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Quicken 2004 - Customizing and Tips

I would appreciate any tips and information anyone could provide for quickly optimizing the Checkbook, Investment and Reporting features of Quicken 2004 to mimic earlier versions of Quicken. I agree with the negative (and positive sentiments) concerning Quicken 2004 and Quicken

2005 verses earlier versions, I've been forced to migrate to Quicken 2004 Premier from Quicken 2002 Deluxe because of the sunset provisions.

I use Quicken's Checkbook features to keep track of my cash flow, the Investment registers to track the fluctuating value of security portfolios by downloading daily security prices. I prefer to use .QIF downloads and imports instead of any type of direct connection for privacy and data backup reasons, taking care to name my accounts so that Quicken will not recognize them. Has anyone found a efficient way to download and import security pricing into Quicken by alternative routes? Is anyone running both Quicken 2004/2005 and an earlier version, downloading security prices with the latter version and exporting to the earlier version?

Quicken is limited in it's Investment handling capabilities, mainly due to it's limited number of transaction codes, limited abilities in handling corporate spinoffs and mergers and lack of any useful auditing functions. Better to use a dedicated portfolio management software package to watch portfolios of any complexity. Quicken is strictly for "ballpark numbers."

I've read the great tips from John Pollard and others on how to handle the Cash Flow Report Exclude Internal Transfer "change" in Quicken 2004:

"Unfortunately, Exclude Internal does not work the same way in Q2004 as it did in previous versions, or as it works in Q2005 (which *does* work like pre-Q2004 versions). In Q2004, Exclude Internal only excludes transfers where the TO account *is* the FROM account (as in Opening Balance entries).

The only way to achieve the equivalent of Exclude Internal in Q2004 is by excluding the individual [Account] categories."

Any other suggestions on how to make Quicken's reports more accurate, as Intuit has not included easy-to-use parameters in their report customization, other than the "Garbage In, Garbage Out" principal?

I believe Intuit is moving towards an on-line subscription based product line and away from the simple checkbook package it started with. Too bad for U.S. customers Intuit did not adopt a yearly subscription renewal model so that users could stay with a Quicken version they liked and learned to use, as other software companies have.

Reply to
D Thomas
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In my opinion, you are not getting any benefit from your approach, and may actually be losing some security.

You can use sites such as Yahoo to download .csv files of portfolio prices; or you can use MS Excel to download securities prices. From there you can modify the downloaded csv files manually or create (or download, or buy) a macro to convert the .csv file format to what Quicken expects. Once you have your .csv file in the format Quicken expects, you can import the prices in that file into Quicken (open the Portfolio View, then File > Import > Prices).

You can export securities prices from Quicken and theoretically import them into any other version of Quicken ... newer or older. But I am not convinced that it is always as straightforward as it may sound ... though you can easily test it. If it does not work directly, you can modify the format of the exported file containing prices, to conform to Quicken's requirements. See the faq on merging Quicken files at the MSN Quicken Users Group.

You are too kind; and it was another poster who actually forced me to rethink my view on the subject (I once was convinced that the "workaround" would not solve the problem). I apologize for forgetting that poster's name, but I can not take credit for discovering this.

Since I do not know what you mean by "more accurate", I can not offer any help here.

Perhaps it is too early to be making a judgement on what Intuit intends.

Reply to
John Pollard

John, you may be right. However, for security purposes I never leave passwords, account numbers or any infommation that may be used for identity theft sitting on a hard drive. Due to the low quality products and poor service Intuit is pushing on it's customers, I am not comfortable using their direct connection setup.

On another subject, I read in another post that you have had more than one Quicken version on your computer at a time. I remember reading to keep the two installations away from each other, use different data file names, be careful to open and save data files with the corresponding version, any other suggestions?

Quicken defined "Exclude Internal Trasfers" one way for several versions and changed this definition without adequate documentation, causing cash flow reports imported from previous versons to be incorrect. What I meant by "more accurate" is whether you have found lack of design continuity in any of their other reports?

I see no judgements being made. I am making a prediction on the direction Intuit is proceeding, based on the different versions of their releases over the past several years, which may or may not be accurate. I have worked in both the computer and financial sectors for over 30 years, part of what I do for a living is make business predictions.

D. Thomas

Reply to
D Thomas

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