this is not a problem when dialing up Checkfree (via Compuserve's network, I believe), but it hoses when trying to do it from the Quicken Quotes module. Generally it ends up locking my system up completely.

• Provide a way to budget for future years. Allow for multiple, different budgets (kinda like scenerios in forecasting).

• I had a SuperCategory graph in a Snapshot that went red because I went over budget. QuickZoom brought me to the Budget Window. I fail to see how this is helpful. The Budget Window tells me what's been budgeted, information that already appears in the Snapshot (i.e. I know that already) but doesn't tell me why I'm in the red. What I'd like is for this QuickZoom to show me what has been actually spent for this SuperCategory (or Category).

• The Memorized Transaction List is supposed to be able to handle 2000 memorized transactions. Supposedly at 50% full Quicken is supposed to warn the user that their memorized transaction list is getting full, however at 660 transactions the warning appears. Not only that but Quicken turns off Auto Memorization. It can be turned on again but Quicken again turns it off on the next transaction.

How about this: You should be able to set the percentage of when you want to be *warned* that your nearing the fill point (including 100% meaning don't warn until I'm full). At no time should Quicken turn off Auto Memorization, rather it should just warn the user.

• Bring back Quickfill from Register! It is a much more hueristic way of dealing with memorized transactions, allowing the user to have a temporary memorized transaction list built from the last X transactions (with X settable via options) that are aged by date where old, unused transactions eventually disappear of this temporary list and to have a permenent memorized transactions for those less frequently used (but still important) transactions stored in the Memorized transaction list.

• Add two columns on the Memorized Transaction List titled something like "# of Uses" and "Last Used" that would show the number of times a memorized transaction is used and the date that it was lasted used. This way the user can quickly tell if a memorized transaction is a one timer or not needed anymore.


Quicken 3.0
Known Problems

Quicken 3.0

The following known problems existed in Quicken 3.0 and persist in Quicken 4.0:

• Provide a reporting "language" so that the user can really write their own custom reports.

• Adding "zero suppress" to the account list, in addition to the security list. An option to hide closed (bank) accounts, like the 'open/always/never' in the securities list.

• Better interaction with other Windows programs. i.e. OLE support. I'd like to make better use of graphs, report and data in other Win applications.

• Intuit should establish a connection to the internet for support, news, email and updates.

• Not all numeric fields in all dialog boxes (e.g. the reconciliation box) have quickfill pulldown buttons for the calculator. These boxes should be like the ones in the register or splits window where you can pull down a calculator.

• On the account setup, allow the definition of number of decimal points and the rounding behavior desired. This will eliminate/reduce the requirement for manual adjustment of transactions and amounts. Most mutual funds, for instance deal in amounts in whole cents, and shares to three decimal places.

• Allow access to on-line banking with banks who offer such services.

• Provide a data manipulation "language" so that the user can massage data in the way that they see fit (e.g. find all transaction in this investment account and change the memo field from "Estimated prices as of." to blank.

• Allow budget to extend longer than one year.

• It would be nice to have an easy way to distribute sales tax equally to all items in a split transaction. So if you have purchase of $121.00, $100.00 of which is categorized as Food and $10.00 of which is categorized as household, and $11.00 of which is Sales Tax (assuming a 10% sales tax) you could push one button and $10.00 of sales tax would be added on to the Food line and $1.00 would be added on the Household line.

• How about a feature that lets families of accounts (e.g. mutual funds) be combined into an equivalent super-account that can be viewed as one. Not only for RECON purposes but portfolio and reports etc. would be easier. Similarly loans could be grouped, retirement plans could be grouped etc.

• Expand undo to allow you to progressively back out what you had modified.

• Allow a "not on weekends or holidays" option for scheduled transactions.

• Eliminating the restriction on account size (now 64k of data).

• Expand the Dynamic Link concept of Windows such that the user can do things like dynamically link the "Actual" and "Budget" columns from a budget report into Excel. If you could even get access to the raw check register data more possibilities open up.

• I want the ability to define sub-accounts within an account. Savings goal accounts do not do the job adequately, because you can not include a transfer into a savings goal account as part of a split.

• Μemorized and scheduled transactions should allow you to specify the check number field. (I use this field to denote XFERs and FEEs, for example)

• Allow for automatic depreciation of investments at various depreciation methods with the depreciation occurring on a variable basis. In other words:

Account:                Truck

Initial Value:          17,000

Final Value:            5,000

Lifetime:               5 years

Convention:             Half Year/Mid Quarter

Method:                 Accelerated Depreciation  (double declining balance)

Update:                 Monthly

• It would be nice to have some sort of macro capability, where I could push one button and have it generate a series of reports that I like to see regularly. Snapshots don't allow me to print reports.

• Fully support investment transactions, including investment reminders, in the calendar.

• Add "nth" day of the month for scheduled transactions.

• Allowing the specification of tax free income accounts, with distinctions between federal, state, and total tax free investments. This could also be done on the basis of security.

