Q7 provides pop-up lists (as in ASD Software’s PopupFolder or Now Software’s Now Utilities) of your categories so that you no longer have to jump from register to category window and back to locate the proper entry. And Q7 knows automatically which register belongs in which category, making it simple to divide your finances into logical categories, such as home vs. With the click of one button, you can go back and forth between your different sets. No longer must you slog through your Visa register and stock portfolio to figure your 1997 budget. Investing (for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds), Assets/Debts (managing loans, determining your net worth), Planning (budgeting and retirement planning), and Reporting (reports, graphs).
Using a vertical task bar first seen in Westcode Software’s OneClick, Q7 divides itself into five Activity Areas: Banking (for checking accounts, savings accounts, and credit cards). Quicken provides you with a sort of cyberblotter so that you’re not distracted by your other desktop clutter.
Its interface is so easy to use that a newbie with basic Mac experience can operate it sans manual. You may have had a hard time getting it to understand your budget, and it couldn’t help you if you gave it the wrong information, but it was a big improvement to throwing your statements on the kitchen table and doing long-hand, often incorrect, arithmetic. It was like having the benefits of an anal-retentive accountant in your computer without having to put up with his annoying quirks. With a markedly improved interface and the ability to bank online, it minimizes most of your finance headaches, if not the service charges.Įarlier versions of Quicken were an obvious improvement to the way most people balanced their checkbooks and statements (which, in many cases, was not at all). Well, Quicken 7 (Q7) may not be as cool as the Jetson mobile, but it’s eminently more useful. For most of us the concept of online banking, in which a computer balances your checkbook, determines your credit card finance charges, and pays your electricity bill, ranks up there with videophones and the Jetson mobile.
It was easy to skip version 6 with its few revisions and the promise of online banking. Quicken does its job so well that, ironically, it’s hard to justify an upgrade.
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