Here's a blow-by-blow account of the numerous bugs I've encountered using Quicken the last five years. It ain't pretty. The product's just been getting worse since 2002.

Quicken 2008: Was a forced/hostage upgrade from Quicken 2005. You "have" to upgrade since they've cut a deal with the financial institutions to cut off your online access with the institutions if you don't upgrade every three years. Just as found when I was hostage upgraded in 2005 from 2002, there's nothing more than a cosmetic face-lift, no meaningful fixes/improvements -- but there's even more bugs, problems and aggravation.

* Product now will not connect properly to Fidelity; no problem under 2005.

* Took forever to figure out how to turn off a "reminder" function ... that kept reminding me to pay bills already scheduled to be paid using the auto-pay function. 2005 did the same thing and it's not been fixed.

*You can turn off the product registration nag screen ... if you Google to find out how. Product does not have to be registered to use it.

* Un-reconciles accounts six months back every once in a while. I've been assuming that's being caused by a few bytes of bad data that occasionally comes from the financial institutions ... that the Quicken people have not properly coded so as to filter out. This bug also surfaced in 2005. Two weeks into 2008, I've seen it again already.

* You can't turn off the "free update/revision" nag screen unless you take the update. No such nag screen in 2005.

* When connecting, the completion screen used to show which accounts had new transactions to match and had convenient buttons next to each to take you directly to the account. Gone in 2008. Now I have to look through every account each time to see where transactions might have been retrieved.

* Icons everywhere attempting to peddle other unwanted Quicken products. One of the 'product improvements' in 2008.

* Doesn't handle stock distributions correctly (since they were not actually paid for); keeps generating error messages when you enter the correct posting of no cost incurred. Same problem in 2005.

* Tricky screens/checkboxes/prompts that try to bait you into using/enrolling for QuickenDot services when you don't have to or need to. Users that did so now post complaints they can't undo it and that the QuickenDot server is constantly down, causing problems/delays when trying to connect to other accounts using a one-step update.

Yet another company that's grown totally complacent about product quality while wallowing in its assured-for-the-moment revenue stream. It will bite them hard in the long-run. Postings indicate similar complaining regarding the major competitor product, Microsoft Money. If history is any lesson, there's no reason to suspect that these software products will ever get better under these conditions. Some other product will have to steal their customer base before they wake up and smell the coffee.

If you are not already committed to either of those two products, take a good long look at open source software such as GNU Cash.

[Update: April 15, 2008] Does now connect to Fidelity ... occasionally. When I opened the portfolio area today, the entire computer screen flashed with confusion and the product crashed. 2005 never once crashed. Still flashing but no subsequent crashes. Who knows what happened. Not me. Apparently not Quicken programmers either.

[Update: July 12, 2008] Connects to Fidelity now more or less on regular basis. Software still flashes/flickers routinely. Also slow to load, apparently trying to read every single record into RAM, regardless of age. Pop-up screen this morning stating "We've noticed you are not downloading your current Quicken Visa/MasterCard transactions, click here to ..." I don't have one. Obviously a deceptive come-on intended to trick users into the application process for a Quicken credit card. Nice. Still constantly beg-screens me to take the latest software update.

[Update: October 18, 2008] Just downloaded this week's financial transactions and Quicken wiped out four months of reconciliation on one of my credit cards ... again.

[Update: January 10, 2009] Tried to change the amount of an annual repeating payment. Refused to accept the change with the error message "You must make this change and sign on no later than six days before scheduled payment." Payment was set for April 4, 2009, almost three months in the future. I had to delete the payment, log on to make the deletion take effect, then enter the payment all over again for the new amount, then log on again to make that payment take effect. And when I tried to log on I rec'd an error message stating an Internet connection was not detected (a message I get rather often despite my always-on broadband). Luckily I can choose the "Ignore" button and it will go ahead and connect. Quicken programming staff = worthless carpetbaggers.

