Quicken moving to subscription model

[Dd852]

I've been happy with Banktivity for a couple of years now. And it was easy to migrate from quicken at the time. worth a look

 

[Jerry1]

I sent Quicken a e-mail using the link earlier in this thread. In it, I asked them to at least consider a "Basic" version that could be loaded to a computer as a stand alone product. I understand the import function and why people would like that, but I've used Quicken since 1994 and have never used it for more than a check register and basic reporting tool. I'd hate to loose all that data. While not often, there have been a number of times where I was able to find a name of someone who did work for me or verify when I bought something. Again, nothing critical, but nice. Seeing the post about trying another software and not having all the data come in correctly is disheartening. I guess I'll keep an eye on this and see if there will be other alternatives. Based on projected pricing and my distain for a subscription I can't see me moving forward with them without some alternative.

 

[NW-Bound]

From what I read, the new Quicken version still resides on your computer, but needs yearly licensing to run.

About moving to other programs, both GNUCash and KMyMoney threw up error messages that totally confounded me. Perhaps someone with an accounting background knows this stuff, but I am only a miser who likes to count his beans in various accounts, and wants to keep track of money going in/out of each account. And I look at accounts as in IRA, checking accounts, HSA, etc..., and not accounts billable or receivables or something like that which businesses use.

When I imported MS Money file into Quicken 6 years ago, I had some problems, but they were not as severe as the ones I see now. Why is this so tough? Could it be due to Quicken not exporting all the info to screw up attempts to migrate to other software packages?

I may go back and try to export/import just a smaller account with few activities to understand this a bit better. Darn! This can waste a lot of my time.

 

[Hermit]

I looked closer at the old data I have in Quicken. The older data is pretty messed up from doing a year-end copy several years ago. I think I will just hold on to the old data in Quicken for history if needed.

I'll start fresh with something else. I'm seriously considering GnuCash.

 

[JoeWras]

Honestly, I haven't tried GNUCash, but I really need to at least try it and comment here. I will in due time.

From what I read, it requires double entry bookkeeping. This is much like Quickbooks. If you are not used to it, it can throw you. It makes a lot of sense, but may be overkill for personal finances. The discipline is excellent, yet not everyone cares to worry about a balance sheet.

I've used Quickbooks for a few years to manage a non-profit. Someone on this thread is using it for personal finances. Wow, that's pretty heavy, but possible. I've come to appreciate the accounting discipline of double entry. However, for personal finance I really want more about investments, etc. Not sure what I'll get out of the competing products.

 

[CaptCurmudgeon]

Well, thank you all for the Welcome Back. I was thinking that I need to come up with a tall tale to go with my absence. Maybe something to tie into the scar between my eyes from Mohs surgery, such as black ops contractor fighting pirates for the last decade.

Anyway I chose Moneydance as it was familiar from my Mac days; now I am mostly Windows (long story). I do my planning, analysis and budgeting in Excel. All is need is something to sort out direct downloads from bank and credit card accounts and report back category spending so I can manually load it into Excel. I think MD is capable of doing that w/o having to do anything with the Cloud.

 

[ejman]

From what I read, the new Quicken version still resides on your computer, but needs yearly licensing to run.

About moving to other programs, both GNUCash and KMyMoney threw up error messages that totally confounded me. Perhaps someone with an accounting background knows this stuff, but I am only a miser who likes to count his beans in various accounts, and wants to keep track of money going in/out of each account. And I look at accounts as in IRA, checking accounts, HSA, etc..., and not accounts billable or receivables or something like that which businesses use.

When I imported MS Money file into Quicken 6 years ago, I had some problems, but they were not as severe as the ones I see now. Why is this so tough? Could it be due to Quicken not exporting all the info to screw up attempts to migrate to other software packages?

I may go back and try to export/import just a smaller account with few activities to understand this a bit better. Darn! This can waste a lot of my time.

GNUcash can be a bit intimidating on first acquaintance . Click on the import Quicken QIF ( Or QFX) and watch it whir for a few hours and afterwards you look at the files and it doesn't make any sense... Been there, done that. My first experience after importing 20+ years of Quicken data is - this doesn't make any sense.

