QP2007: What Account Type for CD?

"Margaret Wilson" wrote

Unless Q2007 has some new method of treating CD's, I see nothing wrong with your choice. Based on my experience with earlier versions of Quicken, I know of only the two possibilities you suggest (though the investment account does not need to be a Single Mutual Fund account - and I'm not clear on the advantage of using a SMF account).

In the past the choices might have been determined by (at least) two factors: could you download interest transactions for the CD's; and did you want the CD's to play a role in your Asset Allocation.

Earlier versions of Quicken required that, if you wanted your CD's to be included in your Asset Allocation stragegy, they had to be held in investment accounts; newer versions of Quicken allow you to designate a "cash flow" account to be treated as an investment account, allowing it to be included in your asset allocation plans ... so that consideration should no longer be important.

The other consideration - being whether you could, and wanted to, download the interest transactions - still exists. If your fi makes the interest transactions available for download, I believe you must choose an intrinsic Quicken account that is compatible with the real-world account type where you own the CD's (you can't download savings account transactions to an investment account, or vice-versa). I had a few CD's with one of my banks; I had to set them up as cash flow accounts (one per CD) if I wanted to download transactions for them.

In an oversimplified summary: I think your choice is just right, no matter what: you get the best of both worlds (assuming no changes in treatment by Q2007).

[I know that many have complained about Quicken's lack of ability to "understand" CD's; while I share the concern, I think that the ability to download CD interest transactions, and the new ability to include CD's in asset allocation no matter what account type they are held in, solves most of the worst of the problems.]

I've had many CDs and that's my choice for setting them up. All am interested in is the balance and I update it manually as statements come in. If you were to put it in an investment account I think you'd want to treat it as a bond and Quicken is very clumsy with bonds in spite of all the years they've had to refine the process.

If I may, I have a couple unrelated questions for you. I recall from an old thread here that you use Paperport 9 and I am wondering if it now works properly with Windows XP Pro SP2. Google posts say XP SP2 broke it and I can't tell from the Nuance update propaganda if it's been fixed.

Also I would appreciate it if you let me know if the mouse scroll function works once you are inside a document. My version is 6.5 and lacks both the scroll and pdf capabilities so I'd like to upgrade for those reasons.

Thank you,

Mike

Hi John,

Thanks for your input. Emigrant Direct has web connect, but EWD isn't working right now, as most of us are aware. ED also lets us manually download transactions. Since my ED savings account gets little activity, I don't bother to do the download, just manually reconcile and download/save each month's PDF statement. I just put a few $$ from my savings account into the ED CD (6mo), as it earns a tiny bit more interest than the savings acct, and it was pretty much an experiment to see how I like messing with CDs! ;-) I asked my orig question, because I suspect I will open more, larger and longer CDs as time goes on, and I thought I should get the Q acounts right while I have only one.

Thx and Regards,

Margaret

John Pollard wrote:

Hi JB, thx for your input. You, John P and I all picked the savings account type, so I'm assuming I got it right. ;-)

Re PaperPort. I did indeed have v9.0, and because I'm using it more and more (and had some usability issues that were corrected in subsequent versions), I upgraded to v10 and recently to v11. IIRC, it was either v9 or 10 that allowed you to choose the native *.max filetype *or* PDF. I really like using PDFs, esp if I ever decide to do away with PaperPort (or it goes away for some reason), my files will be usable outside PP. A do have a few *.max files hanging around, but I have yet to investigate converting them to PDF. Anyway....

IIRC, the earliest version of PP I owned was v8.0. (Could be wrong, perhaps 9.0) Although v10 was better than v9.0, v11.0 (current) fixes

*a lot* of usability issues. For example, reordering pages w/in a doc is so much easier, and now you can actually see the contents of the pages well enough to get it right w/out all the trial and error of previous versions. (IIRC, this was better in both v9 and v10, but perhaps only v10.) You can also change the default image quality for PDFs, and naming and renaming files is much simpler. Same goes for stacking and unstacking. Further, until recently, it was the only prog I knew of that let me scan multipage PDFs. I've use Vuescan (shareware) for years, but fairly recently an upgrade allowed scanning to PDF, and it does multipage, too. I used to have to scan pages individually then stack and reorder. Now I just use PP to scan PDFs (file size is smaller than with Vuescan), and if I do need to stack, files stack in the correct order as selected. Finally, it autostraightens scans, and is just much better in many ways, though it took me using v11 a while before I really started to notice the improvements over v10. I hope this is all making sense. :-)

