Any New Alternatives to Quicken?

[TromboneAl]

After the latest round of Quicken irritations (including having to delete it and reinstall), I'm wondering if anything new has appeared that could replace it. In the past I've concluded that Microsoft Money is just as bad as Quicken.

My daughter uses mint.com, which actually looks quite good, but I don't want to give my Vanguard user name and password to the site, and I want things stored on my computer.

MoneyDance looks interesting...

[haha]

MS Money has been discontinued. I think they will support it (and its web access capability) for only about another year. I have been using it for some time. Like you I loath Intuit. I use their Turbo-Tax because it wil do my stuff, but it is clunky and stupid. No way will I move to Quicken, even though it can translate my MS Money files.

To replace it I am looking for a simple double entry general ledger that will access websites of banks and CC cos to download transactions. If these don't exist, any cheap simple double entry general ledger will do. For years I did a paper general ledger, then my son wrote a simple basic general ledger that I liked. Somewhere along the way we have lost it.

I have found that I forget too many transactions with a single entry system, and I have no required trial balance to find errors.

Any suggestions?

Ha

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl After the latest round of Quicken irritations (including having to delete it and reinstall), I'm wondering if anything new has appeared that could replace it. In the past I've concluded that Microsoft Money is just as bad as Quicken. My daughter uses mint.com, which actually looks quite good, but I don't want to give my Vanguard user name and password to the site, and I want things stored on my computer. MoneyDance looks interesting...

By the way -- in case you didn't know it, Intuit (the Quicken folks) now own mint.com. There's no escape!

MoneyDance is rough around the edges but if it does what you need it to do, it works quite well.

[LOL!]

Even though MS Money is discontinued, it still downloads quotes, etc. Users have published ways to download info (i.e. quotes) into MS Money even after MS stops doing that through their web site.

I only have a handful of transactions each month (mostly in checking account), so I will stick to MS Money even after MSFT stops supporting it.

[TromboneAl]

Quote:

MoneyDance is rough around the edges but if it does what you need it to do, it works quite well.

This seems to be the general consensus. I'd be willing to give up features if I didn't find some new bug every 20 minutes or so (as in Quicken).

[FIREd]

I have Quicken. It has its quirks, but I otherwise like it a lot, especially the reporting feature. I don't know why people hate it so much. I have tried some alternatives to Quicken, but didn't find anything that comes close. I didn't like Mint.com or Quicken.com at all.

[Tesaje]

I've been using Moneydance for the past year and am much happier with it than I was with quicken. There was some fixing needed during the transition. It is much cleaner and I can tell what it is doing.

[RockyMtn]

I've been using MS Money since 1995 and find it reasonably easy to use. Certainly not perfect but seems fine for my needs.

With MSFT not continuing support or online apps I too am looking for something new. Have until 12/09/10 before my online services end so have some time to cull through the options.

Has anyone tried the patch that Quicken came up with to supposedly convert all of your info from MS Money?

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FIREdreamer I have Quicken. It has its quirks, but I otherwise like it a lot, especially the reporting feature. I don't know why people hate it so much. I have tried some alternatives to Quicken, but didn't find anything that comes close. I didn't like Mint.com or Quicken.com at all.

I don't really dislike Quicken per se. I think it does try to do too many things which leads to bloated code that's more prone to bugs. The other irritation with Quicken is that Intuit intentionally breaks online functionality (bill pay, stock quotes, et cetera) when a version is no longer supported. I can understand desupporting a product, but to me, intentionally breaking functionality in order to force you to pay for an upgrade is pretty low.

[easysurfer]

I like using Intuit's Turbotax. But I stopped using Quicken a long time ago when I found it too cumbersome and bloated to use for my needs.

[FIREd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 I don't really dislike Quicken per se. I think it does try to do too many things which leads to bloated code that's more prone to bugs. The other irritation with Quicken is that Intuit intentionally breaks online functionality (bill pay, stock quotes, et cetera) when a version is no longer supported. I can understand desupporting a product, but to me, intentionally breaking functionality in order to force you to pay for an upgrade is pretty low.

I agree that the loss of online functionality is irritating. However, if you upgrade the software every 3 years, the cost per year is still extremely low IMO. Quicken allows me to drill into my finances quickly and accurately, it tracks my investments better than any financial advisor I have ever had and I am sure than it more than paid for itself over the years. YMMV.

