Q2009 - is it just me or....?

Anyone else happen to notice how 'quiet' this NG has been when it comes to complaints and negative posts concerning Q2009? I wonder why that is....

Reply to
Andrew
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I got my copy of TT and Q last weekend and installed them both. Can't do much with TT other than load it and transfer the data. So far it looks good.

I loaded Q09 and upgraded (from Q08). Upgrade process was quick and not much different from the Q08 upgrade. I found the database conversion seemed to run very fast (less than a minute or two).

I did have two problems. It decided to add a $53K (USD) starting balance to my AMEX card account. Much appreciated, but not real... ;-)

The second one was with One Step Update. I have 4 credit cards that I update. 2 are AMEX (Green & Blue) and 2 Visa cards (both Chase cards). It ran just fine for the AMEX cards, but got stuck on the Chase account. It showed it as being in progress but with no option to cancel it. I had to close Q to stop it. Tried various things, but couldn't get it to work.

I ended up uninstalling and re-installing Q08. What I found interesting was the fact that One Step Update still showed the problem, but with a "Cancel" button. I tried several times and it just started working. ust have been a web site problem...

The next day I did the upgrade again and this time both problems didn't reappear.....

I've used it for several days, now and, frankly, I don't see a lot of reasons to upgrade. I would be hard pressed to recommend it to a Q08 user.... Not a *bad* upgrade, just not that interesting.

This is the first time that I've found this to be the case. Usually, there are several interesting additions or improvements, but not this time (at least so far)... Certainly not for $60 if that is what you must spend. I got it with a $30 rebate (for buying it with TT), but it's still not worth it to me.

Reply to
Hank Arnold (MVP)

Reply to
Andrew

[I was going to reply to Andrew's reply to your post (because he listed a couple of the changes in Q2009), but am unable to get Andrew's post "quoted" when I initiate a reply. Instead your post is quoted. Never seen that before. No big deal though. Outlook Express with Quote Fix.]

I don't see any fabulous new features in Q2009 either, but for those who might be interested, here a a few changes in Q2009, in addition to those Andrew mentioned.

You can remove the entire row of tabs that were introduced in Q2008 (Quicken calls them "Top Tabs"). This actually does free up a little screen space.

The Q2009 Paycheck form now subtotals the paycheck "categories": Earnings, Pre-Tax Deductions, Taxes, and After-Tax Deductions.

You can now make a limited Edit to a single (the next) scheduled transaction, without changing the entire series (probably not workable for paycheck transactions).

You can now move an investment account to the "Banking" account group (actually, to pretty much any other account group).

At least one mouse scroll-wheel problem was corrected.

At least some micro-printing problems were fixed.

There is a brand new Quicken "version": Rental Property Manager (one step above the Home & Business version). It does incorporate some specifics for managing rental property, but I will leave to others to judge how valuable its rental property capabilities are, especially for those who have already worked out ways to handle their rental property needs in earlier versions of Quicken.

There are some other changes that appear mostly directed to new users, or to fairly unsophisticated users. [And there are probably some useful changes I have forgotten.]

Reply to
John Pollard

John,

When would one want to move an investment account to the Banking account group? This rings a chord with me because I've recently started buying cd's, so far from one bank, and initially set them up as an investment account name CDS. When I started to think about it, it seemed like cds were more like savings and belonged with the rest of my banking, so I tried to make a savings account out of the cds. That failed miserably, either because my concept is incorrect to begin with or because I just don't know how to do it. The problem is that while I can create a CD savings account, I can't {don't know how to) buy the cd's in that account and have them distinguished as individual entities and have the interest attributed to the correct cd. I know over the years there have been posts that Quicken doesn't do very well with cds, but I didn't have any so didn't follow the discussions. What is the "best" or recommendd practice for tracking cds? Leave them in an investment account where they can be uniquely defined? If Intuit has a help discussion on this, just point me to it.

Thanks,

jo

Reply to
jo

My opinions only: I make no claim to know a "right" way or even a "best" way.

If you consider CD's an "investment" (one which you would include in your Asset Allocation strategy, for example), then I would leave them in the investment account in the investment group.

