Quicken for Mac Alternative

[MichaelLAX]

I was able to convert my Quicken 2007 files with not too much effort...

Why would you leave Quicken 2007 for Mac? It is much more robust than the horrible Quicken 2015 for Mac or the modestly better Quicken 2016 for Mac and has been updated to work in El Capitan.

It includes a strong Reports Manager and Investments and is still available for $15 from Intuit if you use their online Support Chat feature and purchase it.

 

[dimme]

Why would you leave Quicken 2007 for Mac? It is much more robust than the horrible Quicken 2015 for Mac or the modestly better Quicken 2016 for Mac and has been updated to work in El Capitan.

It includes a strong Reports Manager and Investments and is still available for $15 from Intuit if you use their online Support Chat feature and purchase it.

I lost the ability to directly download from some of my financial websites. I tried everything to fix it but no luck.

 

[MichaelLAX]

I lost the ability to directly download from some of my financial websites. I tried everything to fix it but no luck.

In my case, in these days of "identity theft" I just will not trust all of the log-ins and passwords to all of my valuable financial accounts to Intuit or any other software for that matter.

I just once a month, go to the website for my financial transactions (primarily credit cards) and download a QIF file and then manually IMPORT these QIF files into the proper account in Quicken 2007. Since I primarily use my credit cards for most of my financial transations, I have them all imported into Quicken for all of my needs!

I did this for years in Quicken Deluxe 2002 and Quicken '98 before that until I was required to update to Quicken 2007 when Macs switched to the Intel processor.

 

[nightcap965]

Maybe I'm missing something, but Mint seems to handle pretty much everything for me, and I just copy monthly spending by categories into a Numbers spreadsheet for budget purposes.

 

[amattas]

Maybe I'm missing something, but Mint seems to handle pretty much everything for me, and I just copy monthly spending by categories into a Numbers spreadsheet for budget purposes.

Mint falls on its face while handling manually entered transactions, and forecasting out scheduled transaction. With Quicken on my PC I can see what my balances are going to be in all my accounts over the next 3 months.

Now with that said, Quicken 2016 on PC has some serious bugs and is constantly corrupting my files so I'm actively looking for something new. I just haven't found something that works better (well when it works).

 

[MichaelLAX]

Mint falls on its face while handling manually entered transactions, and forecasting out scheduled transaction. With Quicken on my PC I can see what my balances are going to be in all my accounts over the next 3 months.

Now with that said, Quicken 2016 on PC has some serious bugs and is constantly corrupting my files so I'm actively looking for something new. I just haven't found something that works better (well when it works).

If you have a Mac, I seriously recommend you obtain Quicken 2007 for Mac from Intuit for $15 from their Chat feature while it is still available. It runs on Snow Leopard through El Capitan and does most of the features that Quicken PC users find important.

Quicken 2016 for both Mac, and now based upon your observations, PC, just seems to be garbage!

How do I convert Quicken for Windows files to Quicken for Mac 2007?

 

[dimme]

Looks like Quicken has a new owner. This could be good news for Quicken users.

 

[Rigby]

Looks like Quicken has a new owner. This could be good news for Quicken users.

I wish them the best, but the buyer being a private equity firm doesn't instill me with confidence. They'll probably want to sell off their shares in a few years to recoup their investment and make some profit. If the Quicken team doesn't stand on its own two feet by then ...

 

[talmy]

Earlier in this thread I said I had settled on Moneydance. I am currently using Quicken for Windows in a Windows XP virtual machine on our home server, but Quicken expires this April and the new Quicken for Windows won't run on Windows XP.

Moneydance's Quicken import took a couple of hours to clean up the conversion errors and I found deficiencies in its handling of investments. So I decided to try Quicken for Mac 2016. The import was flawless and it seems to have all the features I used in Quicken for Windows. It is noticeably slower, has a cleaner interface that often requires more keystrokes to get the job done, and won't work with the database on my server to share across multiple systems. But we decided to go with it to minimize disruptions. If they put the promised effort into Quicken for Mac it will assuredly be a winner.

