I'm done with Quicken! - What else?

[conversationalphrase]

After resetting my newly required Intuit password half a dozen times and still not being able to get logged in I'm fed up and done with Quicken. I've used Quicken for 20+ years and it's only gotten worse.

All I want is a program that I can use to track my checking account, enter future direct withdrawal bill payments, future deposits, download and sync cleared transactions, etc. I have other ways to track investments so I don't care about any of that from my financial management software.

What else is there? I've read about Mint and Personal Capital but they seem to be about investments more than simple bill paying and checking account management. The bank's (Chase) online bill pay tools don't seem to have good way to enter future expenses or deposits.

CountAbout and MoneyDance seem intriguing - anyone with experience on these? Any others

 

[braumeister]

Happy Moneydance user for the last nine years. Does everything I need. Free trial available.

 

[Htown Harry]

What do you mean about entering future withdrawals and deposits? Are you wanting to forecast, or are you merely saying that you want to have transactions entered / downloaded as they occur?

FWIW, I use Personal Capital for tracking spending, registering only my checking account and credit cards. The only investment tracked is a small IRA at the bank with my checking account. I check PC a couple of times a week to see what has posted, correcting the individual entries for the correct categorization as needed.

At the end of the year, I copy the accumulated transaction data to a spreadsheet as a spending record for the year, which becomes my defacto budget plan for the following year.

It's easy, but not nearly as powerful as some of the other tools. For example, I don't believe there is a way to manually enter payroll deductions.

 

[conversationalphrase]

Thank you for the fast replies!

What do you mean about entering future withdrawals and deposits? Are you wanting to forecast, or are you merely saying that you want to have transactions entered / downloaded as they occur?
.

For example, I have my credit cards setup for AutoPay - that is direct withdrawal from my checking account to the credit card account for the full balance on the date due. When I get a credit card statement I enter the future withdrawal in my register on the due date. I can then see cash flow for next 30 days or so. Same thing with deposits - I have regularly scheduled deposits to my checking account from elsewhere.

Does Personal Capital support this?

 

[bUU]

I haven't found anything that delivers all the features of quicken that i rely on.

 

[braumeister]

For example, I have my credit cards setup for AutoPay - that is direct withdrawal from my checking account to the credit card account for the full balance on the date due. When I get a credit card statement I enter the future withdrawal in my register on the due date. I can then see cash flow for next 30 days or so. Same thing with deposits - I have regularly scheduled deposits to my checking account from elsewhere.

Does Personal Capital support this?

Moneydance supports it.
Another feature I like is that on the main summary page you can have your account totals shown as either the current balance or the balance after all the pre-entered transactions.

 

[Htown Harry]

Thank you for the fast replies!



For example, I have my credit cards setup for AutoPay - that is direct withdrawal from my checking account to the credit card account for the full balance on the date due. When I get a credit card statement I enter the future withdrawal in my register on the due date. I can then see cash flow for next 30 days or so. Same thing with deposits - I have regularly scheduled deposits to my checking account from elsewhere.

Does Personal Capital support this?

I don't forecast cash flow in that way, so if PC has those features I'm not using them.

If you register your credit cards, spending against those credit cards shows up as individual transactions as they are posted in the card account. Those transactions are rolled together to show a liability entry (negative balance) at the both the card account and personal summary level.

There is no need to enter credit card payments, current or future.

When my autopay posts, two "transfer" transactions appear within a day or two of one another. One is the deduct from the checking account, the other is the payment credit to the card account.

 

[IMATERP]

After resetting my newly required Intuit password half a dozen times and still not being able to get logged in I'm fed up and done with Quicken. I've used Quicken for 20+ years and it's only gotten worse.

All I want is a program that I can use to track my checking account, enter future direct withdrawal bill payments, future deposits, download and sync cleared transactions, etc. I have other ways to track investments so I don't care about any of that from my financial management software.

What else is there? I've read about Mint and Personal Capital but they seem to be about investments more than simple bill paying and checking account management. The bank's (Chase) online bill pay tools don't seem to have good way to enter future expenses or deposits.

CountAbout and MoneyDance seem intriguing - anyone with experience on these? Any others

I'm a die-hard Quicken user also. I, too, played the password game earlier this year. What a frustrating experience!

The new "bug" happens to be with updating investment accounts. A few weeks ago, I purchased 100K of the Wellesly Fund (in my Fidelity IRA) and for some odd reason - Quicken does not recognize the transaction. Fidelity recognizes it and has updated my account appropriately - but Quicken acts as if I didn't make the purchase.

Anyway, I predominantly use Quicken for day to day cash management of my checking account - and so far there hasn't been a problem.

Michael

 

[pb4uski]

I started using GnuCash for a small non-profit that I am treasurer for and to get familiar with it as an alternative to Quicken for my personal use if they go the annual subscription route (rather than continuing to let me buy it every few years).

GnuCash is very basic bookeeping package (probably a Quickbooks lite) and I'm not using all of its features but that may serve you needs... its free.

 

[Lawrencewendall]

I went with AceMoney as it is one of the few programs that will import Quicken. It's around $40 with free upgrades for life.

 

[OldShooter]

I, too, am unwillingly locked into Quicken due to many thousands of transactions. I tried the MoneyDance import a few years ago and it failed. One of these days I'm going on the hunt again, looking for a program that can import all my data.

In the mean time, things are likely to get worse. Intuit quietly sold Quicken to a private equity firm in 2016 (Intuit Quietly Sells Quicken To Private Equity Firm | Bruceb News). This can only mean increasing efforts to extract money from the customer base, worst and most likely case being that Quicken will become a subscription service like Photoshop and there will be a monthly fee. In fact, the new management has been so quiet that I suspect that they are developing the "cloud" aka subscription product and will come leaping out of the closet soon.

