Quicken 2016

[Moneygrubber]

Anyone use quicken to track their budgets? I am creating a 2016 budget and it pulls in historical info to populate the categories, i want to input custom amounts, also its showing spending for 2016 in some categories which has me befuddled...


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[prudent_one]

I don't have that version of Quicken, but I am pretty sure you can manually assign budget amounts instead of having Quicken compute them from past spending.

 

[bUU]

I've put off upgrading to Quicken 2016 for now until I hear generally positive news with regard to the software's overall stability for folks who upgraded their data from a number of prior versions.

 

[Willers]

I do and I usually have it create the budget from the historicals and then overwrite what I need to. You can also create one from scratch if you'd like to. I've never had it create any unexpected spending, but it may depend on the date range from which it is pulling the data.


IMHO, they've made this feature less user friendly over the years because they removed a couple of features that I used. I haven't used 2016. Since I have 2014, I won't upgrade until they cut off my quote update access (2017).


Feel free to PM me if you want any specifics.

 

[grasshopper]

My Quicken 2013 was going to end downloads in the spring, so I bought 2016 on Black Friday at an OK price. 2013 was working so well that I was really hesitant to upgrade. Well upload went perfectly, data refreshed perfectly, and release R3 caused no problem after waiting a few days to see if other folks had a problem with the update.

I don't really notice anything new in 2016, and nothing changed for me after R3 release.

YMMV

As for your budget yes you can change values.

 

[littleb]

I bought Quicken 2015 and really liked it for a few months. I wanted it mainly to have my investment portfolio combined on one screen since I have money in too many brokerage accounts. (In process of consolidating)


The budget feature is a nice touch where I can track money without manually entering every transaction.


However, I spend way too much time cleaning up Quicken.


Sometimes if I manually enter a bill paid but not cleared, when the bill clears the account it does not match with the manual transaction and one of them has to be deleted.


It also adds strange transactions on its own which requires searching for hours trying to find out why the checking account will not reconcile.


When selling a mutual fund or transferring (to Admiral funds) the transactions do not always download correctly. Sometimes the amount of shares downloads into the dollar value of the fund messing up the entire transaction.


I read reviews that the 2015 Quicken has many problems and I have found that to be completely correct.


I believe if you use Quicken 2015 for a few accounts you will not experience some of these issues. However, if you have many accounts (bank, brokerage, 401k, HSA etc) you will encounter more problems.

 

[bUU]

Sometimes if I manually enter a bill paid but not cleared, when the bill clears the account it does not match with the manual transaction and one of them has to be deleted.

Don't automatically accept downloaded transactions. Manually match them with the manually-entered transactions you may be entered prior to the download. Generally, Quicken will make most of the matches itself, but if your date varies from your bank's date, or if you entered the wrong dollar amount, you may need to manually specify the match.

It also adds strange transactions on its own which requires searching for hours trying to find out why the checking account will not reconcile.

That's never happened to me, but I suspect that it may have to do with your use of the word "strange". Perhaps if you provided an example, we can take the strangeness out of it for you, and make your Quicken experience better.

When selling a mutual fund or transferring (to Admiral funds) the transactions do not always download correctly. Sometimes the amount of shares downloads into the dollar value of the fund messing up the entire transaction.

That's never happened to me. What brokerage?

And now I wonder if the aforementioned strangeness may be specific to your bank, so which bank to you use for checking?

I read reviews that the 2015 Quicken has many problems and I have found that to be completely correct.

Quicken is the most used commercial personal finance tool. Its cost fosters in is users an unreasonable expectation of perfection which no software product actually offers. I've even been guilty of expecting more of Quicken than is reasonable, myself, in the past.

Alternatives avoid the volume of criticisms that Quicken receives by having far fewer users and/or by offering less.

 

[RetireAge50]

People still use Quicken? We used it too back when we were playing Putt Putt travels through time and Freddie Fish with the kids. Liked all these a lot but eventually was the same story over and over.

 

[littleb]

Don't automatically accept downloaded transactions. Manually match them with the manually-entered transactions you may be entered prior to the download. Generally, Quicken will make most of the matches itself, but if your date varies from your bank's date, or if you entered the wrong dollar amount, you may need to manually specify the match.

That's never happened to me, but I suspect that it may have to do with your use of the word "strange". Perhaps if you provided an example, we can take the strangeness out of it for you, and make your Quicken experience better.

That's never happened to me. What brokerage?

And now I wonder if the aforementioned strangeness may be specific to your bank, so which bank to you use for checking?

Quicken is the most used commercial personal finance tool. Its cost fosters in is users an unreasonable expectation of perfection which no software product actually offers. I've even been guilty of expecting more of Quicken than is reasonable, myself, in the past.

Alternatives avoid the volume of criticisms that Quicken receives by having far fewer users and/or by offering less.

Do you use Quicken 2015 or a prior version? I have read wonderful reviews on Quicken prior to 2015.