[Update: March 5, 2009] Wanted to stop an ongoing monthly repeating payment where the next scheduled payment was already in place in my register for March 27. I edited in a change for "how many times" from "unlimited" to "1." In other words, I wanted to pay on March 27 for the last time. When I logged on to the bank the first time, Quicken canceled the March 27 payment. Now doesn't that take the cake--Quicken accounting/finance software programmers are unable to count up to one. And, as all too often anymore, the screen went wacko while I was logging onto the bank.

[Update: March 8, 2009] Quicken just UNreconciled one of my credit cards (again) back to the October, 2008 close. Luckily, its a card I don't use much. I suppose this has something to do with Quicken software coders not understanding the start of Daylight Savings Time.

[Update: March 27, 2009] The repeating payment change I referred to at March 5, 2009? The saga continues. When I tried to enter the NEW repeating payment, it wouldn't take. I entered it, connected to the bank and nothing happened. The payment did not show in the list of repeating payments or in the register. I tried deleting the payee entirely to start over, but Quicken wouldn't/won't let me delete that payee at all. It claims it cannot be deleted because there is a repeating payment in effect ... that would be the payment that is ALREADY canceled. Which means I can't cancel it so I can't delete the payee. To set up the new payment I ended up having to create an entire new payee to make the new payment 'take.' I had to put a dash in the middle of the account number to create the new payee since Quicken won't allow two repeating payments with the exact same account number. And I am still stuck with the old payee on file which I cannot delete at all. I had to call the bank twice just to make sure the durn payment is actually going to be made on time ... and made only once ... and for the correct amount. You would think there would be a way to force deletion of a payee. Then again YOU are thinking, Quicken programmers on the other hand are off somewhere slurping down a latte.

[Update: April 2, 2009] Have an established monthly recurring payment of $X and would like to change it to $Y. Enter the Online Center, click on Repeating. There it is. Click on it then select Edit. Change the amount from $X to $Y. Save the change. Seems simple enough. Log on to the bank. Result: (1) Quicken cancels the next pending payment, on April 19, of $X. So far so good. (2) Quicken enters a pending payment into the checkbook register for $Y dated May 19. Huh? What happened to my April payment? God only knows what will happen if I tinker with this recurring payment any further. I will write a paper check for one month ... and hope for the best.

[Update: July 14, 2009] Quicken is popping up a screen telling me I am overdue on a July 10 payment to a vendor. The register shows the payment was made and cleared on July 10. And it's reminding me to schedule another future payment ... that's already scheduled. It's the same durn thing I was talking about in bullet # 2 at the top of the review, apparently it's a zombie bug that has now risen from the dead. Still begs me to take the Quicken software update constantly.

[Update: September 15, 2009] Quicken has suddenly started reminding me ... once again ... that certain bills are overdue, even though they've already been paid using the automatic monthly payment function. It asks me if I want to delete, pay or skip. I can only guess what havoc might occur if I delete or skip ... so I just keep waiting for the nag screen to eventually go away.

[Update: January 17, 2010] Repeating payment to my HOA increasing by four bucks a month. Learned already the hard way that if you change it by just increasing the payment, it doesn't take. So I first deleted the existing repeating payment entirely (but not the existing payee). Logged onto the bank. Deletion occurred properly. THEN I tried to create a new repeating payment (using the existing payee). Enter all the information - and nothing happens. Just like I never entered it at all. Rebooting, log on to the bank again, no change. So I created a new payee (with slightly different spellings for payee name and account number since those fields define the unique payee). Creation took place properly - after every desktop icon on screen flashed on and off screen for nearly a minute. Logged on to bank to let Quicken advise of new payee. THEN created new payment using the tweaked, new payee. Logged on again. More icon flashing in process. New repeating payment now appears in register. Although it has NOT always done so in the past, THIS TIME Quicken let me delete the old payee. For users that can't figure out these kinds of workarounds, the simple, everyday-routine, core process of adjusting the amount of a repeating payment simply doesn't work. It USED to work in older versions of Quicken, so I can only assume Quicken programmers spend their lazy afternoons destroying old code and functionality - instead of writing new code to fix known bugs.