So, I started from scratch. Created a chart of accounts. Big, Big difference between Quicken and GNUcash. Quicken has accounts - i.e. your bank account, your Wellesley account. And Quicken has Categories i.e. your dividend income or your grocery expense. Everything is an account in GNUcash. So, you have to tell Gnucash what Kind of Account it is i.e. Income/expense or Equity/Liability. After I realized that, I ran Quicken and GNUCash parallel for a couple of months and matched income/expense, Net Worth Reports on both programs.

Hell, I'm retired I can spend a little time learning a different way of doing things. GNUcash works wonderfully, BUT one must learn it's ways... It's free after all.

 

[NanoSour]

Question for those Quicken users who currently use an older version of Quicken (before 2014) that no longer supports online downloads. Can you still import QIF files or is that also blocked?

Not sure why, but I still use Q 2007 for Mac and download checking account information almost daily from USAA. Works fine.

I've been using Q since my 2005 conversion to Mac and I only use it to track spending via the checking account. Used to track investments with it, but it was too weak in that area.

Don't think I'll miss it if I'm not able to download anymore. Will just shutter the checking account tracking at that point. No manual inputting for me and no drawn out search for a replacement.

 

[zinger1457]

As a test I exported 1 weeks worth of transactions from my Chase checking account to a QIF file and tried to import it into Quicken 2016. In Quicken a QIF Import window opened up and there was a note stating that "QIF import is not available for checking, savings, credit cards, 401K, and all other brokerage accounts". In the QIF Import window you're given a drop down menu to select the account to import the QIF file to and all of my accounts that fall in any of the categories above were not available to select. So I guess the answer to my own question is that although QIF files can be used in newer versions of Quicken their use seems to be very very limited.

 

[rbmrtn]

QIF is a text formatted file. Back when quicken did the change someone did a workaround for it but involves editing the QIF before importing.

https://getsatisfaction.com/quicken...t-qif-files-into-non-cash-accounts-post-q2004

 

[Hermit]

For GnuCash, I find gnucash-guide to be pretty useful. You have two scroll bars to the right and if you grab the wrong one, it is confusing. The links within the document are broken (at least for using with Windows and Chrome), but you can scroll through the entire presentation.

It helped me understand the double entry implementation. It looks like the double entry is very similar to selecting categories and sub-categories in Quicken once the accounts are set up.

 

[Animorph]

I'll have to look at GnuCash, though I'll probably just pay for a Quicken subscription. I "trick" Quicken into double entry operation anyway (it thinks my NW is $0 because of this), so it might transfer OK.

 

[tulak]

Does GnuCash support scripting?

I've recently started writing python scripts for Moneydance. I've already been able to ditch one spreadsheet I used for forecasting cashflows. I'm now working on a script that will make it easier for my portfolio analysis. Right now I do this manually using spreadsheets and having it automated with a python script will save me a lot of time and give me better data.

For example, I track my portfolio cashflows and at the end of the year, compare my performance with my benchmark funds. Right now this is all manual and it takes me a couple of hours to get done for the various benchmarks I track. It's also very tedious, because I need to take into consideration dividend payouts, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if my numbers are not a 100% accurate (but I figure close enough).

Using python with Moneydance, I should be able to automate this analysis. This is just one example, but having access to your entire transaction set in a python script is powerful. I've overlooked this feature for years, but now that I've found it I feel like I won the data mining jackpot.

Another idea: I wonder if I can take my Moneydance data and automatically populate entries within my google spreadsheet?

Right now I have to manually enter total number of shares for each fund that I own. If I can auto-populate this using a script, that would save me more time.

At this point, if I was looking into any personal finance software, I wouldn't even look at anything that wouldn't let me access my data easily. Heck, if I ever had to leave Moneydance, I could write a script that will export all the data to make it easier to import elsewhere (such as a spreadsheet). I realize this isn't for everyone, but for anybody that likes to tinker a little bit and is comfortable with basic scripting, this is a feature you should consider before committing to a new app.

