Quicken

[beks37]

I am searching for information on Quicken to see if it's worthwhile for me to use. I am particularly interested in it's ability to track expenses for taxes. I could not find much on the website other than how to purchase it.

Currently I have excel spreadsheets set up and would like something a bit more involved.

Thanks in advance!

[Preston]

I use quicken, but I don't use it for my taxes. I manually do everything because I am kind of a control freak and also I have a tendency to be audited I need to do my own calculations.

It helps me track my budget (but it can be difficult to do cash transactions and also credit cards where things are split up you'll have to manually do them.) It annoys me when I do one split transaction from a store and the next time it tries to split them up automatically..but I'm sure that's just something I need to fix in the settings.

I have my checking accounts mapped out for the next year, and it's very easy to do scenarios with budgeting.

I do a monthly budget reports and it's a lot easier than doing everything manually.

I load it up daily and there are all kinds of graphs and charts that let me know how things are going. My favorite graph is the one that goes back through 2009-2010 monthly to show our net worth/debts rising steadily. Which is kind of a motivating factor.

I've got the deluxe version, but you'd probably be able to get by with basic for $30.

[monkeywrangler71]

Preston, there is a setting for the autofill, but I can't remember where. I had mine set to never do it, and then sometime in the last couple weeks managed to un-set it somehow. It drives me insane. When I find it again I'll let you know.

For the tax thing, there are categories that are basically flagged as tax related. When you use that category for a transaction then it will show up if you run a tax report. I use it at year end to remind me about things I spent money on but might not remember - like donations, kid's fitness, train passes - just as a way to verify that I'm not missing anything when I do my taxes.