[Update: January 26, 2010] The above described payment (at four bucks more) was made successfully to the HOA yesterday. In the Quicken Bill Reminder Tray it says I have FOUR payments missing - all to the HOA, all at the new 'four bucks more' amount, two of them due yesterday and two of them due today. As always when this tray incorrectly reports overdue payments, the tray's three choices are Enter, Edit and Skip. Which one would you dare use to try to get the stuff to disappear? If you choose Skip, will it take the payment back? Maybe in the mirror-image BizarroWorld that is Quicken software.

[Update: July 25, 2010] Used a certain credit card last month (that hadn't been used otherwise in about eight months). The account had been live and retrieving transactions without incident for years. The account password is saved in Quicken so that it can do so. But guess what, those new transactions did not retrieve after multiple log-ons (using Quicken's "one-step update" which logs on to all active accounts in a single pass). Quicken reflects the account as active for transaction retrieval, everything AOK. Quicken also reflects the connection took place with the account without error. If I didn't KNOW I had transactions not retrieved, I wouldn't have had the least idea there was an error. Not that Quicken would give me the least indication to do so, I went ahead and tried solving the error by re-running the account through the 'online initialization' process again. It worked. The transactions then retrieved normally. HOWEVER the NEXT time I tried to run through the logon/retrieval process, Quicken demanded I provide the account's password. That would be the very same password it had in storage to begin with - and that I JUST provided to Quicken a SECOND time when I did the re-initialization. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Also, after the re-initialization, I started getting a message that claims 'your last update attempt was not successful, do you want to re-try?" I figure that erroneous message will resolve itself after enough time has eroded since 'my last update attempt.'

[Update: August 8, 2010] I wanted to change the amount for a repeating payment (the equal pay plan for my utility bill was adjusted), so I used the `change' function. Kick me in the *** because (1) using the obviously correct approach in Quicken often means trouble and (2) I've tried this before and it's a major fail. I opened the repeating payment, changed the amount and clicked the OK button. As I was signing on, Quicken advised it would be changing the payment amount just exactly as I had entered it. Result: both payments, old and new, are in the register. I marked the old payment for deletion and re-connected to the bank. The bank generated an error message stating that the old payment had already been cancelled. I tried deleting the old payment from my register and it won't budge. It demands that I must log on in order to complete the deletion. As I just said, when I logged on the bank refused to recognize the deletion request.

OK. I have a new plan for opening a can of whoop@ss on Quicken's demons. I will delete the NEW payment, then delete the payee entirely. Then Quicken will HAVE to let go of the old payment, right? Then I will re-create the payee. I marked the new payment for deletion and logged on. It WAS deleted at both the bank AND in the Quicken register. But when I try to delete the payee, Quicken says "cannot delete payee for which there are repeating online payments scheduled." Go to the screen that lists all the repeating payments. Nothing there. Go back to the register. The old payment is still there. The old payment that refuses to be deleted until it yaks with the bank ... too bad the bank says it's already deleted and won't yak. Totally screwed by Quicken again.

Eventually I discover via Googling that Quicken has an undocumented save posted in their support blogs - to use CTRL to force the deletion of the old payment. It works. I suppose that's worth half-a-point. OK, now let's put the new payment back (like it was before I deleted it). I enter all the information, click OK. Nothing happens. Acts like I entered nothing at all. Try it three times, zippo. I look in the list of repeating payments. I look in the transactions pending for transmission. I look in the register. Nothing. Unfortunately I've been here before. This entire process has "imploded" the payee, making it unusable.  I'll have to create an entirely new payee. I go to delete the old payee. It won't let me. It STILL insists I have repeating payments outstanding against it. Whattaeffing piece of software cr@pola.

