MoneyDance vs Quicken

[Dalmore]

I saw mention of people using MoneyDance in another thread, and being in the market for some home finance software, I went and took a look at it. One thing I am looking at is bill paying functions. My CU recently updated their online software and went from mediocre to abysmal. None of my bill reminders work now (nor will they in the future), so paperless is becoming a real pain in the butt.

Parts of it are really very good, but other parts are lacking. Most of my problems revolve around security (and configuration thereof) for pulling data down from banks and financial institutions. There appears to be multiple standards for secure downloads with various levels of implementation. Most tend to be manual downloads/imports. The other hangup I have is there is no stock update function to keep your account values current. I haven't gotten to the bill pay functions yet, as I have been spending all my time on the initial setup and testing of account functions.

I don't have any experience with Quicken. I am not fond of the SAAS model they are going to. There is no free trial, just a money-back guarantee, which I hate. But how do they compare to MoneyDance? Is it worth it to give Quicken a shot? Is it easier to set up and integrate with financial institutions? Are the bill pay functions useful?

 

[cathy63]

Quicken is a more mature product. It's been around longer than anything else, and it has a wider array of features. It's not the best at everything it does, but it's pretty good at most things and it can save you from having to implement multiple software packages.

Like Moneydance, Quicken also has multiple standards for downloads because online connectivity is implemented by the financial institutions, and each one can choose what level they want to support. All my banking and brokerage accounts support automatic download except for one credit card at Wells Fargo Bank. WF wants to charge me $10/mo for that, and I don't want to pay it, so I login and download a QFX file manually and then import it into Quicken. (I also use that card a lot less than I probably would otherwise, and this limitation has made me decide not to get any kind of checking or savings account at WF, so they're shooting themselves in the foot with this policy. Our WF Brokerage accounts do have free transaction downloads though.)

Stock quotes are delayed 15-minutes, but you can setup Quicken to download them as often as you want. I just do it as part of the regular "One Step Update" process, which I kick off once every couple of days. One Step Update has a master password that you enter, and then it uses the individual account passwords stored locally to connect to each financial institution and download the latest transactions. Then you click on each account that is marked with a red flag and choose to accept the downloaded transactions into your registers.

I don't use Bill Pay at all, so I can't say how good Quicken's is. I setup my regular payments at each payee's website and have them charge my credit cards or pull money from my checking account. I also have the auto-charges setup in Quicken to enter themselves automatically in the appropriate registers, and then when payments are made, the downloaded transactions match up to my pre-entered data and I can easily see if there's any discrepancy.