Steve, some of your points are valid but I don't think you're comparing
apples to apples.

Quicken and Quickbooks are entirely different products. It's sort of like
comparing MS Money to Microsoft Office Accounting -- personal finance
software is much different from small business accounting.

I, too, have the same problem as your client. The business software
(Quickbooks and Microsoft Office Accounting) does a much better job of
producing financial reports than Money or Quicken. And, I suspect, they do a
better job of tracking inventory, employees (time and payroll), vendors and
business reports than the Home and Business versions of the personal
financial software. The only overlap I see between the two products is in the
download of bank account information.

The foundation I manage also has assets that are invested in stocks, bonds
and mutual funds. I have had to revert to Money (using a separate file from
my personal finances) to track the performance of these assets because
neither Quickbooks nor Microsoft Office Accounting can do it.

Between Money and Quicken, I think they're very similar in their offerings.
I do like Money's clean user interface (as opposed to Quicken's ad-infested
screens) and I believe Money has an advantage in the investments area. But, I
suppose, it comes down to personal preference. For the price, I think both
offer tremendous value.



"SteveB" wrote:

- quote -

One of my clients fired up Quicken this morning to pay me for some
work, so I asked her how she liked it. As a retired single woman, she's
happy with Quicken for her personal finances, but she doesn't like
QuickBooks.

She keeps the books for a small non-profit, and they have an endowment
fund that's invested in stocks and mutual funds. She said QuickBooks
has no way to track investments. She has to fake it with an asset
account and periodic appreciation/depreciation entries to account for
market shifts.

This has no direct bearing on Microsoft Money, other than as evidence
that switching to Quicken is no magic solution. Even their flagship
product has significant deficiencies.

I guess that the moral is, "The devil you know is better than the devil
you don't know".

--
Steve Bell
New Life Home Improvement
Arlington, TX