I already have two other old payees I can't delete that act just like this ... even though they haven't been involved any kind of payment in at least a year. Quicken says in that same support blog webpage that using the CTRL key also forces payee deletions. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Can't get rid of it. (You can see these kinds of problems also discussed earlier in this review.) I will have to put a space or something in the account number to create a brand new payee, since that account number has already been "used" and Quicken won't let me re-use it. And I am stuck with another old payee I can't delete.

Oh, and down in my tab titled "Scheduled Bills & Deposits Due" I still  (as described above) have listed FOUR TIMES my monthly HOA payment, as being overdue from 13 days ago. (It's a repeating monthly payment set up in Quicken months ago, and it was already paid on schedule.) The four listings are actually two pairs of amounts, each pair one day apart. All of these are artifacts from where I tried to adjust that repeating payment amount when I experienced an increase. The three choices are "enter" "edit" or "skip" I've learned to wait until well after the bill is actually paid, then enter "skip." Otherwise it may well try to pay twice. (I've already described this particular bug up above ... just a reminder, it never goes away.) Bottom line:  since about 2005, the Quicken product has become totally effed up.

I am now about six months now from the next cycle of Quicken's "sunset policy." Every three years, you have to pay for the Quicken upgrade or they cut off your ability to download transactions from your financial institutions (Quicken servers are the `middle man" between your software and the institutions). Maybe it's time to migrate to competing software product that works right, only has to be bought once ... and connects directly to my institution to collect unadulterated data!

When Quicken goes under, I'm going to wear a pink tuxedo to the funeral.

[UPDATE: August 14, 2010] FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST !! After that last fiasco, I decided why invest more time trying to solve the Quicken problem ... when I could invest that time migrating to Moneydance 2010.

Moneydance, what a dream come true! And much less painful a migration that I imagined. Just buy the license at the website first, then download&install the product. Here's a couple of key points I learned (the hard way) that should make your migration run smooth as silk:

* Export the data from Quicken using the "all accounts' option (not one account at a time). I had to look for it but that choice WAS in the Quicken drop-down list.

* When importing IGNORE any advice Moneydance offers that you ought check the "Import account info only" option (ie, to import the structure/tables/fieldnames first, then to go back and re-do the procedure to get the data records). When I followed that advice, I had all sorts of screwy issues, records landing every which way. When I DID NOT check the box (in essence asking Moneydance to import everything in one fell swoop - both records & structure/tables/fieldnames for all of the Quicken accounts) everything dropped right into place, ready to roll. The only record that did not import correctly (and I had ten years of records over about fifteen accounts) was the "original transfer balance in" for one account.

After that I did have to do some minor clean-up for a while - entering stock symbols, entering the names I wanted to use for the accounts, other account details such as my credit card numbers. To make the stock prices update in real time (for some reason) you have to manually add-in two developer extensions. Easy to do (so long as you realize that you have to do it) and the user's guide explains how exactly. Quick and no glitches.

Moneydance swims slick as an eel. Downloading of records only takes three or four seconds at most. With Quicken it took a lot longer. Moneydance is connecting direct to the institution; Quicken is running you through its own server as an intermediary. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that a lot of my earlier issues (such as missing or duplicate records) that I did NOT post in my reviews (since I did not attribute them to Quicken) turn out to disappear. Because they were being CAUSED by Quicken's intermediary server. We'll see.

The online banking download setup was easy, but there were the most minor of issues. Moneydance did not have any idea of course when the last download was done (with Quicken), so it retrieved all the available records at the institutions. (Be smart and bring your Quicken accounts and downloads totally current and as reconciled as possible BEFORE you export them.) Also, where I had multiple accounts at one institution, it got confused first go-round, mixing them all up - and changing the account numbers in the setup parameters. I just deleted all the downloaded records and went back and re-entered the correct account numbers. After adjusting that first `initializing' download for each account, no problems.

I haven't started using the `setup payments through Moneydance' feature yet. My bet it'll be easy.

