Quicken 2007 XG

I bought Quicken 2007 XG the other day. I wanted it for the detailed investment performance reporting using IRR (internal rate of return). It seems to deliver on that for the most part although I have only loaded in some investment transactions. I actually loaded in my first transactions ever! I still had my transactions from 1996-1999 when I was purchasing the AIC Advantage Fund. I’ll talk more about that investment and what I found out from Quicken’s reports. I looked at the options in the investment performance report and it looks very flexible in terms of showing results for only certain accounts or investments, and for all dates (not just 1,3,5 years). The part that sucks about Quicken is that it’s still a Mickey Mouse program because it doesn’t to double-entry accounting. When I was entering “Bought” transactions there seemed to be an associated cash account that was going negative, but I couldn’t choose the account. Nor do I remember creating this account. I used the BoughtX transaction type instead, and then I could choose an account to fund the purchase. I have been using Gnucash up until now and was very satisfied with it but wanted better investment reporting. I love Gnucash’s double-entry accounting, and it is too bad that Quicken doesn’t have that capability. I thought about getting QuickBooks but it didn’t seem like QuickBooks had any investment support, although I could be wrong. The other annoyance is that Quicken has such a cluttered interface. Gnucash was so simple, just a list of accounts and a ledger. I’ll have to see if I can customize the interface in Quicken at all, but I doubt it. I have made a tentative decision to stop tracking individual transactions in my chequing accounts and just track investments instead. Not sure if I’ll go ahead with it, I’ll have to see how easy it is to import transactions from statements downloaded from online banking sites into Quicken. Only 1 of our 3 institutions allows us to connect right from Quicken. For the other 2 I have to go to the website myself, and click on “download statement.”