 

[DotCom2]

I sure hope the sale of Quicken is good news for us Mac users because this is one of my last hold outs from using a VM.

 

[SoftwareMarcus]

I'm the new product manager for Quicken Mac and I'd like to provide some background and answers to questions many of you have.

1) Why don't you just improve Quicken Mac 2007 - Quicken 2007 was built before Mac OS X and is based on Mac technology that Apple no longer supports such as QuickTime. If you're a software developer you'll know that building on top of a code base that is that ancient is nearly impossible and fruitless so we can't just pick up from where that product left off.

2) Why does Quicken Essentials suck? - Quicken Essentials was a complete rewrite of Quicken from the ground up that uses the latest Mac technology and was to be used as a platform for future Quicken Mac development. It's difficult to rebuild all of the functionality that was in the original Quicken overnight and so the Essentials product was born and was supposed to be for first-time or basic users. It was never designed and should never have been marketed as a replacement for Quicken 2007. The goal was to continue to build on this version until it had the depth of what long time Quicken users expected. I would also argue that it didn't really "suck" but instead lacked the feature set that many Quicken users wanted and expected and kind of got a bum rap.

3) Why doesn't Intuit just release a product that is equivalent to Quicken Windows on the Mac? Does Intuit hate the Mac? - Building a product from scratch that has the functionality of a 30 year old product in a few years is impossible. After Quicken Essentials was released and Mint was purchased, Intuit decided to kill Quicken Essentials because the Mac market was small and shrinking and all development was stopped. Companies don't do things out of spite. Management at the time looked at the numbers and the Mac desktop market didn't look that promising compared to the opportunity that the web-based Mint offered. This is why the functionality of Quicken for Mac is so far behind. No work was done for 3+ years.

The reality is the Mac market changed over that time. Quicken sales continued to be strong and after Apple released the iPhone, Mac sales started to sky rocket. In the Summer of 2012 we were given the go ahead to create a team and to start working on Quicken for Mac again but by then all the original Quicken Essentials developers had left and there was a lot of knowledge lost. The team had to be rebuilt and everything had to be re-learned. This takes time. This effort eventually became Quicken for Mac 2015. The goals for 2015 were to modernize the app to appeal to new users, focus on mobile and add investment functionality that would separate it from Mint and begin to add back the functionality that loyal Quicken users wanted. We were also able to convince management to change the way revenue was accounted for and to adopt a subscription model which in turn allowed us to continue adding features through out the year to speed legacy feature delivery. This is why features like Bill Reminders, Calendar View, and Net Worth reports were added after the original 2015 product was released for free to customers. Of course, the team is building everything from scratch so it takes time. Despite the many negative things said about Quicken for Mac 2015 it was an unmitigated financial success.

Quicken for Mac 2016 was released last Summer and added bank bill pay and the team continues to work on more legacy features for 2016 customers. The current Quicken for Mac team is very passionate about building a great product and to deliver the functionality long time loyal Quicken users want. We're working hard to add back all the features the previous versions have but it takes time and quite frankly we don't want to necessarily add it back in the exact same way it appeared in the legacy products even though I know many of you would prefer that. The reason is that the new Quicken Mac has to meet the personal finance needs of customers today who bank in a lot different way than they did 30 years ago. For example, people don't write checks very much any more. Quicken needs to continue to attract new users including millennials or the product won't grow, sales will stall and if that happens the product will be put back into a precarious position. We have to build a modern personal finance product and not a clone of an old one.

4) Is this private equity purchase good for customers? - Absolutely. Quicken was a small business for Intuit compared to QuickBooks and TurboTax and would never get the attention it needed. The new Quicken company that is being spun out will care only about one thing: Quicken. Mac customers are already benefiting from this focus. The plan is to ramp up hiring of Mac developers to speed delivery of legacy functionality. Our CEO believes in the business and our new mission so much that he personally invested in the new company.

