What is Quicken Deluxe 98?

Quicken Deluxe ’98 — the name harks back to the old Match Game quiz show. Match Game 72, Match Game 73 — each year promised bigger stars and more risque questions. But Fannie Flagg wasn’t much of an improvement over Charles Nelson Reilly. With Quicken 7 fulfilling most financial needs, we assumed this new version would be, at best, the equivalent of Richard Dawson returning to Match Game 7 while on hiatus from Family Feud. We couldn’t imagine what major improvements Intuit could offer to justify yet another upgrade.

Truthfully, those who already own a copy of Quicken 7 can probably survive without upgrading. But Quicken Deluxe ’98 adds enough great new features to make purchasing this version well worth the small price.

The most obvious improvements occur within Quicken’s registers — the program’s onscreen rendition of a checkbook. The Shortcuts function was tucked away so obscurely in version 7 that it was generally ignored. The Deluxe ’98 package puts Shortcuts in a pop-up menu within the register. By clicking on Shortcuts, you can schedule a transaction, make a report on a particular payee or transaction, or move a transaction from one register to another without performing the extra steps of deleting and then reentering the information.

A miniregister application known as Quick Entry also is new in Quicken Deluxe ’98. With Quick Entry, you can enter the day’s transactions using a fraction of the RAM required by the main program. Quick Entry saves the entries until you open Quicken, then transfers them. Because it’s easy to use, Quick Entry encourages you to input credit card and ATM slips as you accumulate them during the day (before you lose them).

Another new feature, Smart Reconcile, enables Quicken to determine whether a given account is balanced. On occasions when you discover your checkbook isn’t in sync with your bank statement, Quicken Deluxe ’98 points out immediately which transactions have or have not been checked off, saving (sometimes) hours of frustration.

Quicken Deluxe ’98 also caters to more varied financial needs. You can determine the yearly depreciation on your Power Mac or form a viable retirement plan. Quicken’s online capabilities will help you find the best mutual fund for your money, the best deals on home loans, and up-to-date information about your stock portfolio. Quicken’s Tax Deduction Finder, located in the Planning Environment, not only finds missed tax deductions within your accounts, but it also scouts out deductions throughout each calendar year. In combination with Quicken’s online Tax Center (htttp://www.quicken.com/taxcenter), the Tax Deduction Finder can squeeze a lot of money out of your tax bill.

Quicken isn’t perfect. Online banking still is a laborious process, in which you have to write the bank for an application and wait several days before accessing those capabilities, many of which still suffer from technological glitches. Because Quicken uses a more advanced version of West Code’s One Click technology, it isn’t compatible with the consumer version of One Click — a major bummer for many users. Finally, Intuit shortchanged us by not offering a Macintosh version of Quicken Home and Business, which gives Windows users the opportunity to keep accounts and make invoices for small businesses.
We’re optimistic, however, that Quicken Deluxe ’99 will tend to these issues and offer even more features to keep Quicken the number one host of computerized finance.

Weisman, Robyn. (March 1998). Quicken Deluxe '98. MacAddict. (pg. 60).

Download Quicken Deluxe 98 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver