Intuit on Friday announced a lower price and new features for Quicken Essentials, its personal finance software. The software will now cost $49.99; customers who purchased it at the higher price of $69.99 will be eligible for a refund for the difference – the offer is good through May 31, 2010.

Quicken Essentials was developed for users who want to track income and expenses, including bills and paychecks, create customized budgets, plan financial goals and more. You can use it to track activity in your bank, using credit cards, loans and other financial tools. Quicken Essentials can also automatically categorize your transactions for you.

New features are coming to Quicken Essentials by the end of May, and they include the ability to password-protect files and export transaction data to spreadsheets.

Intuit also plans to roll out new features for Quicken Essentials between now and the end of 2010. Those plans include the ability to enter investment info from brokerages that don’t download to Quicken directly; comparison of spending between time periods; export of tax-deductible expenses to tax filing programs; and the ability to track budgets across several months.