It makes sense to shop around and to look at alternatives. I'm not trying to persuade you to give Quicken Mac another chance but I simply wanted to provide some history, context and the current state of the product. Hopefully this answers some of your questions. If you are interested in sticking with Quicken Mac, I highly encourage you to engage with us directly and be a part of the Quicken community working together to design future versions of Quicken Mac.

 

[Rigby]

I'm the new product manager for Quicken Mac and I'd like to provide some background and answers to questions many of you have.
[...]

Appreciate your posting. I sincerely hope that the new Quicken company will be a big success! I have now switched to a different product (after having been a Quicken user for many years), but I will keep an eye on how Quicken develops.

A couple of questions:

- Do you intend to continue Intuit's "sunset" policy (i.e. planned obsolescence after a few years)? I have no problem paying for updates every year or so, but I prefer to do it because of product improvements rather than being forced due to deliberately disabled functionality.

- Will I be able to use Quicken without linking my data to an online account of any kind, like the "Intuit ID" that Quicken for Windows forced me to use since the 2014 version? I like to keep my financial data strictly local, away from any cloud accounts.

- I also much prefer the "direct connect" method to perform online transactions directly with my banks (as opposed to scraping through an intermediary like in "express web connect"), so I hope Quicken will continue offering this as an option.

 

[machenryr]

I certainly hope the new team steps up their game. I've been a quicken user for Mac since the beginning. I haven't been using it it much in the last few years and now understand why. It's just been terrible. The old quicken I knew backwards. But this, I just don't grok it like I did their pre -- the 2007 and prior versions. And I wasn't a power user. Look forward to continued development.

 

[DotCom2]

Appreciate your posting. I sincerely hope that the new Quicken company will be a big success! I have now switched to a different product (after having been a Quicken user for many years), but I will keep an eye on how Quicken develops.

A couple of questions:

- Do you intend to continue Intuit's "sunset" policy (i.e. planned obsolescence after a few years)? I have no problem paying for updates every year or so, but I prefer to do it because of product improvements rather than being forced due to deliberately disabled functionality.

- Will I be able to use Quicken without linking my data to an online account of any kind, like the "Intuit ID" that Quicken for Windows forced me to use since the 2014 version? I like to keep my financial data strictly local, away from any cloud accounts.

- I also much prefer the "direct connect" method to perform online transactions directly with my banks (as opposed to scraping through an intermediary like in "express web connect"), so I hope Quicken will continue offering this as an option.

Excellent questions, Rigby.
I will be looking for a response.

 

[Doc C]

@SoftwareMarcus :

I am pleased to hear that Quicken will be a priority for the group that is now working on it, even though I have started using QuickBooks instead (it isn't nearly as user friendly...)

One thing I have been experiencing with Quickbooks is that it cannot download bank information from all the sources (e.g. Costco MasterCard in Canada). Interestingly, I had no issues with downloading the info when using Quicken, however I wasn't able to find any way to successfully convert the data or transfer it, I recognize that this may be an issue on their end, however I wondered if there was anything that you could do from your end (or perhaps pass it on to the current team working on it).

Thanks

 

[MallardDuck]

1) Why don't you just improve Quicken Mac 2007 -

Understandable.

2) Why does Quicken Essentials suck? -

No, it sucked, and you need to stop tying to defend it. Simple basic features were missing, others didn't work, support was abysmal, and it was never improved. The reason it failed financially is because it sucked. This product burned so many of us that we've never remotely considered giving you a second chance. Why should we believe anything that you say now?

3) Why doesn't Intuit just release a product that is equivalent to Quicken Windows on the Mac? Does Intuit hate the Mac? -

We still write checks, either manually or via online bill pay and balance/reconcile accounts every month. Are you saying you're going to eliminate the basic register function that's existed for hundreds of years?

We do not want to, and will not give you, access to our remote accounts from your web servers, and will not allow you to hold any of our financial data online. Will there be a completely client->bank mode available that does not route through any of your infrastructure?

4) Is this private equity purchase good for customers? -

Exactly how many developers are now on the Mac product? Going from 1 to 2 doesn't count.

Are you going to have US based support that answers in a timely manner and doesn't just read from a useless script?

