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Answers

• We are seeing this behavior as well. Quicken is aware, waiting on notification from them on plan of action. I have restored from a backup and not completing any online actions right now.

  Quicken user since 1994.
  Quicken Forum/Community Contributor since 2005.
• Superusers are seeing this behavior as well. Quicken is aware, waiting on notification from them on plan of action. I have restored from a backup and not completing any online actions right now.
  

  Quicken user since 1994.
  Quicken Forum/Community Contributor since 2005.
• Thank you. This has trained me to back-up more often.
• August 28, 2019. Quicken updated to version R21.16 last night. I immediately noticed there were no transactions since January 15, 2015. My next step will be restoring the Quicken file from just before the update.
• @curtc I encountered the same behavior. I restored from backup, closed Quicken, reopened Quicken and then completed a OSU successfully (with data appearing to be correct). I'm leaning towards a nasty display issue versus data corruption but still testing.

  Quicken user since 1994.
  Quicken Forum/Community Contributor since 2005.
• Hello All,
  Thank you for taking the time to report this issue to the Community, although I apologize for any frustration or inconvenience experienced. We have reported this behavior and are currently investigating.
  If you have or are currently experiencing issues with missing transaction data after installing the newest release, please post back to let us know:
  

  1. Are the accounts affected by missing data enabled for Mobile/Web sync?
  2. Are the affected accounts connected to download transactions?
  3. If the affected accounts are connected - which connection method is used? Express Web Connect, Direct Connect or Web Connect
  4. Are the Account Balances in the Account Bar correct?
  5. Is the account register filtered for anything besides 'All Transactions' and 'All Dates'?
  6. Does the missing transactions appear when running a report?
  7. Does closing and reopening Quicken restore the missing transaction data?

  
  If you are willing to assist in the investigation of this issue by providing a sanitized copy of the data file where this issue may be seen, please open the affected data file in Quicken and go to the Help menu > Report a Problem option.
  **Sanitizing a data file removes all personally identifiable information, including account login and financial institution details, leaving only the raw data for debug purposes**
  In the Report a Problem window, enter 'Attn: Sarah - Missing Data' in the subject line, ensure the boxes are checked for every file listed, including the Sanitized Data File option. Please add any other additional details, such the date range of the missing transaction data or affected accounts and when ready click 'Send to Quicken'.
  Thank you,
  Sarah
• This discussion was created from comments split from: Problem after Install of R21.16 update - mutual fund shares no longer match brokerage.
• Thanks everyone - first time in forum and still getting used to it. I tried the restore/restart process and it didn't help me. More details below:
  1. Are the accounts affected by missing data enabled for Mobile/Web sync?
  - no sync enabled
  2. Are the affected accounts connected to download transactions?
  - no downloaded transactions.
  3. If the affected accounts are connected - which connection method is used?
  Express Web Connect, Direct Connect or Web Connect
  - no connections
  4. Are the Account Balances in the Account Bar correct?
  - Account balances in account bar seem correct
  5. Is the account register filtered for anything besides 'All Transactions' and 'All
  Dates'?
  - All filters at default
  6. Does the missing transactions appear when running a report?
  - missing transactions don't appear on reports
  7. Does closing and reopening Quicken restore the missing transaction data?
  - No
• Hello All,
  We've reverted an internal change in the backend system. Please close and re-open Quicken and post back to let us know if the missing transaction data persists.
  Thank you,
  Sarah
• I'm seeing the same problem beginning today (8.28.19), using Quicken Deluxe R21.16, build 27.1.21.16. I first noticed that an automatic reconcile of a credit card account failed because of missing transactions. Looking at all my accounts, none showed transactions after some time in 2011. I quit Quicken, restarted, and opened the database again. This time all transactions were present.
  Later this morning, after starting Quicken again, transactions after some time in 2010 were missing. I quite Quicken, and restarted, and opened the database again. All transactions were now present. When transactions are cut off, it appears to be uniform across all my accounts.
  This feels like there is some timeout occurring during database load, that is preventing all transactions from loading. For what it's worth, my transactions for some accounts date back to 1993. I'm using Windows 10 with latest Windows updates applied. I'm also using an SSD drive so database loading is very fast.
• I too am having this problem. Account bar has incorrect values, transactions appear to be missing, accounts with no entries.
  I have over 10 years of data in a 132MB file using Quicken Premier for Windows 10.
  I believe I have found a simple workaround. After invoking Quicken, select File/Save copy as.. and copy the file. Do not leave Quicken nor switch to the file copy. The original file will now display all the correct data. You may have to do this each time you invoke Quicken.
  My suspicion is the data file is unaltered but Quicken is either misreading it or displaying it incorrectly.
• The back-end fix doesn't seem to matter. Not sure why it would since I'm using the Window 10 qw.exe with a local database.
  I just started qw.exe, opened my database, and I'm missing transactions from several accounts at varying times in 2018 on. Also on my Home tab, the Expenses data for YTD has no data, since none of this years transactions are presently loaded.
  With Quicken still running, displaying the database with 'lost' transactions, I went to a command line, and copied the database to a new file. Then in Quicken, I switch to the copied file by using the menu 'File->Open Quicken File'. This time all the transactions are present.
  There's definitely something weird going on. I'm seeing the Quicken window flicker as if there was some process going on in the background. I've never seen that before.
  Now with 'File->Open Quicken File', I switched back to the original file (from which the copy was made), and all transactions are present.
• Re: NEW 08/28/19 Missing Transaction Data after One Step Update in QWindows R21.16,
  Quicken, please send notifications of such CODE RED PRODUCT FAILURES **B E F O R E** one attempts to One Step Update? Push a notification/alert to those running 21.16 proactively with recommended actions?
  