• In the Portfolio View, there are fewer decimal places for the number of shares (or the price) than in my Schwab One account: the roundoff causes inaccuracies. It needs more, or a user's choice.

• I now use Quicken 2 for Windows and enter stock prices about once a week. However, when I go to plot the price history, the plot only shows one price per month regardless of how many entries I made that month. Quicken 6 for DOS displays every stock price I enter. Does anyone know if the new Quicken for Windows will display each stock price entry?

• I'd like to see tracking of stock option grants, including vesting periods.

• Note that if you schedule a memorized transaction with the Calendar and later edit the memorized transaction, the scheduled one does not change. I consider this a bug.

• When some dialog boxes are showing, I am unable to push the calculator button on the icon bar to pull up the calculator. I must cancel the dialog, get the calculator, make my calculation, and then post the dialog box again. Make the calculator always accessible.

• Support foreign currencies fully. This is not supported very well for either checking and credit card accounts but it is a real pain for investment accounts.

• Support the ability to select a bunch of transactions to copy to the clipboard instead of copying one transaction at a time. Exporting a range of dated transactions is too inconvenient.

• Data should be exportable to Excel in a cleaner manner. Tab separated text works (on a lot of stuff) but require a lot of cleaning up.

• On pie graphs, allow actual values in addition to percentages.

• Create a "delta" report that shows *only* the difference between actual and budget and fit it into a page.

• Individual scheduled transactions cannot be Investment type transactions. In general, all types of transactions should be schedulable.

• The calculator should be able to permanently store at least one number for recall during calculations. For example, the sales tax rate would be helpful when itemizing a receipt that is split up among several budget categories. It would also be nice if the calculator had a full line display that showed the entire equation, allowing parenthesis.

• Better integration between some of the basic features and the investment account features.

• Would like to have control over the ordering of transactions that have the same date. How about some drag and drop functionality?

• Adding a field for account ownership (husband/wife), allowing for easier grouping in reports and portfolio views, as well as in the TaxLink function to allow TaxLink to extract data from one Quicken file into Multiple Tax returns.

• Financial planners should allow periods of less than a year. So a user can answer questions like, "I wanta pay off this credit card in 6 months. How much should I pay each month?". Also, the Financial planner should be integrated with things like credit card accounts so that the interest could be extracted from the credit card account if it were entered. Also, one should be allows to solve for any variable, not just two it currently supports.

• The Loan facility should be able to operate with loans in terms of months so that one can have a loan of 6 months or 37 months.

• Provide a report which indicates which categories are not being used, and allowing easier deletion of those categories.

• Automatically default to sorting by date when printing reports.

• Calendar would be great to keep track of dividends due, bond coupons due, T-Bills maturing. (In fact, I bought v3 for this purpose, only to find that the calendar does not support investment transactions)

• Also, the calendar/planner would be very much more handy if one could schedule transactions for dates like:

       1. First business day of some month(s)/every month

       2. Last Saturday of some month(s)/every month

• Adding categories for tax free income to the REINVDIV, etc. list for investment accounts.

• The calculator truncates rather than rounds. For example, if I have a $.99 purchase and need to calculate 7% tax on it, Quicken gives me $.06, rather than the correct $.07. I can see that the calculation of 0.0693 is made correctly, but when I tab out of the field, the calculator truncates, this to 0.06.

• If I have 2 split lines with categories and classes and then I delete one of the split lines, so that the split disappears, the class is dropped from the categorization.

• There is no reminder if a class is not put on a transaction (all of my transactions require a class...it is just as important to me to be reminded of the missing class as a missing category).

• There is no way to budget within a class...for example, I would like to be able to generate an automatic budget based on the figures for one or more of my classes only.

• Some scheduled transactions do not remember/or have no way of indicating a class (I'm compiling this list from memory and I don't have Quicken running in from of me...but I know that for my scheduled loan payments I must manually enter the class information each month)

• It would be nice if the billminder message box included a button to start Quicken.

• When a loan is created, fill in the budget for the asset transfers (not just for the interest payments as is done now). The information is there and we shouldn't have to manually type in each month from an amortization table.

• It has been mentioned that Quicken should eliminate zero-balance accounts. This is very true for mutual funds. If you have cleared out one account and but Quicken still maintains a zero balance in all my reports etc. Although I enter all transactions properly, a decimal error along the way keeps the fund from closing.

• Allowing transactions in a cash account to be "reconciled", or failing that, allow the "new year" function to automatically clear "un-reconciled" cash transactions.

• How about adding a verification for date and time when "restoring" a file? Presently, Quicken (3.0) asks only 'overwrite the current file?' and doesn't offer protection against accidental overwriting of a newer file with an older one.

• Remove the "Charges, Cash Advances" and "Payments, Credits" boxes on the Credit Card Statement Information (Reconciliation) dialog box as they have no effect. Make this dialog similar to Reconcile Bank Statement dialog box.

• Certain actions, like go to transfer, change a maximized window (in this case the register window) to it's non-maximized size. It should leave the window maximized instead.