Moneydance. Just do it.
Here's a blow-by-blow account of the numerous bugs I've encountered using Quicken the last five years. It ain't pretty. The product's just been getting worse since 2002. Quicken 2008: Was a forced/hostage upgrade from Quicken 2005. You "have" to upgrade since they've cut a deal with the financial institutions to cut off your online access with the institutions if you don't upgrade every three years. Just as found when I was hostage upgraded in 2005 from 2002, there's nothing more than a cosmetic face-lift, no meaningful fixes/improvements -- but there's even more bugs, problems and aggravation. * Product now will not connect properly to Fidelity; no problem under 2005. * Took forever to figure out how to turn off a "reminder" function... that kept reminding me to pay bills already scheduled to be paid using the auto-pay function. 2005 did the same thing and it's not been fixed. *You can turn off the product registration nag screen... if you Google to find out how. Product does not have to be registered to use it. * Un-reconciles accounts six months back every once in a while. I've been assuming that's being caused by a few bytes of bad data that occasionally comes from the financial institutions... that the Quicken people have not properly coded so as to filter out. This bug also surfaced in 2005. Two weeks into 2008, I've seen it again already. * You can't turn off the "free update/revision" nag screen unless you take the update. No such nag screen in 2005. * When connecting, the completion screen used to show which accounts had new transactions to match and had convenient buttons next to each to take you directly to the account. Gone in 2008. Now I have to look through every account each time to see where transactions might have been retrieved. * Icons everywhere attempting to peddle other unwanted Quicken products. One of the 'product improvements' in 2008. * Doesn't handle stock distributions correctly (since they were not actually paid for); keeps generating error messages when you enter the correct posting of no cost incurred. Same problem in 2005. * Tricky screens/checkboxes/prompts that try to bait you into using/enrolling for QuickenDot services when you don't have to or need to. Users that did so now post complaints they can't undo it and that the QuickenDot server is constantly down, causing problems/delays when trying to connect to other accounts using a one-step update. Yet another company that's grown totally complacent about product quality while wallowing in its assured-for-the-moment revenue stream. It will bite them hard in the long-run. Postings indicate similar complaining regarding the major competitor product, Microsoft Money. If history is any lesson, there's no reason to suspect that these software products will ever get better under these conditions. Some other product will have to steal their customer base before they wake up and smell the coffee. If you are not already committed to either of those two products, take a good long look at open source software such as GNU Cash. [Update: April 15, 2008] Does now connect to Fidelity... occasionally. When I opened the portfolio area today, the entire computer screen flashed with confusion and the product crashed. 2005 never once crashed. Still flashing but no subsequent crashes. Who knows what happened. Not me. Apparently not Quicken programmers either. [Update: July 12, 2008] Connects to Fidelity now more or less on regular basis. Software still flashes/flickers routinely. Also slow to load, apparently trying to read every single record into RAM, regardless of age. Pop-up screen this morning stating "We've noticed you are not downloading your current Quicken Visa/MasterCard transactions, click here to... " I don't have one. Obviously a deceptive come-on intended to trick users into the application process for a Quicken credit card. Nice. Still constantly beg-screens me to take the latest software update. [Update: October 18, 2008] Just downloaded this week's financial transactions and Quicken wiped out four months of reconciliation on one of my credit cards... again. [Update: January 10, 2009] Tried to change the amount of an annual repeating payment. Refused to accept the change with the error message "You must make this change and sign on no later than six days before scheduled payment. " Payment was set for April 4, 2009, almost three months in the future. I had to delete the payment, log on to make the deletion take effect, then enter the payment all over again for the new amount, then log on again to make that payment take effect. And when I tried to log on I rec'd an error message stating an Internet connection was not detected (a message I get rather often despite my always-on broadband). Luckily I can choose the "Ignore" button and it will go ahead and connect. Quicken programming staff = worthless carpetbaggers. [Update: March 5, 2009] Wanted to stop an ongoing monthly repeating payment where the next scheduled payment was already in place in my register for March 27. I edited in a change for "how many times" from "unlimited" to "1. " In other words, I wanted to pay on March 27 for the last time. When I logged on to the bank the first time, Quicken canceled the March 27 payment. Now doesn't that take the cake--Quicken accounting/finance software programmers are unable to count up to one. And, as all too often anymore, the screen went wacko while I was logging onto the bank. [Update: March 8, 2009] Quicken just UNreconciled one of my credit cards (again) back to the October, 2008 close. Luckily, its a card I don't use much. I suppose this has something to do with Quicken software coders not understanding the start of Daylight Savings Time. [Update: March 27, 2009] The repeating payment change I referred to at March 5, 2009? The saga continues. When I tried to enter the NEW repeating payment, it wouldn't take. I entered it, connected to the bank and nothing happened. The payment did not show in the list of repeating payments or in the register. I tried