When the CD's are in an investment account, you can (fairly) easily create a security for each CD and buy, reinvest, and sell the CD securities at $1/share. Interest would be treated as a Reinvest Interest transaction.

If you consider your CD's as savings (for a rainy day, perhaps), you could put them in the savings group.

If you're moving an investment account into the savings group, you would still have an investment account, and would still handle it as above.

If you're going to create new savings accounts for CD's, you'd probably want (need) to create one account for each CD (you'd almost certainly want to do this if you were going to download the CD transactions). Interest would be entered just like a bank savings account interest transaction.

Reply to
John Pollard

John - thanks for your list of additions - I'll check these out when I am feeling a tad better (bad head cold) and maybe adopt some of them. Appreciate your chiming in - I posted the original for some discussion.

Reply to
Andrew

There should be no downloaded "prices" for CD's regardless of what account type, or account group, you chose for them. Interest is handled based on the underlying account type; but it works equally well in a savings account or an investment account.

But as I suggested in my previous post: if you are downloading CD transactions, you will have to choose the account type dictated by the financial institution where you hold the CD's.

If you buy CD's from a bank, and the bank offers downloads of CD transactions (and you want those downloads), you will almost certainly have to create one Quicken savings account for each CD. Each of those CD's will be treated as separate accounts at the bank.

If you buy CD's from an investment brokerage, and they offer, and you want, downloaded transactions for those CD's; you will have to setup the CD's in one or more investment accounts ... the criteria for setting them up will, again, be set by the financial institution.

If you are not going to download transactions, you can create whatever account type you like for your CD's.

I think you're mixing apples and oranges here.

If you have a separate Quicken (savings) account for each CD, you will not lose the identity of any CD's; presumably you will name the accounts based on the characteristics of the CD it holds.

And if you hold the CD's in an investment account, each CD will be a separate security; again, no loss of identity.

But before you make any conclusions, see below.

At its core, the re-assigned account remains an "investment" account. If you opened the account register, you wiould see all your investment transactions, just as they appeared when the account was in the investment group.

Naturally, since the purpose of changing the account group was to no longer have the account treated as an investment account, the account will not appear in any "Investment" reports, or the Portfolio View, etc.

To see the subtotals for each security in an investment account that has been re-assigned to the Banking group, run a Net Worth Report (or an Account Balances report) with the "Show" "Account detail" option checked. Regardless of which group you assigned the investment account to, you will see subtotals for each security in every account. This works the same in Q2009 as it does in Q2008.

As per my reasons in my previous post: if your CD's are "investments (one criteria for this: you want them treated as cash for your Asset Allocation strategy), assign their account(s) to the investment group. If your CD's are to save for a rainy day, assign their account(s) to the Banking group.

A Quicken savings account can be re-assigned to the investment group, and a Quicken investment account can be re-assigned to the banking group.

[If you don't have Q2009, I don't know how you could have tested the effects of re-assigning an investment account to the Banking Group.]
Reply to
John Pollard

jo wrote: > When would one want to move an investment account to the Banking

I have individual CDs at banks and credit unions. I keep those as individual accounts, so that they are easy to download account interest, etc. They are created as savings accounts, but I did move them to the investment section, as I think of them that way. They behave the same either way.

I also have brokered CDs in an investment account. In that case, I have one account, and buy and sell CDs within it. That can also download information from the brokerage. That has the advantage of being able to easily track the maturity dates. It has the disadvantage of being reported by the brokerage on a 1099 as an investment sale, so I have to report them on my schedule D, with a $0 gain. Not a big problem, as TT downloads that information directly.

I try to reflect "real world" accounts and activities. That usually works out best.

-- Jim

Reply to
JimH

could be because not a lot of people upgraded, given the nightmarish track record of previous versions...

Reply to
sQueezBox®

FWIW, I've upgraded many times and never had a problem, just upgraded from 2008 to 2009 w/o a hitch.

If you make sure your current version is backed up to a floppy, flash drive, cd, etc. so it can be restored then there's no reason not to go to the newest version.

Reply to
XS11E

Anything is possible, but I too (like XS11E) have upgraded continously yearly since the DOS good ole days as far back as 1989 without any problems on the upgrade that I can remember....

Reply to
Andrew

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