I'm sorry I can't answer your question about specific versions, but I've been running XP SP2 since it came out, and I don't recall having any problems w/ PP. Of course, I don't remember what version I was running at the time. I'm guessing I ran both v9 & v10 before my recent upgrade to v11. BTW, there's a "pro" version of v11, which I didn't buy. I believe it comes with some PDF converter functions that I didn't expect to use. So I upgraded to just the basic v11. I have been *very* happy with the new version and recommend that if you can, just go right to v11. It's so much more configurable, resolves a number of issues, some detailed above.

Also, you may be aware of this already, but Nuance bought out ScanSoft, or they chgd the co name, not sure. I just went to the web site and see that you can download the "Pro" trial version. (Don't see one for the basic v11.) But here's the main link that explains features and lets you purchase upgrade:

Hope this helps, and feel free to contact me directly if you have more ?? (FYI, my email addr is munged when you do a reply.)

Regards,

Margaret

JB wrote:

Hi JB,

First, I forgot to answer your ?? re mouse scroll. It appears to not work in v11, either. I know it's a pain, but I have found that the mouse scroll function doesn't work in most of the progs I use. :-(

I do have another ?? re CDs. The one I just opened is only a 6mo CD, which will auto renew for the same time period unless I cancel renewal w/in 10 days of mature date, IIRC. Assuming I renew, can also add $$ at that point, so I guess I should use the same acct for this one, assuming I renew. If I open more CDs, I suppose I should use a separate savings acct for each, as they will have diff acct nums, mature dates and amts. Correct?

And my final ??, IIRC, QP2007 has an alert for notifying me of CD maturity dates. If there's no acct type for CDs, how could I possibly use this alert? I haven't checked Help or KB yet, guess I should on that one. But if you already know the answer (if there is one), I'd appreciate your sharing it. ;-)

Thx and Regards,

Margaret

JB wrote:

"Margaret Wilson" wrote

The Quicken alert for CD's and Bonds is based on the maturity date you enter when you create the "security". These alerts had problems in earlier versions, maybe those have been fixed in Q2007.

I have never tested this, but it's not clear that Quicken actually requires you to own the CD or Bond in order to have Quicken issue an alert for its maturity date. I just setup a test CD in Q2006 - did not enter any transactions to cause any "shares" to be held in any account ... and it appeared in the Investment Maturity Date Alert section with the correct maturity date (the one I entered when I added the CD to my Securities List).

In other words, you may still be able to hold your CD's in your savings account(s); but create an investment security for each one with the correct maturity date, and have Quicken notify you when it matures.

"JB" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@enews1.newsguy.com:

I still have "Paperport Office Pro 9". I keep getting invitations to upgrade to 11, but 9 still works for us, and SWMBO likes it when she uses my machine (she's into genealogy in a big way).

I have had XP SP2 for a long time, and never knew I was supposed to have difficulties with it. I just got a new Logitech LX 710 wireless keyboard - mouse combo, and the scroll wheel scrolls fine through scanned documents (I tried *.max). The old Dell keyboard and mouse also worked fine.

I also invested in Omnipage 15 for better scanning/OCR etc, and I like that to generate files that are easier to edit in Word (rtf's). Of course some things are more affordable with an academic discount, especially things like Acrobat 7 Pro.

Let me know if you need more info.

Han,

Thanks for the information. I don't plan to get the pro version of Paperport but I have heard the vanilla version would support mouse scrolling so it should be OK.

I will have to take a look at Omnipage and Acrobat but I have a feeling that they cost more than I'm willing to spend unless they will do mass conversions. That feature would add value for old Paperport users like myself with thousands of documents in .max format.

Regards,

Jb

"JB" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@enews4.newsguy.com:

I don't think you will get OP or Acrobat, then. They are expensive, and cannot read max files. I don't know what can read max files apart from paperport.

Also if you are looking into Acrobat, wait until version 8 is more than vaporware. Version 7 may get a lot cheaper. Note that there are many different flavors of Acrobat. Get the right one, so you don't pay too much or get too little.