deleting the payee entirely to start over, but Quicken wouldn't/won't let me delete that payee at all. It claims it cannot be deleted because there is a repeating payment in effect... that would be the payment that is ALREADY canceled. Which means I can't cancel it so I can't delete the payee. To set up the new payment I ended up having to create an entire new payee to make the new payment 'take. ' I had to put a dash in the middle of the account number to create the new payee since Quicken won't allow two repeating payments with the exact same account number. And I am still stuck with the old payee on file which I cannot delete at all. I had to call the bank twice just to make sure the durn payment is actually going to be made on time... and made only once... and for the correct amount. You would think there would be a way to force deletion of a payee. Then again YOU are thinking, Quicken programmers on the other hand are off somewhere slurping down a latte. [Update: April 2, 2009] Have an established monthly recurring payment of $X and would like to change it to $Y. Enter the Online Center, click on Repeating. There it is. Click on it then select Edit. Change the amount from $X to $Y. Save the change. Seems simple enough. Log on to the bank. Result: (1) Quicken cancels the next pending payment, on April 19, of $X. So far so good. (2) Quicken enters a pending payment into the checkbook register for $Y dated May 19. Huh? What happened to my April payment? God only knows what will happen if I tinker with this recurring payment any further. I will write a paper check for one month... and hope for the best. [Update: July 14, 2009] Quicken is popping up a screen telling me I am overdue on a July 10 payment to a vendor. The register shows the payment was made and cleared on July 10. And it's reminding me to schedule another future payment... that's already scheduled. It's the same durn thing I was talking about in bullet # 2 at the top of the review, apparently it's a zombie bug that has now risen from the dead. Still begs me to take the Quicken software update constantly. [Update: September 15, 2009] Quicken has suddenly started reminding me... once again... that certain bills are overdue, even though they've already been paid using the automatic monthly payment function. It asks me if I want to delete, pay or skip. I can only guess what havoc might occur if I delete or skip... so I just keep waiting for the nag screen to eventually go away. [Update: January 17, 2010] Repeating payment to my HOA increasing by four bucks a month. Learned already the hard way that if you change it by just increasing the payment, it doesn't take. So I first deleted the existing repeating payment entirely (but not the existing payee). Logged onto the bank. Deletion occurred properly. THEN I tried to create a new repeating payment (using the existing payee). Enter all the information - and nothing happens. Just like I never entered it at all. Rebooting, log on to the bank again, no change. So I created a new payee (with slightly different spellings for payee name and account number since those fields define the unique payee). Creation took place properly - after every desktop icon on screen flashed on and off screen for nearly a minute. Logged on to bank to let Quicken advise of new payee. THEN created new payment using the tweaked, new payee. Logged on again. More icon flashing in process. New repeating payment now appears in register. Although it has NOT always done so in the past, THIS TIME Quicken let me delete the old payee. For users that can't figure out these kinds of workarounds, the simple, everyday-routine, core process of adjusting the amount of a repeating payment simply doesn't work. It USED to work in older versions of Quicken, so I can only assume Quicken programmers spend their lazy afternoons destroying old code and functionality - instead of writing new code to fix known bugs. [Update: January 26, 2010] The above described payment (at four bucks more) was made successfully to the HOA yesterday. In the Quicken Bill Reminder Tray it says I have FOUR payments missing - all to the HOA, all at the new 'four bucks more' amount, two of them due yesterday and two of them due today. As always when this tray incorrectly reports overdue payments, the tray's three choices are Enter, Edit and Skip. Which one would you dare use to try to get the stuff to disappear? If you choose Skip, will it take the payment back? Maybe in the mirror-image BizarroWorld that is Quicken software. [Update: July 25, 2010] Used a certain credit card last month (that hadn't been used otherwise in about eight months). The account had been live and retrieving transactions without incident for years. The account password is saved in Quicken so that it can do so. But guess what, those new transactions did not retrieve after multiple log-ons (using Quicken's "one-step update" which logs on to all active accounts in a single pass). Quicken reflects the account as active for transaction retrieval, everything AOK. Quicken also reflects the connection took place with the account without error. If I didn't KNOW I had transactions not retrieved, I wouldn't have had the least idea there was an error. Not that Quicken would give me the least indication to do so, I went ahead and tried solving the error by re-running the account through the 'online initialization' process again. It worked. The transactions then retrieved normally. HOWEVER the NEXT time I tried to run through the logon/retrieval process, Quicken demanded I provide the account's password. That would be the very same password it had in storage to begin with - and that I JUST provided to Quicken a SECOND time when I did the re-initialization. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Also, after the re-initialization, I started getting a message that claims 'your last update attempt was not successful, do you want to re-try? " I figure that erroneous message will resolve itself after enough time has eroded since 'my last update attempt. '