• @CurtC Are you able to do a Validate and Repair on your current file and post the results here? We're continuing to look for more information--
  Just go to File > File Operations > Validate and Repair to complete the process.
  Thanks,
  Quicken Kathryn
  

  0
• edited August 28

  
  

  1. Are the accounts affected by missing data enabled for Mobile/Web sync?
  2. Are the affected accounts connected to download transactions?
  3. If the affected accounts are connected - which connection method is used? Express Web Connect, Direct Connect or Web Connect
  4. Are the Account Balances in the Account Bar correct?
  5. Is the account register filtered for anything besides 'All Transactions' and 'All Dates'?
  6. Does the missing transactions appear when running a report?
  7. Does closing and reopening Quicken restore the missing transaction data?

  
  If you are willing to assist in the investigation of this issue by providing a sanitized copy of the data file where this issue may be seen, please open the affected data file in Quicken and go to the Help menu > Report a Problem option.
  **Sanitizing a data file removes all personally identifiable information, including account login and financial institution details, leaving only the raw data for debug purposes**
  In the Report a Problem window, enter 'Attn: Sarah - Missing Data' in the subject line, ensure the boxes are checked for every file listed, including the Sanitized Data File option. Please add any other additional details, such the date range of the missing transaction data or affected accounts and when ready click 'Send to Quicken'.
  Thank you,
  Sarah

  Hello All,
  A big Thank You to all those who have replied and/or submitted the Report a Problem!
  We are continuing to investigate this behavior and have some additional questions. If you are affected by this behavior, please post here and in addition to the above questions and request for log files/sanitized data file, please also let us know:
  1. Do you use scheduled transactions/reminders?
  a. If so, is auto-entry of the scheduled transaction/reminder set to On?
  b. Were any scheduled transactions/reminders due or entered during the last two days?
  c. If so, were those transactions/reminders set up for the account(s) that are missing transaction data?
  2. If you sync to the Quicken Cloud for the Mobile/Web Apps, are the accounts missing transaction data also enabled for syncing?
  3. Does closing and reopening Quicken correct the missing data?
  4. If not, does performing a Validate & Repair correct the issue?
  (File menu > File Operations > Validate & Repair)
  a. Please let us know what the validation data log says
  5. Does reverting to the R20.15 release resolve the missing data?
  (To revert to the R20.15 release, please download and install the Mondo Patch available here)
  Please reply to this post and let us know.
  Thank you!
  Sarah
• I opened quicken as usual and found most of my 2019 transaction data missing with the resulting misstatement of the balances.
• edited August 28

