Update – 20120712: I was wrong, this is still a great article, but I gave up on Intuit and any and all of their Macintosh software, see my latest post. As I mentioned in my last article, I’ve entered my last transaction into Quicken 2007 for Mac. I haven’t deleted it off of my system yet, but I will shortly. This is my review of Quicken Essentials for Mac ( QEM as as my fellow bloggers seem to have dubbed it, I don’t think that rolls of the tongue, so I’ll just use Quicken Essentials).
This article will be the culmination of my adventure into Macintosh personal finance software. I didn’t set out to be a spokesperson for the legacy Quicken for Mac users, but it seems to have worked out that way, at least a little, and I’m awed at the passion people have for this space and the wonderful comments everyone has left on my blog. When I setup this site, it was to home NAS device. I was upset, disgruntled, and needed an outlet. As soon as I published that article, I happened to get my Quicken Essentials pre-order email from Inuit. I immediately became livid at what I perceived to be a complete and total betrayal of the loyalty, patience, and trust I had provided to Intuit. Not only was the new product missing key features, that were present in my 4 year-old version of Quicken, but there was no upgrade pricing, and only a moderate discount for pre-ordering ($10).
That prompted me to write my second ever blog post, The rest was history and led me to talking with multiple people at Intuit, including, VP/GM of Personal Finance at Intuit, and having discussions with folks at IGG Software, the developers of iBank. I hope that after you’ve read this review, you can truly make an informed decision on your next Personal Finance software purchase for the Macintosh. It’s not an easy place to be right now if you rely on this type of software. No matter what you choose, you’re going to be faced with data conversions, data irregularities, new interfaces, different problems from the ones you’ve already discovered work-arounds for, and learning curves. Hopefully I’ve helped you along that path.
Installation Once you’ve acquired your Quicken Essentials disk image (or CD-ROM) and opened it, you’ll find three items of importance: Quicken Essentials, the Getting Started guide, and the Converting? If you are new to Personal Finance software you can just drag the Quicken Essentials program icon into the provided Applications folder link (hint, hint, iBank) and it will copy itself into the Applications folder on your hard drive.
Dec 16, 2018 One of the biggest news items in the personal finance software space for 2015 was the releasing a new version of Quicken for Mac. The last time there was a true update for Quicken for Mac was in 2007. Quicken Essentials for Mac was released.
![Quicken Quicken](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125496448/819050326.png)
The Getting Started guide, a PDF, is well worth the time it takes to read through, it is very well written, thorough, and gives you a great starting point for Quicken Essentials. I highly recommend both new and old Quicken users read it. Intel native! Boo, not 64-bit. I know, I’m never happy.
Bye bye Rosetta. Initial Configuration The Demo Alas Intuit does not provide demos of its products. It would be great if existing Quicken for Mac users could pull this version down and try it out. I know the Beta tests were, for the most part, open and lots of people got to use it, but this is the finished, polished, product. A timed demo or even transactional limit demo (like iBank) would probably waylay the concerns of many existing Quicken customers as they moved to this product. It would have also given folks a chance to test out the data conversion and see what, if any, issues they’d have when moving, before they purchased.
Unfortunately, most “mainstream” software does not provide a demo period, so I’m not going to fault them for it. Quicken File Exchange Utility Yea, you actually have to do some work BEFORE you can import your data into Quicken Essentials. You’ll have to convert your existing data file into something more modern that Quicken Essentials can read. You didn’t expect Intuit to natively support a four year-old application data format did you? What I don’t understand though is why not do this from within Quicken Essentials?
I really don’t get the thought process behind this. As a programmer, I can certainly respect that this is a one-time action you’re going to perform on your data, so why bloat the application with all the code necessary to perform those conversions? Well, because it’s not necessarily a one-time thing, that’s why. The issue here is that if you misplace, damage, or lose your original installation media, then you’ve lost the Utility and cannot convert older Quicken files to the new format anymore and hence cannot import them into Quicken Essentials. This could have been handled better. Worst case, keep this application separate, but bundle it inside the main application and have it launched from within Quicken Essentials itself. This is clunky.
I don’t like it. Regardless of its clunkiness, you should back up your Quicken Data file. I’m going to say it again, BACK UP YOUR ORIGINAL QUICKEN DATA FILE. The easiest way is to highlight it, press CMD-D to make a copy, and then perform all of the conversion operations on the copy. After you’ve got a backup, run the Quicken File Exchange Utility that is found in the Converting? Folder on your installation media.
Yep Intuit told you to make a copy too, I was just prepping you. Tap the Continue button and the utility will ask you to find your Quicken Data file.
