Quicken Financial Life for Mac Delayed to 2010

[Homerpalooza]

I think Intuit is making the right decision to purchase an outside development team rather than trying to grow it organically from inside. They needed to acquire a boatload of talent. Not slowly recruit it. No question though, when Quicken 2005 quit connecting to my existing online accounts, forcing me to update to Quicken 2008 ... I was pissed.

[jb60606]

So does this mean that Quicken Mac will be an online service only?

I have to admit, even though I have a mint account, I don't want to continue storing my financial details online. Besides, Mint never quite works for me. It always times-out and logs me off the website before it can update my account balances.

Oh where or where will I ever find decent financial management software.

[Nugget]

Knowing Intuit, they'll release Quicken for Mac as a web-only app but it will require IE7 to work.

[wwjdjoe]

Originally Posted by Skald

Am I the only one hesitant about giving Mint (or anyone else) all of my banking and investment account names and passwords? I have more faith in the ability of hackers than I do in security systems.

No, you're not the only one. This is exactly why I didn't sign up for Mint a year ago. I don't know why this is such a challenge for Intuit. I'm about ready to build my own in FileMaker Pro. At least then I will get the features I want and not all the fluff that isn't really all that useful.

[wwjdjoe]

Originally Posted by jb60606

So does this mean that Quicken Mac will be an online service only?

I have to admit, even though I have a mint account, I don't want to continue storing my financial details online. Besides, Mint never quite works for me. It always times-out and logs me off the website before it can update my account balances.

Oh where or where will I ever find decent financial management software.

I bet this where Intuit is headed--online only. Maybe it's part of the new health-care package and will require all Americans to have their financial details online.

[jbennardo]

Just had this discussion with the wife. This thread made me re-examine what exactly I use Quicken for.. I don't have stock or any of that stuff. My budget isn't so difficult it couldn't be done in Numbers or Excel.

It's essentially been a double entry system that is more aggravating than beneficial. Plus, I haven't been able to connect to my bank this week to download transactions anyway. So disappointing that Quicken has gone this way.

[jb60606]

just deleted my Mint account. I'm tired of chasing financial software.

Microsoft Money went under. Quicken was never consistent under Windows, a complete failure under OS X, and mint.com, while it gave me a snapshot of my finances, did nothing else for me.

If you think about -- aside from automatically interacting with your financial institutions, this isn't something you can't do yourself, so I'm going to try building my own. All of my financial institutions optionally let me download my stuff in CSV files.

[Skald]

If at least two posters plan to create their own minimalist financial program, I hope they and others consider collaborating on one good open-source program.

Some of us would not be at all bothered if such a package had no provision for downloading data from financial institutions. I've used Quicken for years without doing that, and still found the record-keeping, sorting, categories functions worth my effort.

I know that some people are busier than others, but I have found than manually entering transactions helps keep me aware of where I spend money. This seems to me worth one's time, especially anyone trying to get out of debt or who prepares budgets.

Another reason to use some program? Years ago I read in the Wall Street Journal that the IRS largely accepts legitimate Quicken and similar records in lieu of receipts. A court made them do it. I am not a lawyer, but anyone needing an extra push to offer a program might want to see if this is true and would increase user interest.

[nickweston]

Apple-

PLEASE come up with a great accounting program. Intuit SUCKS.

We Mac people built that company from the ground up, then they bailed on us around '96. Now they realize they made a mistake and are pawning off watered-down, poorly written versions of Quicken and Quickbooks for exorbitant prices (no upgrade path for QB, you just buy it new every time!), and the WORST support on the planet.

Now, they (Intuit) bought Mint.com, one of the only cool developments in the accounting software world.

After wrestling with these idiots for 20 years, because my accountant uses QB, I'm DONE.

c'mon Apple.....show us how it's supposed to be done!

[savar]

Originally Posted by Nugget

Thanks for the warning, I deleted my mint.com account on the news. I refuse to channel another dime towards Intuit, however indirectly.

