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To make the most out of Quicken's financial help, it's worth plunking down an extra $20 for Quicken Deluxe. Quicken Deluxe also comes with a guidebook from tax experts, as well as a feature for assigning tax line items to various categories to make tax preparation faster and more accurate. But it does contain a tax planner that lets you move tax information from Quicken to an external file that can be read by a tax-specific product like Intuit's Turbotax. Quicken still can't compute taxes for you. For example, its loan planner can help you compute monthly mortgage payments, compare adjustable-rate loans, figure out the tax advantages of a mortgage, determine when a mortgage will be paid off and even make a mortgage fit a budget by making adjustments in other spending areas. Quicken does have a number of relatively underappreciated features. It will sort your financial transactions from the largest expenditure to the largest source of money. Try creating a "where am I spending my money?" report, as outlined in the "101 tips and tricks" booklet that comes with the new version, Quicken Deluxe. The best way to get a quick read on Quicken's investment prowess, though, is to set up an investment account and start generating financial reports or charts with it. After that, it's worth hooking into the 10-minute overview. Users are ready to go in less than five minutes.
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So where do you start with Quicken? Like most products of its kind, Quicken just about installs itself. This eliminates the task of having to run a series of financial reports and charts. A new "snapshot" feature allows users to get an instant picture of their bottom lines with a single keystroke.
#SEE FINANCE QUICKEN HOW TO#
While Quicken has never given technophobes much reason to moan, the latest version is clearly more user-friendly, offering everything from advice on how to use a computer mouse to an icon bar that you can customize to go to a frequent transaction.
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