I’m an old-skool Quicken user. I’ve been using it since I was working on my first undergraduate degree. Today, I use it for pretty much everything in my financial life.
Back in my Linux days, I kept a Windows partition only for Quicken. When I became a Mac user in 2001, I dutifully bought Quicken for Mac. I’ve been disappointed in it from the beginning due to its lack of features and its unreliability. I’ve upgraded faithfully on each version (with an exception, more on that in a minute) in the hopes that one or both of these issues would be addressed. The former has, in a scant handful of cases; the latter possibly has, too, although not nearly enough for my tastes.
But then the Intel transition happened, and Intuit made the decision that they would start over with a new version of Quicken for Mac instead of transitioning their existing codebase to Intel. Having been on the Office:Mac team during the Intel transition, I have a reasonably good understanding of why they made that transition. I understand the decision, even if I don’t really like it. The new Quicken was delayed multiple times, and Intuit finally shipped Quicken Essentials for Mac (QEM). On its release, Intuit said that it didn’t have all of the features of its predecessor, Quicken 2007 (Q07). I relied (and continue to rely) on some of those features, so I continued stumbling along with Q07.
OS X 10.7, Lion, changes that. Q07 is my last PowerPC application that requires Rosetta, and Lion no longer supports Rosetta. In all of my years of dissatisfaction with Quicken, I’ve looked at various alternatives, but have rejected them relatively quickly as not meeting my needs. However, if I want to stay current with my OSes1, something’s gotta give. Q07 has got to retire, and I’ve got to figure out what that is.
I currently run two instances of Q07. One is on my personal Mac for my personal finances, one is on the household Mac for my shared finances with my husband. He might also run an instance of Quicken for his personal finances, but I don’t use his Mac so I don’t know.
My personal finances consist of the following active accounts:
- chequing account
- credit cards
- stock account
- stock account
- 401(k)
- IRA
- Roth IRA
- mutual fund account
The household finances consist of the following:
- mortgage
- chequing account
- savings account
- credit cards
- life insurance
- our home2
What do I need in a Q07 replacement?
- Import of my existing Quicken data. I actually wouldn’t mind it if I didn’t have to import all of it. After all, since I’ve been using Quicken for well over 15 years, I’ve got accounts that are long past closed. I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have to import the data from a mortgage that I had more than 10 years ago. There’s not an easy way to separate out such old data from my existing data file3 But I do want to have access to my full history of my current accounts. I like being able to see how much progress we’ve made on paying off our mortgage.
- Downloading of transactions. I’ve got a lot of accounts, and so the ability to download my transactions makes managing everything a lot easier.
- Downloading of security prices. Okay, so I only own stock in three companies4, but I still like to see how they’re doing. This also includes the mutual funds in my 401(k) and IRAs.
- Budgeting. I maintain a budget (both personal and household), and I want to be able to see how I’m doing.
- Eye candy. Yes, I admit it, I want some eye candy. For example, Q07’s graph showing me how my net worth has changed over time gives me a nice warm fuzzy. Of course, the graph showing me the hits that my 401(k) and IRAs have taken have the opposite effect. Sigh.
Q07 has some features that I don’t use:
- Dashboard widgets. I don’t use Dashboard anyway, so I don’t care about the widgets.
- iOS app. Well, this strictly isn’t a Q07 feature, but I still haven’t felt the need.
- Bill pay. I use my credit union’s website for this.
- Printing cheques. I write one cheque per month5, and I don’t even own a printer.
- Integration with other apps. I don’t need iCal reminders, and I’ve got an accountant for my taxes.
That’s the state of my financial union right now. Next up is to compile a list of the possible contenders and rank them. After that, I’ll start downloading trials of the contenders (where applicable, that is) and see how they compare when running side-by-side with Q07 today. Look for more posts in the future.
If you’ve got a favorite financial application that you’d like to recommend (or, an application that you’d like to recommend against), the comments are open. You’ll get special bonus points if you note how well they will (or won’t) fit with the financial institutions or requirements that I’ve listed above.
