Quicken Home and Business Reviewer's Comments

If you are looking for personal accounting software with a few small business features, Quicken Accounting fits the bill. Quicken offers basic business accounting tools for those who manage cottage industries. Most of the program focuses on personal accounting, though. Quicken offers investing tools, tax planning tools, and property and debt management tools, all ideal for personal finance. Even the reporting categories are suited to personal users: Where did I spend my money during this period? How much did I pay to account B? What am I worth today? and, Did I meet my budget?

Though friendly to personal users, Quicken Accounting received a low rank for features in our accounting review because this program lacks important small business section, such as Inventory, Payroll, Time Billing, and Jobs Management. However, the program does have Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable sections, some cash flow options and a Balance Sheet. If you need a program for personal accounting with only a few small business extras, Quicken works.

Ease of Use:  

Quicken Home and Business is an easy program to set up, understand and use. The separate business feature contains most of the small business options, including Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable—both easy to manage.

If you want manage payroll, however, you have to sign up for a separate service. This is an annoying extra step for those who want payroll features integrated into the accounting program.

Quicken Home and Business has intuitive navigation. The drop-down menu at the top of the screen has icons below to help you find the setup wizard and extra services. Quicken also offers tools to manage cash flow, investing, property and debt, planning, and taxes.

In addition, this program will run with Vista.

Help/Documentation:  

The help documentation is excellent; it is complete with a search function so you can find the right subject quickly and easily. They also offer a How do I section at the top of each screen so your questions can be answered quickly and easily.

Accounts Receivable:  

The Accounts Receivable section of Quicken isn't as good as in some of the other software we reviewed. First of all, it's hard to find. You must click on the Business drop down menu then find Invoices and Estimates. A small business should be able to reach Accounts Receivable in one click.

This software lets you to make and email invoices but you cannot track shipments or print labels. We found only one report related to accounts receivable.

Accounts Payable:  

Like Accounts Receivable, it was difficult to find Accounts Payable. (Go to the Business drop-down menu, click Bills and Vendors). Also, we couldn't find a way to build purchase orders or prepare quotes in this program. The only features we found for this section were the ability to manage a vendor list and make payments to them. Only one report was available.

Payroll:  

The payroll features are limited in Quicken. First of all we couldn't even locate a payroll section in this program. The do have a way to easily manage payroll, but it is a separate service. If you signup for this service you are able to print off W-2's and W-3's, manage payroll lists, and write checks. We only found one payroll report available in this program.

Inventory:  

This business section isn't available in Quicken. The only inventory available is Home Inventory. You can tally everything in your home for insurance purposes.

Banking:  

We found only one feature that would qualify for this section—the ability to reconcile accounts. We also found only one report available.

Time Billing:  

This section isn't available in Quicken.

Job Costing:  

In Job Costing you can make a master job list to track jobs and set them as active or inactive. You can also make a job estimation list to evaluate if the project is worth your time. These lists can be emailed. Quicken doesn't have reporting categories for job costing. There are two reports available for this section.

General Ledger:  

The General Ledger isn't available in Quicken. But there are twelve reports, including: Cash Flow, Budget, Income Expense, and others.

Fixed Assets:  

This software doesn't have a Fixed Assets section available. It does, however, offer two asset reports.

Summary:  

If you are looking for personal finance software that can help you manage the finances for a new, small business, Quicken may work well for you.