Go ahead and Open the COPY that you created above. This process is quick, took about 2 minutes on my 13MB Quicken Data file. When it’s complete, you can delete the copy you made of your original data file. You’ll now have a new file in the same directory as your Quicken Data file, but this one will have “export.qdfx” appended to its name. This is your new-fangled Quicken Essentials format data file, which you can now import into Quicken.
Using Quicken Essentials Initial Launch You can finally fire up the Quicken Essentials application. You’ve converted your data to a more modern format and now you won’t have to bounce in and out of Quicken to get your data imported. Main Screen I’ve got to hand it to Intuit here, its pretty.
This is nothing like Quicken Financial Life’s Beta Screens. That’s a clean initial screen, looks very Mac-like, and the colors there draw you in and make you want to jump in with both feet and start using it (I want a chart like that!). You have Overviews, Transactions, Scheduled Transactions, Downloads, Summaries, and Spending Cloud reports. What else could you possibly want? Oh yea, your Accounts. So, pull yourself away from clicking all the buttons, reports, and immediately exploring the new application. Let’s get your Accounts loaded up.
Migrating Data This is where the rubber meets the road. We’ve been promised by Intuit, and Aaron Patzer, that this is one of the areas that Quicken Essentials will shine. This is where you experience “The Mother of All Converters”. This bad boy is supposed to take any legacy Quicken data file, and other application data files, and perform magic on it, importing all of your supported (yes, I said supported, not all) data into your new Quicken Essentials application.
So let’s get started. At this point, it’s important to note what’s not going to import, you’re not going to be pleased, from the Converting Your Data file included in the Converting?
![For For](http://www.fiscalgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/spending_cloud.jpg)
Folder, these items will not be imported:. Transactions in your Investment accounts.
Custom Reports. Passwords to any online accounts you’ve setup. Business data, rental property data, budget data, spending plan data, debt reduction data, emergency tax records data, tax planner data, home inventory manager data (These aren’t Essential) If you haven’t already stopped reading at this point, then it’s time to move forward and perform the import. Head to the File menu and select the Import menu item. Again, seriously Intuit, this process couldn’t have included converting the Mac file to the proper format first?
I mean there is a Convert menu with a Quicken Mac File submenu, but it apparently doesn’t do anything, as the instructions ignore it, and if you try to use it, all your Quicken Data files on the disk (both old and new) will be grayed out, not sure why this menu is there. Okay, go find your modern Quicken Data file that you created above, and Open it. Now go to bed. Or go to a movie.
Have a date night. This process takes eons. I thought the iBank import process took a long time, it’s NOTHING compared to the time Quicken Essentials takes to import your data. The battery on my MacBook Pro died, this is the one with the 8-hour battery (okay I’m joking here). My data file took 28 minutes to completely import. That’s three times the length it took iBank to import the same file. However, the best thing about the conversion process, if you’re patient enough to watch it, is that there is extremely good feedback on what it’s doing, what account is being imported, and you’ll immediately start seeing the on-screen charts updating as transactions are brought “live” into the application.
You’ll even see what appears to be EVERY transaction flying into the new Quicken. It was entertaining. Something else that Intuit does for the import process, that I wish iBank had done, was provide an extremely detailed log of the entire process. You can see everything it did, and that file will be placed on your Desktop. If you have questions about the import process for your accounts, check this file first. After the import process completes you can toss the previously converted data file (the one you just imported). When my import process completed, Quicken Essentials had imported all 75 of my accounts, including the two that iBank skipped because there weren’t any transactions in them.
When I was done verifying my accounts and account balances between Quicken 2007 for Mac and Quicken Essentials, there was only one account that did not have a correct balance. A checking account of mine, which after investigating had 3 different problems:. An ATM Withdrawal, which I had built as a Split since it had a Bank Charge, was missing the Bank Charge. A payment of $80 was duplicated, but Quicken had put a note both of them: Imported Orphan Transaction – So be sure to check for that phrase in the Memos when importing (see below).
One entire transaction had been skipped After correcting these items, the account balanced again. This was a much better result than iBank had delivered on my data. But that better performance comes at a price.
My eight Brokerage accounts came across without any transactions and as having a zero balance. If I want to see how much money I had/have in these accounts, I have to set them up for online access. Just one problem with that, 5 of those accounts were closed, so all that history is gone. Was I using that history? Not really, but it still stings to lose it all.
Additionally, something I wasn’t expecting happened. Both of my active 401-K accounts were wiped of history as none of the transactions came across. I use these accounts to track my contributions to my 401-K (and my wife’s), using a Split transaction on our Paychecks that puts money into those accounts. This probably isn’t the traditional way people used the 401-K account type in Quicken for Mac, but it’s how I was using it, and it worked. What is really throwing me is that I can use the 401-K account I have setup as the destination of a transfer, but it doesn’t show up in the account, it seems to just disappear.
Very disconcerting.