Intuit is such a lousy company... I finally escape them, and they sucker me back in!

Seems to me like the real market for a personal finance program would be for a great open source app that has plugins (like firefox). A big part of the problem is that personal finance is such a diverse activity, no one program is going to suit everybody. But if it could be tweaked and grow organically, that would be a big hit.

[jb60606]

Originally Posted by savar

Intuit is such a lousy company... I finally escape them, and they sucker me back in!

Seems to me like the real market for a personal finance program would be for a great open source app that has plugins (like firefox). A big part of the problem is that personal finance is such a diverse activity, no one program is going to suit everybody. But if it could be tweaked and grow organically, that would be a big hit.

exactly. I think open source is the only answer. I'd gladly devote time to its development. The only question mark is cooperation from financial institutions.

[savar]

Originally Posted by jb60606

exactly. I think open source is the only answer. I'd gladly devote time to its development. The only question mark is cooperation from financial institutions.

Well, I started to do some research.

Turns out, Mint is actually powered by a backend service called Yodlee (yodlee.com) who offers the same type of account aggregation. Pretty interesting. Another company, similar to Mint, called justthrive.com, offers another account aggregation personal finance manager.

On the open source front, looks like GnuCash is the big thing:

http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/MacOSXInstallation

I'm going to mess around with some of this stuff. It seems to me like an army of open source volunteers could probably provide the same level of compatibility with online banks -- as far as I can tell, all they are doing is logging into the website for you with a software robot, and screenscraping data if those banks don't offer it in a standardized format. This is something banks can't really stop, except to continually change their page layouts.

Edit: plus running a program locally like this would solve the security dilemma that I still have with Mint. Your passwords are no longer stored in the cloud, but would be stored on your machine only.

[Skald]

If some of you do develop an alternative to Mint, et al, as I hope you do, please make it easier to install than gnucash (I am still woozy from reading the wiki installation instructions at gnucash.org).

[zaphoyd]

It is interesting that several people have suggested writing a new personal finance app. I wonder what it is that makes a good PF app so hard to get right? I used Quicken for a few years and finally couldn't stand it anymore and switched to MoneyWell. MoneyWell was an excellent program but had very limited reporting and desktop syncing tools. Ultimately I decided to write my own application that combines the best features of the wide variety of finance applications I have tried.

My goals for my PF app were:
Implement a basic personal finance data framework that organizes financial data in two distinctly useful ways; neither of which alone can provide a complete set of necessary financial tools.

- Classical Account Register (where is our money?)
- Envelope Budgeting (can we afford this?)

With this data I wanted an app that would:
- Track generic financial assets instead of US Dollars (ie stock shares, gift cards, foreign currency) without making the assumption that USD would be the default asset. Treat cash accounts/transactions as first class citizens and work with pre-tax funds so reports include the complete financial picture
- Use a web application to solve syncing and remote access problems (both my wife and I need to use this app from 4-5 different devices and locations, laptop/desktop/home/work/mobile)
- Have a full featured transaction tagging and filtering system to create very specific reports, replace rigid quicken style categories, and allow for wikipedia meets wolfram alpha style exploration of your financial data.
- Flexible stats/reporting/maybe graphing if it can be done well in a webapp that changes in real time as you adjust your filters or select a group of transactions.
- Dashboard/widget system to aggregate/summarize key data on the home page (balances for day to day spending envelopes, warnings for low checking account balances or bills due)
- Have a clean and attractive UI (so that my wife, a non-personal finance app geek, can easily add her transactions and look up what she needs to)

I wrote the original application last June and have been refining and refactoring it since then. Some parts of it are much more complete than others, some are slightly tailored to our financial situation. We have been using it to track our finances for several months and have been much happier with it than anything else. If anyone is interested in writing/discussing/playing around with some experimental personal finance tracking/reporting software let me know!

[-hh]

Originally Posted by Skald

Am I the only one hesitant about giving Mint (or anyone else) all of my banking and investment account names and passwords? I have more faith in the ability of hackers than I do in security systems.

