Quicken can help you stay on top of the bills you have coming due to make sure you'll have enough money and don't forget to pay them on time. But if you want Quicken to help you stay on top of upcoming bills, you will want to schedule transactions. If you've set up Quicken to download transactions from your bank or other financial institution, you might never or only rarely need to enter transactions. The transactions from your bank, together with manually entered transactions, allow you to track the 'real balance' for your account.
Even if you download transactions, you might still want to enter transactions by hand as well to keep your account up to date.