• Whatever happened to the +/- keys on reports to get rid of lines that are not wanted (like in the DOS version, but not the Windows version)?

• Compress an entire year's cash flow onto a 1 page wide report. An old program I had used 1 page to print the totals for twelve months (no subtotaling of sub-categories). It's nice to see everything on one page.

• When printing Scheduled transactions, sort by the next payment date.

• Support the ability to be able to see more than 5 bar graphs in the Budget Graph and Investment Graphs.

• For recurring transactions, it would be wonderful to have an every-other-month option -- semi-monthly is it called?

• Changing a the amount of a transfer item from my itemized paycheck to a 401K investment account with a single mutual fund changes the cleared flag of all transfers to all of my 401K transfers.

• I assigned a button on my button bar to back up my QDATA information. I do this two times after every change to the data on two different disks. The trouble is that the automatic back-up reminder still appears when I exit Quicken to remind me that the data has not been backed up recently when I have just done the button bar backup two times! I have noticed that if I use the menu bar backup it doesn't do it, only if I use the button I created on my button bar. Anyone else experience this?

• It would be nice to have the credit account separate purchases from cash advances, as most credit card companies have different interest rates for each.

• If I have a savings goal account, and I transferred $500 into it, then later I transfer $400 back to the original account, then I try to edit the $400 transaction to be $500, I get an error saying that I don't have enough in the savings goal account. I have to delete the $400 transaction and re-enter it from scratch with $500.

• Quicken help should not reposition or resize the help window.

• I am not sure about this, but I think page numbers are not visible when viewing a report such a cash flow statement. This makes it difficult to print a specific page. The page numbers are visible if the whole report is printed out.

• Sometimes when printing reports without cents, asterisks appear where numbers should be. Looks like an overflow in the field width.

• The dates over the columns for cash flow reports (I believe) should be months, not months/days.

• A one to one relationship should exist with reports and graphs. There are many graphs in which the actual values can not be printed.

• Add the ability to print the financial calendar graphically.

• Allow the user the ability to mark as done those reminder notes that show in the Quicken 4.0 reminder dialog box.

• When it is time to enter a scheduled transaction into the register, a scheduled deposit is entered with a "check number" of "Sched" rather than "DEP".

• Financial calendar should support a maximize button. Other subwindows may benefit from having a maximize button.

• Payee field of Scheduled transactions should be increased to 40 characters like Memorized transactions, etc.

• Okaying an investment form cause much flicking between the various fields in the form.

• Quickfill does not work correctly in Investment registers. For example, if you fill out the security field with X and hit tab, Quicken will fill it out with XYZ if that is a security that you have set up. What it should do is show you XYZ when you type X.

• Better handling of Tax deferred accounts such as IRA. For example, if I have $10,000 in my IRA account, and that account appreciates to $12,000, my net worth has not really increased by the full $2,000, since I will (eventually) have to pay tax on the additional $2,000. Likewise, if I have stocks in a taxable account that appreciate in value, I will eventually have to pay capital gains tax on the appreciation.

• Paging down on the split transaction window incorrectly marks the transaction as modified.

• Having many transfers from a spilt causes Quicken to take a long time to post the transaction. While doing the the mouse cursor flicker from busy to normal cursor.

• Portfolio View should come up default All Accounts.

• Bring back the virtual "paper tape" calculator.

• Make "Transfer Account Required" a warning for those times when you no longer have the original transfer account because you have deleted it.

• Ability to enter on reinvestment form the $ amount for each distribution type (short gains, cap gains, divs, etc.) as well as a single share price and have Quicken accurately calculate the shares per distribution type.

• The +/- keys to work on decimal cents as well as fractions.

• Quickquotes over the internet.

• Help: About Quicken should show the release number. User shouldn't have to resort to "tricks" such as Shift:Help:About Quicken.

• Document "secret" things like Shift:Help:About Quicken showing the release number and Alt-Z updating the Accounts window.

• Allow the user the ability to attach notes to transactions to further explain what this transaction was about. Any number of notes should be attachable. Length of note text should not be limited.


Andrew DeFaria
About the Author

Hi! My name is Andrew DeFaria and I wrote most of this document as well as collected what other users on the Internet had to say about Quicken. I work for Hewlett Packard, not Intuit, and am often asked why I have taken the time to put all this together. It's quite siimple: I like Quicken and use it myself. As such I would like to see it get better. Plus I like helping people when they have a problem with any piece of software.

Still, it is not my job to maintain this document or to support Quicken users for Intuit.

What can you do in the way of showing your appreciation for my efforts? I'm glad you asked! Well you could always send me money at:

Andrew DeFaria

1901 Halford Avenue #68

Santa Clara, California 95051

However as you can see by my above picture I play guitar for a local band named Bottoms Up here in the South Bay and I'd be just as happy if you just came out to a gig (I know, shameless self-promotion but hey - why not?). So look for the name in the Metro and come out if you can!

You can also contact me by email at defaria@cup.hp.com.