 

[pr43]

I'm the new product manager for Quicken Mac and I'd like to provide some background and answers to questions many of you have.

1) Why don't you just improve Quicken Mac 2007 - Quicken 2007 was built before Mac OS X and is based on Mac technology that Apple no longer supports such as QuickTime. If you're a software developer you'll know that building on top of a code base that is that ancient is nearly impossible and fruitless so we can't just pick up from where that product left off.

2) Why does Quicken Essentials suck? - Quicken Essentials was a complete rewrite of Quicken from the ground up that uses the latest Mac technology and was to be used as a platform for future Quicken Mac development. It's difficult to rebuild all of the functionality that was in the original Quicken overnight and so the Essentials product was born and was supposed to be for first-time or basic users. It was never designed and should never have been marketed as a replacement for Quicken 2007. The goal was to continue to build on this version until it had the depth of what long time Quicken users expected. I would also argue that it didn't really "suck" but instead lacked the feature set that many Quicken users wanted and expected and kind of got a bum rap.

3) Why doesn't Intuit just release a product that is equivalent to Quicken Windows on the Mac? Does Intuit hate the Mac? - Building a product from scratch that has the functionality of a 30 year old product in a few years is impossible. After Quicken Essentials was released and Mint was purchased, Intuit decided to kill Quicken Essentials because the Mac market was small and shrinking and all development was stopped. Companies don't do things out of spite. Management at the time looked at the numbers and the Mac desktop market didn't look that promising compared to the opportunity that the web-based Mint offered. This is why the functionality of Quicken for Mac is so far behind. No work was done for 3+ years.

The reality is the Mac market changed over that time. Quicken sales continued to be strong and after Apple released the iPhone, Mac sales started to sky rocket. In the Summer of 2012 we were given the go ahead to create a team and to start working on Quicken for Mac again but by then all the original Quicken Essentials developers had left and there was a lot of knowledge lost. The team had to be rebuilt and everything had to be re-learned. This takes time. This effort eventually became Quicken for Mac 2015. The goals for 2015 were to modernize the app to appeal to new users, focus on mobile and add investment functionality that would separate it from Mint and begin to add back the functionality that loyal Quicken users wanted. We were also able to convince management to change the way revenue was accounted for and to adopt a subscription model which in turn allowed us to continue adding features through out the year to speed legacy feature delivery. This is why features like Bill Reminders, Calendar View, and Net Worth reports were added after the original 2015 product was released for free to customers. Of course, the team is building everything from scratch so it takes time. Despite the many negative things said about Quicken for Mac 2015 it was an unmitigated financial success.

Quicken for Mac 2016 was released last Summer and added bank bill pay and the team continues to work on more legacy features for 2016 customers. The current Quicken for Mac team is very passionate about building a great product and to deliver the functionality long time loyal Quicken users want. We're working hard to add back all the features the previous versions have but it takes time and quite frankly we don't want to necessarily add it back in the exact same way it appeared in the legacy products even though I know many of you would prefer that. The reason is that the new Quicken Mac has to meet the personal finance needs of customers today who bank in a lot different way than they did 30 years ago. For example, people don't write checks very much any more. Quicken needs to continue to attract new users including millennials or the product won't grow, sales will stall and if that happens the product will be put back into a precarious position. We have to build a modern personal finance product and not a clone of an old one.

4) Is this private equity purchase good for customers? - Absolutely. Quicken was a small business for Intuit compared to QuickBooks and TurboTax and would never get the attention it needed. The new Quicken company that is being spun out will care only about one thing: Quicken. Mac customers are already benefiting from this focus. The plan is to ramp up hiring of Mac developers to speed delivery of legacy functionality. Our CEO believes in the business and our new mission so much that he personally invested in the new company.

It makes sense to shop around and to look at alternatives. I'm not trying to persuade you to give Quicken Mac another chance but I simply wanted to provide some history, context and the current state of the product. Hopefully this answers some of your questions. If you are interested in sticking with Quicken Mac, I highly encourage you to engage with us directly and be a part of the Quicken community working together to design future versions of Quicken Mac.