[TromboneAl]

Here are some minor examples of why I don't like quicken.

A few days ago, I wanted to see how my rebalancing and other major movements of money related to the ups and downs of the market last year. There was no way to say "show me all the investment account transactions that weren't reinvested dividends," etc, so I thought I'd say show me all the investment account transactions over $3,000. For example, if I'd moved $50,000 from the 500 index fund to the GNMA fund, I would see those transactions.

I did that, but the results didn't seem right. After some experimenting, I found that it wouldn't show transactions that displayed as negative (e.g. it would show the 50K into one fund, but not the 50K out of the other.

But more important, it simply did not show some of the transactions! For example, here's a partial list of all transactions,

AllRecords.jpg

And here's what I got after you ask for records with amounts greater than $30K:

GreaterThan30K.jpg

At least one of the over 100K transactions should have appeared in that report. I did nothing other than set it to show only transactions over 30K, and all the transactions disappeared.

There are lots of major bugs like that -- one that caused an error in my taxes.

But the minor bugs are just as irritating. Some buttons sometimes don't work (like Accept) unless you click on them twice, some combo boxes are only four lines high even though you have 20 items to scroll through, etc. Clicking the Accept button sometimes moves you to the next transaction, sometimes it skips several.

[RockyMtn]

here's a somewhat detailed review of alternatives to MS Money (Quicken, MoneyDance and GnuCash).

Replacing Microsoft Money, Part 4: Moneydance - The Finance Buff

The article also contains a link to the article which details how to continue to recieve online stock quotes after MS Money discontinues online services. Seems a bit over my limited code writing abilities but maybe I will give it a whirl.

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RockyMtn here's a somewhat detailed review of alternatives to MS Money (Quicken, MoneyDance and GnuCash). Replacing Microsoft Money, Part 4: Moneydance - The Finance Buff The article also contains a link to the article which details how to continue to recieve online stock quotes after MS Money discontinues online services. Seems a bit over my limited code writing abilities but maybe I will give it a whirl.

I believe this author was once a poster to these forums.

Looking over these possibilities, I decided to give Gnu-Cash a try. If it seems to work smoothly, it is likely exactly what I was looking for, and it is free and open source. I imagine it will be quite a bit less an undertaking than trying to build something in Excel.

Ha

[CoolChange]

For what it's worth, I have been using MoneyDance for years with no real issues. Occasionally, some issue, usually related to online updates of my accounts because of security changes at my financial institutions, will crop up. But, these generally already have a patch available by the time I encounter them.

I have tried Gnu-Cash a couple of times, mostly in an effort to support the open source movement wherever possible. But, I have always had trouble importing my historical data into Gnu-Cash as well as getting online updates to work. Gnu-Cash does seem to be maturing; and, I am planning to give it one more shot before upgrading MoneyDance. (This is not a forced upgrade; as far as I can tell, support will continue for my very old version indefinitely; and, I don't actually need any of the new features. But, if I am going to keep using the software, I am going to throw a bit more money at the developer.)

[deserat]

I bit the bullet and got MoneyDance this year - it's a bit more simplistic than Quicken in some ways (or perhaps the human interface seems that way to me?) - but it works fairly well. I'm happy so far, but my expectations are low. My main criteria was that it wasn't being managed by an on-line database, I own it. I do use the web updates, but I manually do that (i.e. download the info from the financial site and then have MoneyDance import the info).

[Maurice]

A friend of mine raves about this no-frills free software, apparently available for MSFT, Mac, and Linux.

mini$ Screenshots, screen capture - Softpedia


Downlaodable here:

http://sites.google.com/site/rothear...attredirects=0

[harley]

As far as all these non-Quicken apps go, which one would you recommend for the following? I want to track my spending, and track my investments (net worth, ROR, etc). Don't really need any banking or bill paying capabilities. However, I do want to own it, not have it floating out on the web.

[walkinwood]

I looked at a few and decided to stick to Quicken. I must not be using it very creatively because it works well for me. There are a few annoying bugs - like not being able to do a one-click update if you have a password protected data file and screen flicker on start up, and the.. but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...

[Gotadimple]

I've been looking to replace Quicken.

I downloaded GnuCash, but couldn't get a clean install. Here's a site that compares the top 10 personal finance software applications

Personal Finance Software Review 2010 - TopTenREVIEWS

I'm thinking about going with either Ace Money or Moneydance.

-- Rita