  see the Alert.. about possible issues - R21.16 -
  

  0
• I'm experiencing same issue as of yesterday (8/27). Tried to send sanitized data file to Quicken support 2x and it fails with 'Unable to send report to Quicken, please try again' message. Not sure how to get you the info you need to try to resolve this issue. It's created some significant instability with my Quicken data file. Sorry as this might not be the right place to post this, but wasn't sure how to get help.
• See if this announcement provides the FIX that you need to the missing data: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7859265/updated-08-28-19-missing-transaction-data-after-one-step-update-in-qwindows-r21-16#latest
  

  Q user since DOS version 5
  Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
  Retired 'Certified Information Systems Auditor' & Bank Audit VP
  
• RE: Sarah --> 3. Does closing and reopening Quicken correct the missing data?
  Yes - I closed + reopened Quicken and all my transactions were there
  The first time I opened Quicken today - all of my transactions were missing !!!!!
  This is scary - I hope a solution is found quickly.
• Quicken Kathryn: Yes, I was able to do a Validate & Repair. I haven't tried the detail reports yet, but looking at the dates it looks like all transactions are being shown now.
  Thank you.
• Accepted Answer

  They also claimed that validating your file will restore the transactions. It did not work for me. I had to restore from a backup.
• Ok, I just opened the bad Quicken data file again to answer some of your questions:
  (1) Running an unaltered itemized category report (all accounts, all everything) showed zero transactions year-to-date (today is 8/28/19).
  (2) Account balances were wrong in left column.
  (2) VALIDATING FIXED THE FILE, and post-validate log file showed it repaired every account, with no further action required on each line. It didn't state there were any damaged or missing transactions or other similar detail, but instead listed repaired [account name], no further action required (paraphrase) for each account.
  (3) Super Validating after that showed no errors.
  (4) Only 3 accounts receive automatic downloads from banks. Two other accounts require I manually import downloaded financial transactions. Several other accounts don't receive either (auto or imported). All accounts were set back in time. All accounts were repaired with Validate.
  Regardless of the successful Validate operation, I'll continue to use the restored backup from the previous night, because it's stable and passed Validation and SuperValidation without errors right after restoring it.
• I downloaded their mondo patch to roll back to Build 20 as they advised. Transactions appeared.
  Did it absolve my freak out Monday when I ran headlong into the failure driving me to restore from backup? No.

• RE: Sarah --> 3. Does closing and reopening Quicken correct the missing data?
  Yes - I closed + reopened Quicken and all my transactions were there
  The first time I opened Quicken today - all of my transactions were missing !!!!!
  This is scary - I hope a solution is found quickly.

  Hello @Tom Sawyer
  Thank you for the response and providing that additional information. If you haven't already, I would recommend performing a Validate & Repair on the data file from the File Menu > File Operations > Validate & Repair option.
  Once the validation has completed, a data log will open in Notepad - what does that data log say?
  When ready, please next close and re-open Quicken - are the missing transactions restored? If so, are they still visible after closing/opening Quicken once again?
  We're still investigating for the root cause of what caused this behavior and the more data we can receive from affected Users via the 'Report a Problem' will help us in understanding and developing a solution.
  This is a top high priority incident that has every Member of the Development and Senior Leadership staff involved. As updates and/or a resolution becomes available, the Alert post for this issue will be updated.
  If you haven't already, I would also recommend 'Bookmarking' the Alert by clicking the Yellow Star icon in the upper right corner to automatically receive notifications and updates on this issue as they become available.
  Thank you,
  Sarah

• Ok, I just opened the bad Quicken data file again to answer some of your questions:
  (1) Running an unaltered itemized category report (all accounts, all everything) showed zero transactions year-to-date (today is 8/28/19).
  (2) Account balances were wrong in left column.
  (2) VALIDATING FIXED THE FILE, and post-validate log file showed it repaired every account, with no further action required on each line. It didn't state there were any damaged or missing transactions or other similar detail, but instead listed repaired [account name], no further action required (paraphrase) for each account.
  (3) Super Validating after that showed no errors.
  (4) Only 3 accounts receive automatic downloads from banks. Two other accounts require I manually import downloaded financial transactions. Several other accounts don't receive either (auto or imported). All accounts were set back in time. All accounts were repaired with Validate.
  Regardless of the successful Validate operation, I'll continue to use the restored backup from the previous night, because it's stable and passed Validation and SuperValidation without errors right after restoring it.

