Quicken Deluxe 6

by Mark Davis

Past users of Quicken have found it for years to be a powerful financial package, equally able to perform such varied tasks as balancing your checkbook or managing your stock investments. One of the few complaints about the program is that it tended to overwhelm new users, mainly due to the wealth of features it contains. Fortunately, Intuit (the publisher of Quicken) has listened to its customers, and has come up with a much improved and easier to use version 6 for 1997.
For new users, Quicken is much easier to navigate with the addition of an Activity Bar at the bottom of the screen. This bar has a number of icons on it representing different aspects of your finances (My Accounts, Bills, and Planning, for example). Pass your mouse cursor over these icons, and a list of common tasks to perform in each category pops up on screen. This makes it much easier to find what you're looking for in Quicken. Other added ease of use features include the ability to sort your check Register by date, amount, check number, or the order in which you entered transactions into it. A number of shortcuts now allow you to schedule payments and run reports without having to first leave the Register. Reconciling your accounts has also been made easier as well. One of the nicest new additions to the deluxe version of Quicken is the Debt Reduction Planner, which uses your Quicken data to help you plan how to get out of debt faster. Another addition, the Tax Deduction Finder, helps you find extra tax deductions in your finances that you might have otherwise missed.
Another area in which Quicken shines is in the realm of online help. This program is chock full of audio and video tips to help you quickly get up to speed when learning new aspects of Quicken. The new Show Me feature contains a number of video clips that take you step by step through performing various tasks. A "How Do I?" feature answers questions about specific parts of Quicken. Of course, standard Windows Help menus, tool tips, and a good printed manual are also included in the product.
Power users need not be worried that they have been neglected, however, for Quicken has been improved for them also! All the powerful reports and other features that Quicken is known for are still there, and have been made even better in some ways (better layouts and customization features, for instance). Investors will find that they can easily download free online stock and mutual fund quotes to keep up with their investments. The new Security Detail View shows you all the details on each one of your investments on a single screen, so you can easily see how you're doing. Quicken also now supports online banking with about 40 banks and other financial institutions. Banking has now been made easier this year due to improvements in how online transactions are conducted. You can now perform several types of transactions in a single call, rather than having to make a separate call for each type you want to conduct.
Intuit has also embraced the Internet in a big way in this version of Quicken. A slightly modified version of Netscape Navigator 3.0 is bundled with Quicken, and contains a number of preset links to Intuit's Quicken Web site. This makes it easy to download product patches and updates as they are made available. You can also browse through a number of recommended financial Web sites (in order to see these sites, however, you must have an Internet service provider; access to Intuit's Quicken Web site is free, though).
For the first time, Intuit is shipping both a 32-bit Windows 95 and a 16-bit Windows 3.1 version of Quicken in the same box. Both versions require 8 MB of RAM, and take up 35 MB (Win 95) or 27 MB (Win 3.1) of hard drive space. While there are other financial packages out there, Quicken stands in a class of its own. It's simply the best there is in making the chore of keeping track of your finances much easier (and even fun) to do!

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