Considering that I just had another credit card number 'stolen' this month, I tend to agree with the idea of keeping Accounts & Passwords offline.

FWIW, I find the mint.com-Intuit press release quite ironic, as it claims that “A recent survey showed that 85% of U.S. adults had heard of Quicken.” Unfortunately, a similarly large percentage of US adults have also heard of the historical leader of Germany during WW-II and the Holocaust. The point here is obvious: it simply is not sufficient to simply be “heard of”: the key business question is what percentage of the public has a positive opinion of the company Intuit…

...and given their 3 years of FAIL with Mac Quicken...

...what the team at mint.com doesn't necessarily realize or appreciate is that they've now allowed Intuit’s bad reputation to now become part of each of their personal reputations. There’s some things that money can’t buy…


-hh

[MorphingDragon]

Use gnuCash?

[maconservative]

The new version of the Quicken for the Mac (whatever they decide to call it) will be completely useless to me unless it can do the following.

1) Complete feature parity with the Windows version. Not really sure why this is difficult to accomplish.
2) Ability to access the data seamlessly between Mac and Windows versions. Our home computer is a Mac, but my wife's work laptop is a Dell. It would be nice to be able to access the same information no matter what platform we are on.

This coming from a loyal, long-time Intuit customer (both consumer and professional products) and former employee.

[nickweston]

INTUIT?

Let me get this straight. The Mac community built this company, and now we're the ugly stepsister.

Quicken is not compatible with Quickbooks.
Quickbooks for Mac doesn't have the same features as QB for Windows.
Support is pay-only.
No upgrade path (we're expected to buy the entire software package like we're new customers?!!!!)

Intuit has seen my last dollars. I've been forced, more or less, to use their crap for the last 20 years because of my accountants. I am still using QB 2006 and will NOT upgrade (translation: re-purchase).

I would call Intuit evil, but that would be giving them too much credit. They're just inept.

[alec]

Originally Posted by jb60606

exactly. I think open source is the only answer. I'd gladly devote time to its development. The only question mark is cooperation from financial institutions.

Also, why bother with Quicken when Mint exists now a days for free? Especially since Mint is better too...

[alec]

Originally Posted by nickweston

INTUIT?

Let me get this straight. The Mac community built this company, and now we're the ugly stepsister.

Quicken is not compatible with Quickbooks.
Quickbooks for Mac doesn't have the same features as QB for Windows.
Support is pay-only.
No upgrade path (we're expected to buy the entire software package like we're new customers?!!!!)

Intuit has seen my last dollars. I've been forced, more or less, to use their crap for the last 20 years because of my accountants. I am still using QB 2006 and will NOT upgrade (translation: re-purchase).

I would call Intuit evil, but that would be giving them too much credit. They're just inept.

Yah. Inept and too big for their own good. I never expect good Mac software from these bloated software companies anymore...

[NomadicTy]

I'm with the other guys who are leery of having all my financial info online, in one place. That's the reason why I never got into mint. And now that mint is owned by Intuit, I'm glad I didn't do it.

It took me a while to install it, but I've been running GNUCash on my mbp for almost two years now. It's double-entry (I'm an accounting geek since that's what I studied in the uni.) Handles multiple currencies (I love to travel). Downloads stocks, mutual funds, and currency exch quotes.

Though the development may seem to be slow, I really like the direction they're going. And they are making it easier to install on OSX.

[sladey]

Originally Posted by alec

Also, why bother with Quicken when Mint exists now a days for free? Especially since Mint is better too...

Because Mint only works in the US and you still can't manually enter transactions.

So it's Parallels/Windows XP and MS Money 2003 for me which is the only personal finance software that's any good that works in Australia! (until I write my own...)

Just a point on downloading data from banks. I still don't get why people do it. Sure it's convenient, but it assumes that the bank data has no errors! The other thing about manual entry is that it is a natural limiter of my spending. The more data I have to key in the more I realise I'm spending too much so I cut back...