  Hello @johngordon
  Thank you for taking the time to respond with that additional information and answers to the questions from our Development Teams researching this issue.
  I have forwarded this information to the Teams and encourage you to 'bookmark' the Alert post for this issue to automatically receive notifications of updates to this issue and/or a resolution once available.
  Thank you,
  Sarah
  P.S. I also saw your other post (How do I rename my community username? Or delete my account?) and would be happy to update your Username on your behalf.
  Please just reply to that post and let us know what Username you would prefer.
  Thanks again!

• Quicken Kathryn: Yes, I was able to do a Validate & Repair. I haven't tried the detail reports yet, but looking at the dates it looks like all transactions are being shown now.
  Thank you.

  Hi @CurtC .
  Thank you for the response and providing that additional information. We're glad to hear that the transaction detail is now showing after performing a Validate & Repair.
  If you would like to follow this issue to automatically receive updates as they become available, please 'bookmark' the Alert post by clicking the Yellow Star icon in the upper right corner of the post.
  Thank you again,
  Sarah
• edited August 29

  I have tried twice to send a report to Quicken with a sanitized version of the problem. Here is the message I receive.
  This program has become so unstable since it went online. I am definitely looking for alternatives (which I have never done in the approximately 15 years that I have used Quicken Home & Business). [removed - violation of community guidelines]

  1
• edited August 29

  Do you have a backup data file to use before the missing data?
  https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7859265/updated-08-28-19-missing-transaction-data-after-one-step-update-in-qwindows-r21-16#latest
  

  Quicken user since 1994.
  Quicken Forum/Community Contributor since 2005.
• Quicken Deluxe 2019, Version R21.16, Build 27.1.21.16
  Windows 10 Home, Version 1903, OS Build 18362.295
  Used Quicken successfully yesterday, 8/28, and backed it up, per usual. This morning, after One Step Update, many transactions were missing. Only dates were in 2016 or earlier.
  I quickly restored yesterday's manual backup. All was there. Performed a second One Step Update and received latest transactions. Accounts balanced. No problem.
  Do not know if this is connected, but I had a first-time-ever result from the first One Step: the Update Summary had a message from Quicken that Citi had changed its sign-on procedure and I needed to sign onto a special Citi site to fix that before I updated again. I did that before I restored the data.
  After almost 50 years in IT and software, the one mantra for software should be: 'Don't mess up the data!'

Like most people who buy Quicken, you’re probably looking for help: with credit card receipts, checking account statements, retirement plans, and on and on the list goes. You want Quicken to provide an overview of your financial health, while sparing you the time and tedium of balancing your checkbook and tracking every investment by hand. Quicken 2009 can do all that and more, and this book will show you how. The program’s hundreds of features share one purpose: to help manage your personal finances. If you have trouble remembering to transfer extra cash into higher-interest-rate savings, for example, you can set up Quicken to remind you. If budgeting’s your downfall, Quicken can help build a budget to achieve your savings goals.

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Your Quicken ambitions may be no bigger than balancing your checkbook. Yet somehow, owning the program might get you thinking about aspects of your personal finances that you were content to completely ignore in the past. As you learn to do more with Quicken, you’ll expand your knowledge of—and ideas about—money. Then again, sometimes Quicken seems to raise more questions than it answers: Return of capital from stock—what’s that? What does net worth actually mean—and why do you need to know yours? Luckily, the book you’re holding picks up where Quicken’s help resources leave off.