 

[Le Big Mac]

I'm the new product manager for Quicken Mac and I'd like to provide some background and answers to questions many of you have.
* * *
It makes sense to shop around and to look at alternatives. I'm not trying to persuade you to give Quicken Mac another chance but I simply wanted to provide some history, context and the current state of the product. Hopefully this answers some of your questions. If you are interested in sticking with Quicken Mac, I highly encourage you to engage with us directly and be a part of the Quicken community working together to design future versions of Quicken Mac.

Thanks for stopping by to provide some thoughts. Hopefully Quicken will be able to return to being the excellent product it was 10+ years ago. Also hopefully you understand why a lot of former Quicken users are pretty skeptical that will occur. Anyway, look forward to new product releases and assessing whether Quicken is "back"

 

[techconc]

I'm the new product manager for Quicken Mac and I'd like to provide some background and answers to questions many of you have.

Marcus, I appreciate your post and I wish your new company success. However, you have to keep in mind that Intuit has severely damaged the Quicken name for most Mac users. Many of us have moved on to products that are quite frankly better than Quicken ever was. For me personally, I've found much success with iBank / Banktivity. I say this as someone that has used Quicken since the beginning in the Apple ][ days. I'm pleased to see a renewed focus on this product for the Mac side, but I still see that your commitments have stopped short of even bringing parity with the PC version. From my perspective, parity with the PC version is the minimum table stakes that would be needed to even consider this product again. Given that you currently have a lesser product than alternatives and that you charge more for it, I see a rather uphill battle for you. It also seems rather unlikely that you'd be able to restore trust in that product name anytime soon. It will take years of solid Mac product commitment and delivery to move the needle here. Again, I wish you luck, but I think I speak for many when I say that your company has a lot of convincing to do in order to get people to switch back to your product.

 

[talmy]

Quicken for Mac 2016 was released last Summer and added bank bill pay and the team continues to work on more legacy features for 2016 customers. The current Quicken for Mac team is very passionate about building a great product and to deliver the functionality long time loyal Quicken users want. We're working hard to add back all the features the previous versions have but it takes time and quite frankly we don't want to necessarily add it back in the exact same way it appeared in the legacy products even though I know many of you would prefer that.

First thing you can do is add feedback for Quicken for Mac 2016. The send feedback link in Quicken 2016 lands in a Quicken for Mac 2015 page. And pressing the submit button doesn't seem to do anything. Let me leave some feedback here:

• Automatic backups, which are zipped (cuts the size in half).
• If I pause entering the digits in a date, it assumes I'm starting over. Example, 1 (pause) 6 gives "6" in the field, not "16".
• My investment accounts are linked to cash accounts. This apparently is not supported in Quicken for Mac as they aren't linked. Entering in a dividend now requires two entries, the second for the cash transfer, and entering the cash transfer requires adding a split containing only one item (!) the transfer. Huh??
• In Quicken for Windows I had bonds at $1/share rather than "Quicken Shares" (a $1000 bond would be entered as 1000, not 10 Quicken Shares). Import into Quicken for Mac messed everything up -- I had to edit all purchases, sales, and bond prices, for all my history in order to make reports look correct. Even worse, often adding prices or editing existing prices, the new prices would not "take" and I'd have to edit repeatedly.
• When a mutual fund issues a dividend and capital gains, I now have to make separate entries for the dividend, short term, and long term capital gains rather than a single entry. And of course the third or forth entry for the transfer to the cash account.
• I'm having to use a separate spreadsheet for my annual budget. A monthly budget is useless for me when most expenses I have are annual, semi-annual, or random, but I know what I need to spend for the year.
• I wanted to combine some categories to simplify things, however the bulk edit will only change categories for transactions not in splits. What do I do for my 839 split transactions?
• Why do I have to log into Quicken.com. As far as I know I'm not storing any financial information online. Or is this some sort of DRM scheme?
• I want to be able to access Quicken data stored on my server from different computers. I can't seem to do that. I don't want to trust my data to an online service.