 

[bradaz2488]

I'm old school. Been using MS Money since 1999. When MS stop supporting Money I tried Quicken years ago but not all my data transferred. I have to manually enter all transactions but I do not find it that painfull as long as I do it once a week. I still find the tool very helpful even without the online update features. The lifetime planner is also very helpful for RE planning. Not sure if you can still download the free sunset version. I just hope it still works on Win10 when I decide to upgrade PC. Will not be happy to loose all those years of data.

 

[Toddtheformeraccountant]

You may want to check out mint.

 

[Ready]

I have been using Quicken for Mac for about two years now, and prior to that I used Quicken Windows for 20 years. I have noticed that since Intuit sold Quicken the Mac updates have been coming through steadily, where under Inuit the product went virtually untouched for years. The overall support seems to be better as well.

I have more confidence in Quicken now than I did when Intuit managed it. They really never wanted the product and their support showed.

As far as alternatives, I've looked at all of the ones mentioned and wasn't impressed. If there were a better product I'm sure I would have switched by now. It seems odd that a product that is so widely used would not have more competition, but that is the case. The only real competition was MS Money, which has been in sunset mode for many years now.

 

[T-Minus]

Like the OP, I played password roulette with the Quicken update...however, I eventually got things to work (3rd try was the charm). That said, I too am fed-up with Quicken and am on the lookout for a better substitute. I’ve tried Mint, but it didn’t meet my needs. Personal Capital does a good job with investments, but does not work like I want with spending (I too forecast cash spend, payments and balances). I liked YNAB, but the subscription model was a complete turn-off. I’m thinking I might just have to create my own, dual-entry spreadsheet-based model and be done with it.

 

[googily]

My feelings about Quicken (which I've used since about 1992) are the same as Winston Churchill's about democracy: it's the worst one except for all the other ones.

 

[tulak]

+1 Moneydance.

I migrated from Quicken a few years ago. Very happy I did.

 

[bUU]

The new "bug" happens to be with updating investment accounts. A few weeks ago, I purchased 100K of the Wellesly Fund (in my Fidelity IRA) and for some odd reason - Quicken does not recognize the transaction. Fidelity recognizes it and has updated my account appropriately - but Quicken acts as if I didn't make the purchase.

This probably isn't your issue, but just in case: If you have a cash management account as well as an investment account, it is possible to purchase shares into the "wrong" (i.e., cash management) account. If you look at the full view of your portfolio on fidelity.com you won't notice a problem, but of course Quicken will put the shares purchased in the account you purchased them into, and if you've set up the cash management account in Quicken "properly" like I did, it is actually a bit difficult to find the register where that transaction is located. It is generally an account that you have hidden (since you're only using the cash register view).

Like the OP, I played password roulette with the Quicken update...however, I eventually got things to work (3rd try was the charm).

How would I know whether I've received this update or not, yet? I seem to remember having to relogin to "the server" a couple of times, but it was just an automatic action for me so I'm not sure if it's the update you're all referring to.

PS: I'm running Quicken Premier 2016 R 12 (25.1.12.2)

 

[T-Minus]

As of late, Quicken release notes have been exceedingly content-free. R12 was, I think, where they introduced the forced new login for Quicken 2017. I'm now on the latest update, which is R14. Here's where I manually download the latest patch from:

https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-2017-windows-release-notes-updates-and-mondo-patch

BTW - not sure how this translates to the 2016 version...

 

[Luck_Club]

Super old school I use my check register and the back of an envelope.

I've tried those accounting packages in the past, but always thought they were way too much work, and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. My taxes are too high and my income is too low.

 

[Katsmeow]

I use YNAB. I spent a lot of time looking into these but YNAB was the best. It is a subscription model now but worth it to me. There is a free 30 day trial. I either tried or researched pretty much all of the options mentioned here.

 

[ERD50]

Super old school I use my check register and the back of an envelope.

I've tried those accounting packages in the past, but always thought they were way too much work, and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. My taxes are too high and my income is too low.

Heck, I just use the back of an old envelope. I don't write enough checks to bother with the check register.

On the back of an envelope, I have a round # current balance, add in the routine monthly, automated deposit from my brokerage account, subtract mortgage and HI payments.

When Credit Cards are settled, I enter those amounts, plus any actual checks of significant amount (rare), or other transfers. A few entries every month is all I need to know I've got sufficient balance in the checking account. Not even worth a spreadsheet.

-ERD50

 

[Luck_Club]

Heck, I just use the back of an old envelope. I don't write enough checks to bother with the check register.

On the back of an envelope, I have a round # current balance, add in the routine monthly, automated deposit from my brokerage account, subtract mortgage and HI payments.

When Credit Cards are settled, I enter those amounts, plus any actual checks of significant amount (rare), or other transfers. A few entries every month is all I need to know I've got sufficient balance in the checking account. Not even worth a spreadsheet.

-ERD50

I know what you mean.

 

[RetireAge50]

Golf? Or maybe tennis it is cheaper.

 

[Jerry1]

Been using Quicken for a really long time. Looks like at least since 1994. What frustrates me about it is the need to be connected to the internet for it to work. I figured out a way around that and will never upgrade again. I'm in agreement with the group that the next version will probably be subscription. No way!

My needs are pretty basic, but I have no interest in learning another program or going through the hassle of trying to upload the data into another program. The problem will be when the version I have is no longer supported for whatever operating system I'm using. At that point, I'll probably take a laptop and set it up for only that purpose and run it as long as I can. Hopefully something will happen before that.