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Note

This book covers the Windows version of Quicken Deluxe 2009, Quicken Premier 2009, and the personal finance features of Quicken Home & Business 2009. It also tells you about the investment tools that make Quicken Premier…well, premier. On the other hand, this book doesn’t cover Quicken Online or Quicken Starter Edition (What’s New in Quicken 2009), which have radically different features and commands. Similarly, you won’t find info on the Mac version of the program, which was developed separately and differs significantly from the Windows versions. (As of this writing, Quicken Mac 2008 was still not yet available—only Quicken Mac 2007 was.)

Perhaps the first benefit you’ll come to know and love is that you no longer have to worry about arithmetic. Quicken automatically updates your account balances when you record transactions, calculates the remaining funds when you divvy up a paycheck, matches downloaded transactions with recorded ones, and tells you when you’ve successfully reconciled your account.

Because Quicken lets you assign transactions to categories, collecting your tax-related information and building a budget are no longer frantic treasure hunts through shoeboxes of paper. Instead, a few quick clicks produce the information you need. You can also feed tax-related data into programs like Turbo Tax and then import your tax return results into Quicken to plan next year’s tax strategy.

Quicken doesn’t just track what you’ve done with your money in the past. Whether you spend cash, rack up credit card debt, or salt away savings from each paycheck, the program’s planning features help you decide what to do with your money in the future. From simple reminders to pay credit card bills on time to portfolio reports that show you whether your investments are working as well as they could be, Quicken is bursting with tools to improve your financial situation.

Quicken isn’t a true bookkeeping or accounting program. Although Quicken Home & Business (What’s New in Quicken 2009) offers features like invoices, accounts receivable, and payroll, it doesn’t offer ledgers, true double-entry accounting, a chart of accounts, inventory control, or certain financial reports that accountants and the IRS require. For example, because Quicken doesn’t include equity accounts, you can’t generate a balance sheet like the ones your accountant is used to. (However, Quicken’s “Income/Expense by Category” report can pass for a profit-and-loss report or income statement.)

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If you have a small business and you don’t track inventory or generate standard financial reports, you can get by with Quicken Home & Business. But if you work with a bookkeeper or accountant, you’ve no doubt heard pleas to switch to Quick-Books (Intuit’s small-business accounting program)—and it’s generally a good idea to listen. Yes, QuickBooks costs a bit more and dumps you unceremoniously into the Scylla and Charybdis of debits and credits. But if you pay your accountant for advice and she’s willing to help you get started with QuickBooks, the transition won’t be painful. (In fact, your grumbling may decrease as you discover that keeping your books is easier in QuickBooks and that you now have more time to run your business.) If you decide to use QuickBooks, QuickBooks 2009: The Missing Manual can help you get started.

Download Quicken Home And Business

Note

If you decide to use QuickBooks for your business, you’ll still need Quicken for your personal finances, because QuickBooks doesn’t track investments.

So, though Quicken isn’t an accounting program, it does perform some accounting tasks. If your financial horizon is no further than your next paycheck, some of Quicken’s features may seem like mystical arts. Yet, in a cruel twist, Quicken’s accounting features are equally mysterious to those who are familiar with accounting. Here’s a quick overview of how Quicken accounts for your money:

Assets are things you own, like checking accounts, certificates of deposit (CDs), brokerage accounts, a house, and your car. Similar to the asset accounts you find in business accounting, Quicken includes several types of accounts for your assets: checking, savings, house, vehicle, and a generic asset account for assets that don’t fall under any of the other account types (like the Fabergé egg your Aunt Katrinka left you in her will). Furniture and clothing are assets as well, though most folks don’t bother tracking them in Quicken.

Liabilities are what you owe to others, like credit cards, mortgages, and other types of loans. Quicken includes liability accounts to cover every type of debt you carry. The time frame is the only difference between Quicken’s liability accounts and the ones you see in business accounting. Businesses keep short-term and long-term liabilities separate. Quicken merely categorizes credit card liability accounts as banking accounts, and mortgages and loans show up in the Net Worth (Property and Debt) center; short-term and long-term liability designations are nowhere to be found.