My strange transactions are Fidelity retirement transfer and deposits which are manually entered and then automatically transmitted. Then it does not allow the option of matching these two transactions.

I have had issues with Vanguard mutual funds, Fidelity mutual funds and Schwab transactions being incorrect in Quicken. They are fine one day with the correct balance and then a month later the balance is wrong. If a stock splits, it is usually incorrect when the information downloads into Quicken.

If you are in doubt to the issues I have addressed, go to Quicken community and see the reviews on the 2015 version. Many problems. Also consumer affairs 146 complaints.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/computers/intuit_quicken.html

 

[bUU]

Do you use Quicken 2015 or a prior version? I have read wonderful reviews on Quicken prior to 2015.

I am using Quicken 2013. I have read reports similar to yours about Quicken 2013, so Quicken 2015 is objectively more buggy than Quicken 2013, even a year after release, that's big news that should have grasshopper, as someone who just upgraded to Quicken 2016, especially worried. I am waiting to hear a preponderance of experiences from folks like both you and grasshopper. Hopefully others can chime in and we folks how have not yet upgraded can get some useful guidance.

My strange transactions are Fidelity retirement transfer and deposits which are manually entered and then automatically transmitted. Then it does not allow the option of matching these two transactions.

I just checked this for myself. It worked fine this year, just like last year.

I have had issues with Vanguard mutual funds, Fidelity mutual funds and Schwab transactions being incorrect in Quicken. They are fine one day with the correct balance and then a month later the balance is wrong. If a stock splits, it is usually incorrect when the information downloads into Quicken.

The fact that Quicken tries and gets it right 30% of the time is remarkable. No other commercial financial products even try such complex operations.

If you are in doubt to the issues I have addressed, go to Quicken community and see the reviews on the 2015 version. Many problems. Also consumer affairs 146 complaints.

That's pretty much always been the case. So the question for those of us waiting isn't whether there are problems - heck there are problems in my version of Quicken 2013 - but rather whether the newer versions are so much more substantially worse than prior versions that we who have already eliminated alternative software options are better off going back to spreadsheets and abandoning Quicken entirely.

 

[littleb]

Also, Quicken is for sale which give many people the impression that the future is unknown at this time.


Q&A with Intuit CEO Brad Smith on Selling Quicken | Sci-Tech Today


I also use QuickBooks and MINT and they seem much more efficient and less buggy than Quicken. I still like and will continue to work through these issues with Quicken because it gives me the capability of viewing all my portfolio investments on one page.

 

[bUU]

I wonder what the chances are that Quicken 2013 will work past April 2016.

 

[littleb]

I wonder what the chances are that Quicken 2013 will work past April 2016.

Many people are using old versions of Quicken and do not download new versions, so I think you can stay where you are unless the ''new'' owner changes things.

Also, my 2015 Quicken did not give me any issues for the first 2-3 months. It seems when I had money transferred or sold stocks or mutual funds the transactions were incorrect. Also stock splits. I have many different brokerage, savings, checking, DRIPS, HSA accounts which give me a higher probability of errors.

Not every situation triggers the bugs so you might not ever have issues.

 

[bUU]

Many people are using old versions of Quicken and do not download new versions, so I think you can stay where you are unless the ''new'' owner changes things.

By "work" I meant, "continue to download data from my financial institutions". Quicken 2012 no longer "works".

 

[littleb]

By "work" I meant, "continue to download data from my financial institutions". Quicken 2012 no longer "works".

Oh, I didn't know that. So they forced you to Quicken 2013 if your wanted to continue automated transactions.

 

[bUU]

Precisely. I assure you I would still be on Quicken 2010 if I had my druthers.

 

[bUU]

Does anyone have an update on their experiences with Quicken 2016? Is it now stable enough, in your estimation, to upgrade with relative assurance?

 

[Senator]

Does anyone have an update on their experiences with Quicken 2016? Is it now stable enough, in your estimation, to upgrade with relative assurance?

I have been using it since I posted here.

It's on version R4 as i recal now, but I do not see any issues. I use it multiple times daily, with at least two quicken files.

 

[Gone4Good]

Wow, it's hard to say enough bad things about Quicken. I haven't tried to use their budgeting feature but can imagine all the ways in which it makes things more complicated, confusing and error prone than it should be.

The TL; DR version of what follows is that Quicken really, really, blows.

The longer version is that I "upgraded" to Quicken 2015 last year from MS Money 2004. It's shocking how much better the 12 year old software is than an updated Quicken.

I reluctantly got the new financial software in the hopes of being able to download transactions again and also thinking that I'd finally be able to manage portfolio asset allocation from within the program. Nothing doing.

- Downloading transactions works maybe 50% of the time. It seems the connection to my bank gets gummed up regularly and refuses to update. I'm always having to deactivate and reactivate online updates to get it to work again.