My fear is that the winner is going to be Quicken for Windows. I’m sure that this makes me a bad VMware employee, but I don’t actually run Fusion6 on my Mac at home. If I’m going to have to install Fusion, then purchase and install Windows, I’m not sure if I want to reward Intuit by buying another copy of Quicken. This does mean that if you’ve got Windows financial software options, I’m open to those as well, although my preference is definitely for Mac-native apps.
- This is likely, since I’ll probably get a new Mac later this year. ↩
- Not an account, of course. Honestly, I put this asset in Quicken so that the total line in my list of accounts doesn’t show that I’m a trillion dollars in the red. ↩
- At least, I’m not aware of one. Please do comment if you know of one! ↩
- MSFT, AAPL, and VMW, if you must know. ↩
- My HOA isn’t set up for online bill pay. ↩
- Or that other, lesser, virtualization software; nor Boot Camp. ↩
You’ll probably get this recommendation a few times, but I would highly suggest checking out iBank (http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibank/). I just migrated my brother, a heavy Quicken user, to it and was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. For one thing, iBank offered a time-limited trial version as opposed to a transaction-limited trial like most financial software. Also iBank was able to import a Quicken .qif export containing 10 years of data over a dozen accounts without a single error, something that I’ve never accomplished with any other app – including Quicken itself.
I’m in a very similar situation. My wife and I are both Quicken users. We are going to be ordering a new 11″ MBA for her on day one of their release (Thursday?). This means she will have to give up using Quicken. (There is a rumor that Apple is trying to find a way to make Quicken. run on Lion, but I think this is largely fueled by wishful thinking.)
(She also uses Eudora, so we have to do something there as well. I know, I know, you want to know why my wife was still using Eudora. Trust me, it was better for our mariage.)
It looks like Quicken Essentials may have the features she needs, but I track our investments and it looks like that is what Quicken Essentials is missing. So no Lion for me for awhile I’m afraid.
I’ll be following your research closely. Thanks for sharing the results.
I’ve also been dissatisfied with the Mac versions of Quicken, and so I migrated away over a year ago. I’m running Win 7 Pro via Parallels 6 on my Snow Leopard Macs, but don’t want to run a finance app virtually. So, here is the best native Mac app I have found (for my needs): http://nothirst.com/moneywell/
Their iPhone app is quite useful as well.
I am in the exact same boat as you, with many years of Quicken for Mac 07 data that I am not inclined to lose. (Some accounts, sure… but a part of me thinks I should be able to go back and look at the various 401ks/IRAs/mortgages in my past. That’s my data!)
Tried SEE Finance and iBank, including data conversions… neither has Quicken Mac’s power and ability to evaluate extensive investment data, and that’s sad. So I concluded that Quicken Windows is the way forward, despite sharing all of your objections. Bought Fusion, Win7 OEM, and Quicken 2011 for Windows (only $220! sarcasm). The conversion process is brutal, and I have not yet modified all Quicken Mac data to a point where all accounts will successfully convert to Quicken Windows. So there’s that side of the problem, where I’m still working to ‘save’ my financial history. I am also starting with a new Quicken Windows file, and that obviously takes effort.
I wish I had more to offer, but if you conclude that Windows is your best path, feel free to email to brainstorm. And please please please share what you learn.
Right now I’m just glad Lion didn’t come out this past week and I have another weekend to ‘waste’ trying to migrate. Intuit is just shameful in its regard for its Mac customers. I’ve never seen a company compromise its own success like Intuit has, and if they abort all support claiming the Mac side is not profitable, it’s purely their own doing due to inattention and an all but useless QEM.
Have you tried CrossOver Mac by the code weaver guys?
It’s an OSXified commercial version of wine. Run astonishing numbers of windows apps on the mac without needing a copy of windows. To massively over simplify, it just re-directs windows DLL system calls to Mac OS equivalent system calls. Simples.
Is quicken for windows on their compatibility list?
As a VMware employee, I’m much more likely to run Fusion than CrossOver. 🙂