In business accounting, income accounts track money that an organization receives, whether from selling services, selling products, or getting research grants. Expense accounts track money the organization spends, like employee salaries, office rent, and accountants’ fees. Quicken, by contrast, doesn’t have income and expense accounts. Instead, you create income and expense categories. When you record a check, charge, or deposit—in fact, any kind of transaction—you assign the money to a category.

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In business accounting, anything worth tracking gets its own separate account, even the difference between the value of your assets and liabilities. An equity account is the holding tank for that difference. In business, the financial report called a balance sheet gets its name because the total for all the asset accounts equals the total of all the liability accounts and equity accounts.

Quicken doesn’t have equity accounts but it can still calculate the difference between your total assets and total liabilities, called your net worth. In other words, it’s the value of everything you own after you subtract all your debts. Net worth is as important in personal finances as equity is in business. Increasing the value of what you own while decreasing the amount you owe increases your net worth—and helps you achieve all your other goals in life. (Quicken’s Account Bar displays your net worth to regularly remind you of your progress.)

You’ve got five flavors of Quicken 2009 to choose from and this book covers two and a half of them. (It tells you how to use Quicken Deluxe and Quicken Premier. You can also use the book for the home side of Quicken Home & Business.)

Deciding which one suits you is relatively easy. Here’s an overview of what each edition does:

• Quicken Online ($2.99 per month) is completely Web-based and significantly different from the Quicken editions that run on your PC. It lets you access your accounts (which live online) from a computer or a Web-enabled cellphone. The downside is you can’t track anything but income and spending; investing and asset accounts aren’t part of this edition.

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• Quicken Deluxe ($59.99) handles all the basic personal finance tasks, from tracking spending to paying bills, downloading transactions, budgeting, and tracking your investments. You can even store electronic images of bank statements, receipts, and other financial records. If you plan to use the program to track your spending, gather your tax data, track basic investment information, and do a little planning, Deluxe is all you need.

• Quicken Premier ($89.99) is for people who are serious about investing. This edition does everything that Quicken Deluxe does, but throws in additional investment tools. It also offers to help find tax deductions you may have missed.

• The only reason you’d spring for Quicken Premier Home & Business ($99.99) is if you run a small business and want to track both your personal and business finances with the program. This edition offers everything that Quicken Premier does and adds payroll, accounts receivable, invoicing, and mileage tracking.

• Quicken Rental Property Manager ($149.99) is a new edition that helps you track your personal finances and the rental properties that you manage. This edition is like Quicken Premier on rental-property steroids, with built-in categories for rental income and expenses and other rental-oriented features.

Note

If you track inventory, handle payroll for more than a few employees, or need financial reports formatted to the typical accounting standard, consider forking over the extra cash for QuickBooks. QuickBooks Simple Start is for first-time QuickBooks users and costs $99.95 (about $10 more than Quicken Home & Business). You can test the waters with QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition, which handles up to 20 customers, employees, or vendors (and it’s free). QuickBooks Pro costs $199.95 ($99.95 for upgrades from previous versions) and works for many small businesses.

Most of the time, new Quicken versions come with enhancements, timesaving features, and more online tools to make your work easier and faster. You don’t have to upgrade every year, but Intuit drops support for versions that are more than 3 years old. With a rebate for existing customers, upgrading every couple of years doesn’t cost all that much.

Quicken 2009’s changes are more evolutionary than revolutionary, but you may like a few of the additions:

• Simpler setup. No more grueling setup interviews. In Quicken 2009, the Setup tab (Using the Setup Center) is where you choose the features you want to use. When you’re ready to expand your financial prowess, simply click the Setup tab and turn on more features. When you do that, Quicken adds navigation tabs (see the next bullet point) and the corresponding menus to the Quicken menu bar.

• More navigation options. In Quicken 2009, each of the financial centers (Banking, Investing, and Net Worth) along with screens for setup, paying bills, taxes, planning, and customized views you create are just a click away (Navigating with Tabs)—simply click one of the navigation tabs below the toolbar, shown in Figure 1.

