I've been contemplating the purchase of Quicken 2006 Premier Home and Business for a few months. Today, whilst navigating the aisles of our local Sam's Club, I saw that bright red and green box — and took the plunge.
This, for me, will be an upgrade from Quicken 2005 Deluxe. Until now, my purchase cycle for Quicken upgrades was every two years or so. But now that my web sites are bringing in (for me) substantial income, and with my wife initiating her own home-based biz, I really wanted a version of Quicken that would help us with our self-employment income and taxes. Hopefully 2006's Premier Home and Business can fit the bill.
Quicken 2006: First Impressions
I've seen more than a few commenters on Quicken's forums lamenting various problems with installing Quicken 2006 Premier. My installation, though, went off without a single snag. I did notice that Quicken spent a fair amount of time downloading program updates immediately after install.
The hardest chore in the initial few hours of use has been migrating my self-employment-related accounts into Quicken 2006. In Quicken 2005, I tracked income from sources such as Google AdSense and Commission Junction by setting each of these up as its own spending account in my Cash Flow Section.
With the Home and Business version of Quicken, though, such items are meant to be handled in the true business manner — as Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. They're not "accounts," really, in the pure sense of the word. They're more like places to record the transactions between your business and your vendors and customers. The check-register entry format is familiar, yes, but there's more detail than you'd see in a simple spending account.
I've yet to try out Quicken's much-touted new ability to attach outside documents (PDFs and such) to specific transactions. I could, however, see this being pretty useful. I'm also anxious to fire up the new reporting features and the One-Click Category Reports. (Yes, I am a Certified Money Dork. But you already knew that.)
If anyone's interested, here's the 10-page PDF (549kb || .zip) that accompanied the software, entitled "What's New in Quicken 2006."
