Quicken XG 2006 [Old Version]

A sad attempt from the folks at Intuit.

I understand Intuit is no longer supporting or authoring Quicken products for the UK, for whom they also produced an "XG" title. Perhaps a strong hint about the future of Intuit's Canadian products?


Does the job   October 24, 2005
D. A. Cluett (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

I am a three-time user of Quicken, for 2003, XG 2004, and now XG2006. I generally should be using Cash Manager instead, as my current financial goals do not include investing but debt reduction and management. I do not have any stocks, bonds, or other financial instruments other than savings and chequing accounts, and credit cards.
I have a Pentium IV 2.4 with 768 Meg Ram, and have never had a problem installing, reinstalling, running, or upgrading my software, including with XG '06. (One thing I did do was backup my file under the old format before using the new program.)
The new program works fine, handling my downloads of regular transactions for CIBC, Presidents Choice Financial, and Canadian Tire MasterCard.
The new renaming rules seem powerful, but I have uncovered many problems with it renaming the wrong payees, to the point that I no longer use it. The review of rules, and reversion to the old names are both pluses in managing this, however, which allow a feature that does not work well to be managed transparently.
The new report feature is very handy. It allows a quick creation of a report from the register, from which I can customize as needed. It makes the customization that much faster, as that was something I was always doing anyway.
The Scheduled Transactions now have a central page that lists that month's transations, and allows viewing of previous and next months' transactions by clicking the next month/previous month tab. Very handy.
This leads to the much-improved Calendar, something that was a strong feature of the old program. The calendar shows the calendar pane above, and a balances graph at the bottom of the page. The balances graphic now shows bar graphs separated by account, so you see, for example, the positive bar for chequing above the zero line, and any accounts below delineated below the line, something very easily customized. This makes viewing and forecasting balances even more informative.
The Online Banking Booster is something that may be useful in the future, but as none of my financial institutions support it, it is useless to me.
In general, for my meagre needs, I find that it serves those needs very well. I would ask people seriously to consider purchasing Cash Manager instead if they only have the basic chequing, saving, and credit card accounts.