  Figure 1. Click one of Quicken’s navigation tabs to jump to the financial activity at hand. If you like to start every Quicken session with a peek at specific aspects of your finances, you can create a custom view (Creating a custom view) that lives on the My Pages tab and tell Quicken to display it whenever you launch the program (Customizing the Account Bar).

• Simplified Account List window. Before Quicken 2009, you had to click one Account List tab to view accounts and another to manage them. Now, everything about accounts is in one place (Closing Accounts): the Account List window (press Ctrl+A to open it). There, you simply select an account and then edit its settings.

• Bill management center. If you’re constantly juggling funds to stay ahead of your bills, the new bill management center may help. Click the Bills navigation tab (Navigating with Tabs) and you can see what bills are coming up during the next week, the next two weeks, or the next 30 days. When a bill is due, you can enter it right there on the Bills tab.

• Simplified scheduled transaction dialog box. The new and improved dialog box for scheduling transactions (called Add Transaction Reminder) puts the fields you fill out in a more logical order (Setting Up a Scheduled Transaction). You start with who you’re paying (or receiving money from) and the amount, then you specify the account you’re using and the method of payment. If QuickFill (Recording Handwritten Checks in the Register) does its job, it automatically fills in the Category and Tag fields for you. On the schedule side, Quicken automatically sets up a reminder and doesn’t set an ending date for the schedule, so you don’t have to change those settings unless you want to.

• Quicken Sidebar. The tabs hanging off every side of the Quicken screen are beginning to look like a college bulletin board before summer vacation. The new Sidebar (Recording Payments and Deposits) dangles from the right side of the Quicken main window. Click the To Do tab to see tasks you may need to perform. Guide Me gives you advice about the task at hand. The Community and Services tabs take you to a Quicken Web page with additional assistance. The Tools tab has links to Quicken features that may come in handy for the screen you’re looking at, such as Budget when you’re on the Banking tab.

Despite the many improvements in Quicken over the years, one feature consistently falls short: Intuit’s documentation. For a topic as complicated as personal finance, all you get with Quicken is an electronic copy of Getting Started with Quicken, which is little more than a list of tasks Quicken performs, with a few step-by-step instructions.

Even if you don’t mind reading instructions in one window as you work in another, you’ll quickly discover that Quicken Help often isn’t worth the screen space it consumes. The help topics usually cover the basic material you already know, but fail to answer the burning questions that made you launch Help in the first place. You have two options for finding help topics: an expandable table of contents and a search feature. There’s no index for you to quickly scroll through. In addition, Quicken Help rarely tells you why you might want to use any feature. And with onscreen help, underlining key points, jotting hard-earned insights in margins, and reading about Quicken while sitting in the bathtub are out of the question.

Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual is the book that should have come with Quicken 2009. Although each version of Quicken introduces new features and enhancements, you’ll still find this book useful if you’re tracking your finances in an earlier version of Quicken. (Of course, the older your version of the program, the more dissimilarities you’ll run across.)

In this book, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for using the most popular and useful Quicken features, including those you may not quite understand, let alone know how to do: budgeting (Chapter 11), recording investment transactions (Chapter 12), archiving Quicken data files (Archiving and Compacting a File), and so on. Along the way, the book helps you evaluate Quicken’s features and decide which ones are the most useful to you.

Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual is designed to accommodate readers at every technical level. The primary discussions are written for beginner or intermediate Quicken users. But if you’re a first-time Quicken user, special boxes titled “Up To Speed” provide the introductory information you need to understand the topic at hand. Advanced users should watch for similar boxes labeled “Power Users’ Clinic,” which offer technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the experienced Quicken fan.

Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual is divided into five parts, each containing several chapters:

• Part One: Getting Started (Chapters Chapter 1–Chapter 4) covers how to set up Quicken based on your needs. These chapters explain how to create a Quicken data file, create accounts, and choose categories. It also includes one chapter that takes you through a quick test drive to whet your appetite.