I almost switched to MoneyDance, in fact I've purchased a copy. I ended up not going to it because its handling of investments is actually more primitive and caused more import problems than Quicken for Mac. So I have to reluctantly give Quicken for Mac the nod for best out there. And I sure hope you do reach feature parity over time.

The reason is that the new Quicken Mac has to meet the personal finance needs of customers today who bank in a lot different way than they did 30 years ago.

This would be fine if Quicken didn't expire every three years. What happens for people like me with a decade or more of data?

I would have happily continued with Quicken for Windows 2012 had it not expired at the end of next month. And upgrading to 2016 was not an option since it is running in a Windows XP virtual machine and you no longer support XP.

If you are interested in sticking with Quicken Mac, I highly encourage you to engage with us directly and be a part of the Quicken community working together to design future versions of Quicken Mac.

I hope you read this and pass it on since I know of no other way to give Quicken for Mac 2016 feedback.

 

[mic j]

At $75 Quicken 2016 (Mac) is outrageously expensive. Couple that with the fact that I got very tired of being blackmailed into buying a new copy (Windows) every 3 years, it was just not worth the annoyance and expense so I bolted. Switched to MoneyDance, which I admit is probably not that useful for people trying to track investments, but is fine for my mundane everyday transactions.

I would consider Quicken again but only if they: 1)significantly improve the Mac version, 2)lower the price, 3)stop the 3 year upped requirement, 4)all of my data and transactions are independent of Quicken servers.

 

[JSC]

While the Mac market is growing, many Mac users elected to use Parralles to create a virtual machine and run Quicken for Windows. The fact that you need to buy Parralles, Windows and Quicken should tell you how bad the Mac version is by comparison.

 

[Doc C]

While the Mac market is growing, many Mac users elected to use Parralles to create a virtual machine and run Quicken for Windows. The fact that you need to buy Parralles, Windows and Quicken should tell you how bad the Mac version is by comparison.

Either elected to, or were forced to due to lack of features in the Mac version...

 

[talmy]

While the Mac market is growing, many Mac users elected to use Parralles to create a virtual machine and run Quicken for Windows. The fact that you need to buy Parralles, Windows and Quicken should tell you how bad the Mac version is by comparison.

I've had a sad, on-again off-again relationship with Intuit. Back in the 90's, probably 95 or 96, I switched from spreadsheets to Quicken. I was a Windows user at the time. But then I found that transactions more than a couple years old where being silently dropped! So I switched to Microsoft Money. Then when I went to being Mac based I kept a Windows PC running that I accessed with Microsoft Remote Access, then eventually virtualized on a Mac mini server. When Microsoft dropped Money, I was forced to Quicken again. which luckily no longer drops old transactions. Go forward to the present and the latest Quicken won't run on my Windows XP virtual machine.

I also switched from Turbotax to H&R Block TaxCut when Intuit added DRM that made it impossible to do my taxes on one system and print the return on another. Luckily H&R Block hasn't pulled the plug.

 

[talmy]

Just reporting back to this thread that I have been using Quicken for Mac 2016. It has been working well and has had many updates -- they actually are working on the software and making it better. So I'm a happy camper.

Looking at some of the issues I brought up:

• Automatic backups, which are zipped (cuts the size in half).

Still not there, but I've got a Hazel task that zips any manual backup I make and moves it to an archive folder on my server.

• I'm having to use a separate spreadsheet for my annual budget. A monthly budget is useless for me when most expenses I have are annual, semi-annual, or random, but I know what I need to spend for the year.

They've added the annual budget.

• I wanted to combine some categories to simplify things, however the bulk edit will only change categories for transactions not in splits. What do I do for my 839 split transactions?

I figured out a workaround for the problem by using hierarchies of categories and rearranging.

• I want to be able to access Quicken data stored on my server from different computers. I can't seem to do that. I don't want to trust my data to an online service.

I discovered that I could put the Quicken data in a Dropbox folder, so now I get access from different computers, even when not at home!

They've also vastly improved the reconcile feature. Only thing that is still awkward is investment transactions.