Quicken, from Intuit, Inc. has long been recognized as the industry leader in the Personal Financial arena and Quicken Deluxe 99 only strenghens that number one position. With this new version, not only can you balance your check book faster and more accurately than by hand, you can write and print checks or pay bills online, automatically track printed checks or online payments, and get reminders when bills are due. But this is just the beginning.
When you first fire up the program you are immediately greeted with your Home Page. Here you see an overview of all your finances at one quick glance. From the Home Page, you see a list of all your accounts, can view your net worth, hot stocks, budget progress and more.
For each account that you set up, there will be a register which looks very similar to a standard check book register. Quicken has made it very easy to enter data using drop-down lists and makes abundant use of hot keys. Every entry is assigned to a category; this is what makes Quicken so powerful. All charts, graphs and reports are generated using the categories you select. Quicken provides a complete set of categories based on account type, but the user can also add or delete categories to suit individual needs.
Quicken Deluxe 99 makes it very easy to overview your financial status in seconds. There is a complete set of Reports and Graphs to analyze your finances. Reports are arranged in categories: Banking, Planning, Investment, Taxes and Business. The Banking reports allow easy account reconciation, location of missing checks or of individual transactions. The Planning reports allow you to establish a budget and then track actual vs. budget figures, or to view Net Worth. The Investment reports allow you to establish an Investment portfolio and then track its performance. The Tax reports allow you to track all tax-related data. The Business reports allow you to track all aspects of your business accounts, and of course generate your own custom reports. These custom reports can be saved and called up at a later date.
