List of improvements are coming... I promise

Getting a web site together and consolidating the list of over 121 improvements in a way that will make sense to you, our customer, is unfortunately taking time.  Preparing the content and the process we go through to update our web site, to be honest, is slow.  I can tell you that there is a great team of people working really hard and making this happen as fast as possible.

We’re doing this because we are glad you have called on us for the specifics.  Until now all the enhancements have been tracked in product design documents, issue tracking databases and in the heads of a lot of out most creative team members.  The few people who are demanding this comprehensive list on our forums are paving the way for others in the next several months (and teaching us how to better inform you in the future).

We plan on having the whole list up on the Sept. 19^th.  Here is a sneak preview of some of the items…

5. Quicken 2006 automatically uninstalls prior versions of Quicken during installation

15. Mileage rates are now always updated automatically

32. Added option to automatically enter numbers with decimals into registers

57. Added 12-month trend graphs within category and payee spending reports

99. New model portfolios for asset allocation

113. Improved performance of Quicken start-up

Comments

[Karl M. Schreder]

is there any activity that is working with the Federal Government to automatically download the TSP retirement fund information from TSP.GOV?

[Barry Graham]

You say that Quicken 2006 automatically updates mileage rates, but the IRS updated the 2005 rate a few weeks ago and my mileage rate has not yet been automatically updated.

Also with Quicken 2005, the scheduled updates feature, which had been working in Quicken 2004, stopped working. I went through this with technical support who were unable to get it to work (it always displays an error message in the system try as soon as it starts trying to do the scheduled update).

I was hoping this had been fixed in Q2006 but it hasn't.

[Andrew Gillett]

I am wondering about something I was just told, and I don't quite believe it. Someone told me that 2006 is the final version of Quicken, and that Intuit was no longer intending on supporting it. They said they had received a letter from Intuit stating this, and so the individual switched to MS Money. I am wondering whether this is true, and if so, what are the reasons behind the decision? If not, I'd like to know so my nurves are a little less frayed. Thanks! -Drew

[kevin giardini]

Much like John Flora's posting on September 08 2005, I am also a Federal employee that is trying to find a easier way to track my TSP performance over time. Because our funds are not traded (or so I hear), there is no real ticker symbol for the 5 funds we have. As such, we have to import all TSP information manually. For a new Quicken user, this is very hard. I am sure John and I are not the only 2 people facing this issue, as there are millions of federal Government employees signed up for TSP which have to go through the same thing if they decide to use money tracking software like Quicken or Money. I would imagine that this should be great business opportunity for Intuit.

[Tom]

I am also entering US Government Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) information by hand into Quicken and have been for several years. I would much prefer having the ability to automate the process. There are ten (10) TSP funds, the values are updated daily (see www.tsp.gov). Perhaps Intuit could consider creating ten pseudo fund symbol representing these 10 funds and have this information automatically updated daily at Quicken. Considering TSP holds $180 billion for 3.5 million investors (both civilian and military) there is a potential of many new Quicken subscribers if their TSP funds could be easily tracked by Quicken. The TSP FAQ site makes some disparaging statements about the difficulty of providing Quicken compatible data. It appears that there will be no relief for this problem coming from the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board.

[Allen]

I have posted the .csv files to automatically update TSP historical prices in Quicken. The only catch is that you need to have the same ticker/symbol-name that I have in the .csv file. If you want to keep your own symbol/ticker, you can change the csv files in Excel pretty easily. Not too hard to set-up, I have instructions along with the zip file that has the latest prices. Note- I only update these files quarterly because it is kind of a pain. There is a csv file for each of the TSP funds in the zip file. Here is the link: http://middleriver.net/WordPress/?p=35 -Allen