- Quicken mangles investment income tagging for downloaded transactions. Wow, this is terrible. Sometimes it will tag and match mutual fund dividends correctly, sometimes not at all, and sometimes it will tag each side as two different types of income so it gets double counted in the Income Reports. It's so bad I couldn't rely on Quicken in 2015 to estimate my taxable income at the end of last year. What's the point of finance software if it can't even total my income correctly?

- Totals from Quicken's canned reports change depending on which report you select. I'm often having to dive into the guts to try to figure out what Quicken is including or excluding, it's never obvious.

- Asset allocation reporting is useless. Quicken assigns it's own asset category to your investments that can't be edited. That wouldn't be so bad if it didn't relegate a significant portion of my investments to a generic "other" category.

- Quicken makes simple things complicated. To get my Fidelity checking account to record as a cash account rather than as an investment account Quicken forces me to update two separate accounts - one brokerage where I'm buying and selling securities associated with deposits and withdrawals and another cash account where I can actually assign categories to my expenses. Oh, and Quicken doesn't download transactions to this account correctly.

- Quicken is sloooooooow.

- Quicken crashes.

I could go on, but you get the point: Quicken really, really, blows.

 

[bUU]

It is the worst desktop Personal Finance application, with the exception of all the others. (And I do mean all the others. I've checked them all out, including MoneyDance, and Quicken, as bad as it is - and it is bad - is better is far too many way to give MoneyDance a second though - might as well use Microsoft Excel.)

For me, the real questions about Quicken 2016 are about whether it is reached minimally acceptable stability yet, and whether there will be a Quicken 2019. And the definition of minimally acceptable stability will adjust to how close we get to April 26, when Quicken 2013, for all intents and purposes, becomes obsolete for me.

 

[Gone4Good]

It is the worst desktop Personal Finance application, with the exception of all the others. (And I do mean all the others. I've checked them all out, including MoneyDance, and Quicken, as bad as it is - and it is bad - is better is far too many way to give MoneyDance a second though - might as well use Microsoft Excel.)

That might be true when comparing new products against one another. But if you already have a system that works for you (in my case using decade old MS Money +Excel) you're probably better off sticking with the devil you know. Upgrading to Quicken wasn't an improvement. In fact, it's made things harder in a lot of respects.

I'd go back to the old way but but after spending the past year trying to get Quicken to work properly, I'd have to manually input a year's worth of transactions back in to that ancient software . . . it might just be worth it, though.

 

[audreyh1]

I was so shocked when I tried the newer Quicken for Mac. Useless! A total jumble and so restrictive.

As long as my 2007 keeps working, I'll use it. It still does correct downloading of transactions, and the reporting is extensive. I keep my fingers crossed.

 

[ejman]

I just continue to use Quicken 2010 @ my Linux Mint desktop, It works fine (of course, I have to do manual entry but I have few funds and maybe a dozen checks and deposits a month - easy peasy to do it by hand. And frankly I quite enjoy the manual entry and the confidence I get from manually reconciling to the bank/fund statements.

Quicken 2010 is stable with my current system and as long as it continues to work with Linux Mint I'll continue to use this version.

 

[steelyman]

I've decided to try tracking my 2016 budget with Quicken Premier 2015 (Windows). As noted, you can enter amounts manually or use historical data. In 2015, my spending was extremely unrepresentative of what I expect going forward, so manual is the way to go for me. I haven't tried to budget explicitly before so I'll see how that goes.

I also think that Quicken is the best option in a sea of poor choices and I view upgrading (whether major or minor) with apprehension. My latest experience took out the Lifetime Planner for several months, but I found that while it was nice to have, it wasn't essential for what I want to do.

Same with automatically downloading transactions: I just don't do it. There's a core set of features that Quicken provides that I think are helpful, but with some thought, it's a small set.

I've grown more and more attached to Google Sheets to help me with checking out and planning investments and it fits my needs.

My Quicken version is running on an ancient version of Windows that will be at end-of-life in 2017 and at that point I'll have to decide how to proceed. I read the threads that talk about options and those are useful. I want to get away from Windows for good, but Quicken factors into that. So discussions of things like Parallels and the like are interesting to me.

 

[bUU]

That might be true when comparing new products against one another. But if you already have a system that works for you (in my case using decade old MS Money +Excel) you're probably better off sticking with the devil you know.

Yes and no. The only things, imho, that make Quicken worthwhile are:

• Clicking a button and having transactions from three banks, four brokerages, two 401k custodians and five credit card issuers all flow directly into the right slots in the database, complete with cost basis info, transaction fees, etc.;
• The ability to view current asset allocation even after multi-asset-type mutual funds have changed their own allocation holdings, without having to enter those changes yourself;
• The ability to see an automatically updated analysis of your probability of being able to afford retirement.

If there is anything else that did it as simply, seamlessly, easily, conveniently, and universally then why use Quicken? But if your current system doesn't do these things, even though it "works for you", it may be improved by Quicken.