• Part Two: Getting Down to Business (Chapters 5–8) follows your money from the moment you earn it to when you reconcile your bank accounts at the end of each month. These chapters describe how to make deposits and pay for expenses, whether you download transactions or record them yourself. You also find out how to rev up your financial work with timesavers like scheduled transactions. Finally, you learn how to reconcile your accounts with your financial institutions’ records.

• Part Three: Tuning Your Financial Engine (Chapters 9–14) introduces you to some of the features that help you increase your financial success. These chapters explain how to create and use budgets; track property, debt, and investments; plan for the future; and generate Quicken reports to prepare your tax returns or evaluate your financial fitness.

• Part Four: Quicken Power Tools (Chapters Chapter 15–Chapter 17) helps you protect your financial information and teaches you how to make Quicken look and act the way you want. These chapters provide care and feeding instructions for your Quicken data files and include the techniques you can use to determine what you see and how Quicken behaves. You’ll also learn how to export data from Quicken to other programs and the import options you have.

• Part Five: Appendixes is made up of three appendixes that provide a quick review of the most helpful keyboard shortcuts, a guide to Quicken resources, and instructions for installing and upgrading the program, respectively.

To use this book, and indeed to use Quicken, you need to know a few basics. This book assumes that you’re familiar with a few terms and concepts:

• Clicking. This book gives you three kinds of instructions that require you to use your computer’s mouse or trackpad. To click means to point the arrow pointer at something on the screen and then—without moving the pointer at all—press and release the left button on the mouse (or laptop trackpad). To right-click means the same thing, but pressing the right mouse button instead. Usually, clicking with the left button selects an onscreen element or presses a button onscreen. A right-click usually reveals a shortcut menu, which lists several common tasks specific to whatever you’re right-clicking. To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the pointer at all. And to drag means to move the pointer while holding down the left button the entire time. To right-drag, of course, means to do the same thing while holding down the right mouse button.

  When you’re told to Shift-click something, you click while pressing the Shift key. Related procedures, like Ctrl-clicking, work the same way—just click while pressing the corresponding key.

• Menus. The menus are the words at the top of your screen: File, Edit, and so on. Click one to make a list of commands appear, as though they’re written on a window shade you’ve just pulled down. Some people click to open a menu and then release the mouse button; after reading the menu command choices, they click the command they want. Other people like to press the mouse button continuously as they click the menu title and drag down the list to the desired command; only then do they release the mouse button. Either method works, so choose the one you prefer.

• Keyboard shortcuts. Nothing is faster than keeping your fingers on your keyboard, entering data, choosing names, triggering commands—without losing time by grabbing the mouse, carefully positioning it, and then choosing a command or list entry. That’s why many experienced Quicken fans prefer to trigger commands by pressing combinations of keys on the keyboard. For example, in most word processors, you can press Ctrl+B to produce a boldface word. When you read an instruction like “Press Ctrl+A to open the Account List window,” start by pressing the Ctrl key; while it’s down, type the letter A and then release both keys.

Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences like this one: “Choose Edit → Preferences → Quicken Program.” That’s shorthand for a much longer instruction that directs you to navigate three nested menus in sequence, like this: “Choose Edit. On the Edit menu, point to the Preferences menu entry. On the submenu that appears, choose Quicken Program.” Figure 2 shows the menus this sequence opens.

Similarly, this arrow shorthand also simplifies the instructions for opening nested folders, like My Documents → Quicken Data → Backup.

At www.missingmanuals.com, you’ll find news, articles, and updates to the books in this series.

But the Web site also offers corrections and updates to this book (to see them, click the book’s title and then click Errata). In fact, you’re invited and encouraged to submit such corrections and updates yourself. In an effort to keep the book as up to date and accurate as possible, each time we print more copies of this book, we’ll make any confirmed corrections you’ve suggested. We’ll also note such changes on the Web site, so that you can mark important corrections into your own copy of the book, if you like.

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In the meantime, we’d love to hear your suggestions for new books in the Missing Manual line. There’s a place for that on the Web site, too, as well as a place to sign up for free email notification of new titles in the series.

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