[Update: August 8, 2010] I wanted to change the amount for a repeating payment (the equal pay plan for my utility bill was adjusted), so I used the `change' function. Kick me in the *** because (1) using the obviously correct approach in Quicken often means trouble and (2) I've tried this before and it's a major fail. I opened the repeating payment, changed the amount and clicked the OK button. As I was signing on, Quicken advised it would be changing the payment amount just exactly as I had entered it. Result: both payments, old and new, are in the register. I marked the old payment for deletion and re-connected to the bank. The bank generated an error message stating that the old payment had already been cancelled. I tried deleting the old payment from my register and it won't budge. It demands that I must log on in order to complete the deletion. As I just said, when I logged on the bank refused to recognize the deletion request. OK. I have a new plan for opening a can of whoop@ss on Quicken's demons. I will delete the NEW payment, then delete the payee entirely. Then Quicken will HAVE to let go of the old payment, right? Then I will re-create the payee. I marked the new payment for deletion and logged on. It WAS deleted at both the bank AND in the Quicken register. But when I try to delete the payee, Quicken says "cannot delete payee for which there are repeating online payments scheduled. " Go to the screen that lists all the repeating payments. Nothing there. Go back to the register. The old payment is still there. The old payment that refuses to be deleted until it yaks with the bank... too bad the bank says it's already deleted and won't yak. Totally screwed by Quicken again. Eventually I discover via Googling that Quicken has an undocumented save posted in their support blogs - to use CTRL to force the deletion of the old payment. It works. I suppose that's worth half-a-point. OK, now let's put the new payment back (like it was before I deleted it). I enter all the information, click OK. Nothing happens. Acts like I entered nothing at all. Try it three times, zippo. I look in the list of repeating payments. I look in the transactions pending for transmission. I look in the register. Nothing. Unfortunately I've been here before. This entire process has "imploded" the payee, making it unusable. I'll have to create an entirely new payee. I go to delete the old payee. It won't let me. It STILL insists I have repeating payments outstanding against it. Whattaeffing piece of software cr@pola. I already have two other old payees I can't delete that act just like this... even though they haven't been involved any kind of payment in at least a year. Quicken says in that same support blog webpage that using the CTRL key also forces payee deletions. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Can't get rid of it. (You can see these kinds of problems also discussed earlier in this review. ) I will have to put a space or something in the account number to create a brand new payee, since that account number has already been "used" and Quicken won't let me re-use it. And I am stuck with another old payee I can't delete. Oh, and down in my tab titled "Scheduled Bills & Deposits Due" I still  (as described above) have listed FOUR TIMES my monthly HOA payment, as being overdue from 13 days ago. (It's a repeating monthly payment set up in Quicken months ago, and it was already paid on schedule. ) The four listings are actually two pairs of amounts, each pair one day apart. All of these are artifacts from where I tried to adjust that repeating payment amount when I experienced an increase. The three choices are "enter" "edit" or "skip" I've learned to wait until well after the bill is actually paid, then enter "skip. " Otherwise it may well try to pay twice. (I've already described this particular bug up above... just a reminder, it never goes away. ) Bottom line:  since about 2005, the Quicken product has become totally effed up. I am now about six months now from the next cycle of Quicken's "sunset policy. " Every three years, you have to pay for the Quicken upgrade or they cut off your ability to download transactions from your financial institutions (Quicken servers are the `middle man" between your software and the institutions). Maybe it's time to migrate to competing software product that works right, only has to be bought once... and connects directly to my institution to collect unadulterated data! When Quicken goes under, I'm going to wear a pink tuxedo to the funeral. [UPDATE: August 14, 2010] FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST!! After that last fiasco, I decided why invest more time trying to solve the Quicken problem... when I could invest that time migrating to Moneydance 2010. Moneydance, what a dream come true! And much less painful a migration that I imagined. Just buy the license at the website first, then download&install the product. Here's a couple of key points I learned (the hard way) that should make your migration run smooth as silk:

