The Official Quicken Personal Finance Software Blog

Quicken 2006 is coming…

I’ve received several emails and read many questions online from people curious about when Quicken Personal Finance Software 2006 will be available.  I can tell you that the team is working hard, as we speak, and the new version will be available early August (first on Quicken, and of course as fast as your local retailer can get it shelved).  I've got to say everyone on the Quicken Team is very excited about this version!  Once it is released, I will let everyone know a little more about it.

The moderator is not a robot. Mostly…

Hi all.  My name is Matthew Lindmark or Quicken Matt.  As a lot of the people from the Quicken User-to-User forum know I’m the moderator.  I’ve been using Quicken since I started to work here in 2002 and all I can say is WOW!  I never used any sort of money tracking program before and this just worked wonders for me!  I’ve converted most of my family to Quicken by now as well as my friends (I will get you to switch from Money bro!). 

Having worked for both Sprint and Microsoft I can say I’m very proud to work here at Intuit.  Not only do you get a feeling of the importance of “Doing right by the customer,” but there is such a huge community spirit here.  So many times I’ve seen my co-workers go out of their way to fix a customer's issue. This is something I never really saw when I working at any other company.  I feel that the blog and forum will help build a better understanding of both the program and people’s understanding of Intuit.  I look forward to everyone's comments and posts!

The more you tell us, the better we’ll be…

“Help me, help you” –Jerry McGuire

This famous movie quote is one that product managers jokingly use here at Intuit.  As cheesy as it sounds, it is so true.  Knowing how everyone uses Quicken, what do you like, what do you dislike and what are the exact reasons something is important to you helps us determine how to best concentrate our efforts… no item is too big or small (and I don’t just mean in the product either).

Help us, help you by giving us feedback! Go to this web site and have at it -http://www.quicken.com/voc/.  Tell us what you like, dislike, and want to see more of.  Anything from rebates to product features, support questions to compliments (my favorite of course ;-)).  We have teams of people who review this information every single day and your feedback directly influences what each of us does in our daily work.  While we don’t respond to every submission, you can be assured that we are reading them.  Engineers, marketers, business leaders, technical support representatives… everyone.

Some examples of what we do with this may help… Many of you have been asking for extended support hours because the times you want to contact us are not “normal business hours.”  As a result the hours of operation for our online chat have been increased.  Another example… many of you told us you needed a way to follow-up on certain payments you enter into Quicken.  As a result we included the feature to add transaction flags, notes and alerts in Quicken 2005. 

These are just two of hundreds of things we are doing based on the feedback we get from you.  Like everything else, if we didn’t know about these specific things we wouldn’t have been able to do anything about them.  Help us, help you by continuing to provide feedback.  The more you do, I can promise, the more you will like each additional release.  Honestly I need the help from our experts… you!

The Quicken Product Guy

Hello.  My name is John Flora, I am a product manager for Quicken Personal Finance Software.  It’s my job to understand how each of you use Quicken, what you want or need from it and ensure we do our best to provide a great product.  It’s an amazing job!  The biggest reason is I love it… because I am a passionate user of the very product we are building (since 1995).

You’ll see my posts on this BLOG periodically telling you some stories about the Quicken Team, giving you tips and tricks to get more out of Quicken, or simply just informing as many people as I can about the stuff that is happening here at Intuit.  You’ll also see me reviewing and occasionally responding to your posts in the Quicken User Forum.  I’ll be reading the submissions you send to us through our product feedback site and maybe one day we can even visit personally (if we haven’t already).

I hope you find my postings useful or at least entertaining.  Like everything else at Quicken, you can always tell me how to make this even better.

Improving the Product is Only Part of the Story

I can't beleive it's already June!  Seems like only last week, rather than last year, that our team was just starting to talk about what to improve for Quicken 2006.  And now, before you know it, you'll be able to find Quicken 2006 on the shelves of your favorite retailer and on Quicken.com.  We can't wait to ship the new version, as we've been getting great feedback from our beta test customers.

While we're excited about the new product, we've got high hopes for positive feedback on a lot of other things as well.  I think a big difference this year is that we've also focused on improvements that go beyond the product itself.  In talking to many of you over the past year and listening to all your feedback, you've let us know loud and clear that your experience with Quicken is much more than simply your use of the product.  It also includes things like shopping for Quicken, as well as getting your tech support questions answered.

That's why we're working so hard on things like making it easier to select the version of Quicken that's right for you, getting your order shipped faster and providing better answers to your tech support questions.

I'll keep you posted on those improvements and look forward to hearing comments!  To discuss this blog post, please visit our forum.

Glenn

The Official Quicken Personal Finance Software Team Blog

Welcome to the Official Quicken Personal Finance Software Team Blog!

If you're looking to find out more about us and what we've been up to lately, you've come to the right place.  Whether it's picking up some nifty tips and tricks or learning why we decided on particular product improvements, we hope you find the information valuable and interesting.

And of course, we look forward to hearing what you think!

Take Me to Your (Business) Leader...

I’m Glenn Tom, the Business Leader for Quicken Personal Finance Software.  Around here, I’m also known as the End-to-End Category Leader, which is just a fancy way of saying I’m the one responsible for the total customer experience. 

I’m also a big-time user of the product, having purchased my first version with Quicken ’95.  If you found your way to this blog, you probably feel as passionately about Quicken as I do.   And that’s probably the biggest reason we created this blog.  To give passionate Quicken users a view into what makes our team so passionate about what we do.  Oh, and here's a little bit of background info on me.  Before coming to Intuit 3 years ago, I held marketing management roles with Morgan Stanley Online, Citibank and American Express.  I earned my MBA from Wharton, and have undergraduate degrees in liberal arts and engineering.  When I'm not thinking about how to make life better for Quicken Personal Finance Software customers, I enjoy spending time with my 7- and 11- year old daughters.

-Glenn