Desktop/Web
Integration
Quicken.com's My Finances page provides anytime/anywhere access to your
key
Quicken data and functionality. It recognizes that you're a Quicken
user and shows you the information you've chosen to export from Quicken.
Quicken features which work with Quicken.com My Finances include Portfolio
View and Portfolio Export, Banking Synch, Reminders Export, Investments
Alerts, and WebEntry.
Banking
Features
Unfortunately my "bank," Americu, does not have the online
features yet. This online feature will save me hours each month once
it is introduced. Project integration this fall.
Missed Bill Reminder
organizes and streamlines your bill-paying chores. The My Finances and
the Banking Center show you a summary of your bills and allow you to
take action. Missed Bill Reminder alerts you when bills are due in an
account while you are working in the account register. Quicken also
identifies recurring payments from your register and prompts you to
set them up as bills in order to minimize data entry.
Smart Reconcile lets you easily
recover if your register gets out of balance. If you've entered an inaccurate
balance adjustment or changed a transaction that has already been cleared,
Quicken helps you identify which statement is affected by the discrepancy
so you can correct the error. Quicken now permanently stores statement
information, allowing it to be much more intelligent about resolving
reconcile anomalies.
Improved Compare-to-Register makes
accepting transactions you've downloaded easier than ever. After you
download transactions, Quicken will show you which accounts have new
transactions by opening QuickTabs (designated with a lightning bolt)
for their registers. These registers are set in Compare-to-Register
mode so you can instantly begin accepting transactions.
Banking Synch and Reminders Export let you export your account balances,
recent transactions, reminders, calendar notes, and upcoming bills to
My Finances on Quicken.com so you can stay on top of your financial
activities even when you're away from your Quicken PC.
Investment
Features
Quicken's new Investing Center provides a "dashboard" that
summarizes your portfolio, asset allocation, value, cost basis, and
average rate of return over time.
401(k) Download allows you to download your 401(k) information from
Prudential (and other financial institutions as they become available).
Quicken will download your holdings, transactions, total balance, and
vested balance.
Improved 401(k) Tracking now better
handles employer matching and loans, and provides an enhanced integration
of 401(k) information with Quicken's paycheck setup.
Improved Portfolio View provides enhanced customization with resizable
column
widths, one-click views, and the ability to download key information
from Quicken.com. An improved watch list lets you compare the securities
you own to ones you don't own, and to relevant stock market indices.
Improved Investment Alerts help
you to stay on top of changes in the market. Now, you can set up your
investment alerts in one place and view them on both Quicken and Quicken.com.
Improved Asset Allocation features show you the expected return and
risk of your current and target asset allocation.
Quicken 401(k) Advisor gives you
specific recommendations based on the funds
in your company's plan and your personal situation and goals.
The Integrated Portfolio View across Quicken and Quicken.com gives you
anytime/anywhere access to your investment information. The Quicken
2001 improved Portfolio Export feature adds the ability to see your
stock holdings at the individual lot level.
Tax
Features
The Improved Capital Gains Estimator
handles both losses and gains, and is integrated with your Tax Planner
data. Your tax rate is prefilled and you can run scenarios to determine
when your gains/losses would move you into a different tax bracket.
The Improved Tax Planner has a new,
easy-to-navigate user interface. It is updated with the latest tax data
and now supports QuickZoom so that you can easily drill down for greater
detail on individual line items.
Improved Transfer of Quicken Data to TurboTax
includes a more flexible Taxlink, so you can preview exported Quicken
data from within TurboTax and select the categories you want to import.
Integrated
Services
Integrated Postage allows you to
use electronic postage with Address Book on invoices, estimates, envelopes,
and labels.
Integrated Online Backup allows
you to easily recover in the event of hard drive failure.
Household
Features
Improved Home Values Download helps
you track the value of your home using ConsumerInfo's extensive online
database. It gives you the sales data for similar homes in your area,
including square footage. The online database covers approximately 60%
of U.S. households.
Obviously this is an impressive array. However, the learning
curve is steep. This is particularly true if you haven't used a previous
version. I believe the end is worth the effort in this case.