* Export the data from Quicken using the "all accounts' option (not one account at a time). I had to look for it but that choice WAS in the Quicken drop-down list. * When importing IGNORE any advice Moneydance offers that you ought check the "Import account info only" option (ie, to import the structure/tables/fieldnames first, then to go back and re-do the procedure to get the data records). When I followed that advice, I had all sorts of screwy issues, records landing every which way. When I DID NOT check the box (in essence asking Moneydance to import everything in one fell swoop - both records & structure/tables/fieldnames for all of the Quicken accounts) everything dropped right into place, ready to roll. The only record that did not import correctly (and I had ten years of records over about fifteen accounts) was the "original transfer balance in" for one account. After that I did have to do some minor clean-up for a while - entering stock symbols, entering the names I wanted to use for the accounts, other account details such as my credit card numbers. To make the stock prices update in real time (for some reason) you have to manually add-in two developer extensions. Easy to do (so long as you realize that you have to do it) and the user's guide explains how exactly. Quick and no glitches. Moneydance swims slick as an eel. Downloading of records only takes three or four seconds at most. With Quicken it took a lot longer. Moneydance is connecting direct to the institution; Quicken is running you through its own server as an intermediary. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that a lot of my earlier issues (such as missing or duplicate records) that I did NOT post in my reviews (since I did not attribute them to Quicken) turn out to disappear. Because they were being CAUSED by Quicken's intermediary server. We'll see. The online banking download setup was easy, but there were the most minor of issues. Moneydance did not have any idea of course when the last download was done (with Quicken), so it retrieved all the available records at the institutions. (Be smart and bring your Quicken accounts and downloads totally current and as reconciled as possible BEFORE you export them. ) Also, where I had multiple accounts at one institution, it got confused first go-round, mixing them all up - and changing the account numbers in the setup parameters. I just deleted all the downloaded records and went back and re-entered the correct account numbers. After adjusting that first `initializing' download for each account, no problems. I haven't started using the `setup payments through Moneydance' feature yet. My bet it'll be easy. Moneydance. Just do it.