Quicken Rental Property Manager 2017 Personal Finance & Budgeting Software

To make a long story short, I had to switch to new personal accounting software because my old program is not going to be supported. I chose Quicken because it had all the features I need, while its competitors generally lack one or more features, such as check printing. While check usage is declining, it will still be with us for awhile. I have only used Quicken for a short time but I am impressed. While it is taking me a long time to set up my data because I have to do it manually, I think it will eventually greatly reduce the time I spend on bookkeeping. The ability to download bank and brokerage transactions, which my old software does not support, will save me hours every month. My biggest concern was that it would be too simplistic. While it is designed to be friendly to people that have never done their bookkeeping on a computer, it is a full-featured accounting program. You can set up custom spending categories and assign tax categories. I like that it collects all your data across multiple accounts. For example, you may have shares of the same company in multiple accounts. You can easily see your total investment so that you don't unintentionally end up overweighted in that position. I don't have a lot of rental properties but I'm glad I chosen this version of Quicken for the extra features it provides. There are many features that I have not had a chance to explore. One of the neatest ones is the ability to attach documents to transactions. Another is the ability to actually pay bills directly from Quicken, either by connecting directly to your bank, directly through the vendor's web site, or by using Quicken's own bill paying service. The use of 'tags' is incredibly useful. Quicken is not without its flaws. It has already crashed on me a few times, which may be due to poor memory management. But since it saves every transaction, I only lost the one I was entering at the time. There is no easy way to create an adjusted basis for an asset or investment. Tags aren't available for investment transactions. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't do a very good job of providing a suggested work flow. I strongly recommend buying the official guide book because if you want to delve into the deeper features that Quicken offers, it is a necessity. I think when buying software like this it is important to choose a program that is broadly supported by banks, brokerages and credit card companies. Quicken definitely seems to be the leader in this regard.

I just received my new copy of Quicken Rental Manager last night and loaded it onto my computer. This morning I am ready to send it back.I bought the new edition because my copy of QRPM 2013 stopped allowing me to enter anything into my account registers. I kept getting a warning popup, "First select a type for this transaction, or use the 'Account Actions button" every time I tried to enter anything into any of my account registers.I tried googling that exact warning on the Quicken website and on Google itself. I also tried half-a-dozen variations and gave up after a couple of hours. I could find nothing, no help.So I bought 2017 with the mistaken idea that it would correct the problem and let me continue to prepare my taxes.My first registry entry using QRPM 2017 disappeared. I tried to use the Enter key on my keyboard and it was erratic. It would advance to the next field sometimes but not always. On the completion of the first entry, I used the Enter key to actually enter it into the record - that's when the whole entry disappeared. The first time.I tried several more times. I am persistent. I then used the tab key until I got to the end of the entry, yes, Enter, poof it disappeared.I tried using a combination of tab key and mouse pointer which seemed to work, again until I got to the end of the line. This is when I discovered that the arrow key could activate the entry and move the cursor to the next line.Now I am using three different key tabs, mouse pointer, and down arrow keys. Not a satisfactory solution by any stretch.I even tried copying and pasting previously entered items onto a new line and then overwriting them and correcting the dates. That worked if you did not try the enter key.Poof !I then looked at the settings under Edit/Preferences/Data Entry and Quick Fill. The first item was unchecked "Use enter Key to move between fields".I thought I had found the solution and checked it. Well, the Enter key then worked several times before disabling my mouse, locking up the program, and eventually crashing my computer.This has been my limited experience with Quicken Rental Property Manager 2017 but mileage does vary, your's may be different. It may only be a temporary bug or glitch, or even my inexpert use of the program. It could even be my computer. However, I have had some experience with Quicken since early 2000 something, TurboTax, and something called Simply Money, ca 1990's.I'm using Win 10 with an HP 8100 server and 16 gig, lots of disk space.This is the weekend and telephone support is closed.Amazon did have the best price. Too bad it can not be returned.

It should be the perfect thing for tracking my rental properties, but it is not easy to do. I have spent hours and hours trying to figure it out. Everyone says I should just use Quickbooks. I feel that I have so much invested in this already, though, that I hate to throw it all away and start over, just when I am getting some of my accounts to connect. The rental income tracking is very cumbersome. Rental expenses, a little easier. Still unclear on how to input all the mortgage info for properties. Stock splits mess up the # of shares every time, and it will never balance completely. The only thing that works somewhat well is the rental property mileage tracker - if you can find it.

I have been a quicken user since it was on a 5.25 floppy disk, back to the late 80s or early 90s and have always loved and appreciated it. In this version, and the prior one, I have had a lot of problems with it freezing, failing to sync with the bank for days at a time and making me wish that there was a reasonable alternative to the program as I keep waiting for it to crash completely and lose all of my data. It feels like a beta version that was rushed to market. I have heard that Intuit is selling it and going cloud based software only. I yearn for the eye to detail that Quicken used to have.

I don't see a big difference yet from the 2014 version. I have used quicken for several years and find it fairly easy to use. I do use it in conjunction with another program to track my rent as it does not do everything I need it to do.

Overall it's pretty good but it crashes occasionally and does not track my mortgage balance or 401K very well (both major banks). Still great for tracking my monthly budget and customizing transaction classifications.