 

[Hermit]

I was thinking I liked the Quicken QLP and didn't really want to give it up, but after thinking about it and looking at the QLP annual pop-up screens, I have already moved beyond QLP with a spread sheet that tracks accounts by type, income, and expenses until I am 95. It also calculates state and federal taxes. The one thing QLP does not seem to handle is Qualified Charitable Distributions. That will be a biggie for me and I handle those in the spreadsheet.

 

[Hermit]

Does GnuCash support scripting?

I've recently started writing python scripts for Moneydance. I've already been able to ditch one spreadsheet I used for forecasting cashflows. I'm now working on a script that will make it easier for my portfolio analysis. Right now I do this manually using spreadsheets and having it automated with a python script will save me a lot of time and give me better data.

For example, I track my portfolio cashflows and at the end of the year, compare my performance with my benchmark funds. Right now this is all manual and it takes me a couple of hours to get done for the various benchmarks I track. It's also very tedious, because I need to take into consideration dividend payouts, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if my numbers are not a 100% accurate (but I figure close enough).

Using python with Moneydance, I should be able to automate this analysis. This is just one example, but having access to your entire transaction set in a python script is powerful. I've overlooked this feature for years, but now that I've found it I feel like I won the data mining jackpot.

Another idea: I wonder if I can take my Moneydance data and automatically populate entries within my google spreadsheet?

Right now I have to manually enter total number of shares for each fund that I own. If I can auto-populate this using a script, that would save me more time.

At this point, if I was looking into any personal finance software, I wouldn't even look at anything that wouldn't let me access my data easily. Heck, if I ever had to leave Moneydance, I could write a script that will export all the data to make it easier to import elsewhere (such as a spreadsheet). I realize this isn't for everyone, but for anybody that likes to tinker a little bit and is comfortable with basic scripting, this is a feature you should consider before committing to a new app.

You can store your GnuCash data in MySQL or a couple of other databases. You can't get much more flexible or powerful than that!

 

[tulak]

You can store your GnuCash data in MySQL or a couple of other databases. You can't get much more flexible or powerful than that!

Nice. If I wasn't already invested in Moneydance, I'd look at GnuCash. It's nice to know that there are options out there that provide a lot of flexibility with your data.

 

[FIREmenow]

$100 for access to 5 PCs, $70 for access to one PC at the MS Store. In either case, if you need the latest for some reason, still cheaper to get the subscription rather than buying the software. Using Amazon ($69.99 for Office Personal subscription model - for one PC, or $70 for 5 PCs (marked down from $99.99), v. Office Professional $359.99 + tax

- Rita

That's only part of it! I came to this conclusion from a completely different route - I was looking for some cloud storage solutions for photos, documents, etc. (more than is offered by the "free" ones). I found out that most are all charging $5-10 per month for cloud storage alone.

Turns out this same $99/year for Office includes 1TB of cloud storage for up to 5 people EACH - so, 5TB total on Microsoft's OneDrive. When you throw in Office 365 for the same price, its a complete no-brainer!

 

[explanade]

But can you only store Office files or files which would really use up that storage like photo, audio, video files?

Can you stream those media files from the MS cloud?

If they only let you store Office files, you won't come close o using that space with just some Excel and Word docs.

 

[FIREmenow]

But can you only store Office files or files which would really use up that storage like photo, audio, video files?

Can you stream those media files from the MS cloud?

If they only let you store Office files, you won't come close o using that space with just some Excel and Word docs.

Its for anything. Just like Dropbox, etc. It is just Microshaft's version. It just happens that they include that with the $99. annual Office 365 pricing.

 

[cathy63]

That's only part of it! I came to this conclusion from a completely different route - I was looking for some cloud storage solutions for photos, documents, etc. (more than is offered by the "free" ones). I found out that most are all charging $5-10 per month for cloud storage alone.

Turns out this same $99/year for Office includes 1TB of cloud storage for up to 5 people EACH - so, 5TB total on Microsoft's OneDrive. When you throw in Office 365 for the same price, its a complete no-brainer!

This is also one of the reasons why I subscribe to MS Office. I changed the default location of my documents folder on both my laptop and desktop to be on OneDrive. Now everything I do on either one is automatically backed up to the cloud pretty much immediately, and it's synced to the other computer automatically in addition to being available on my iPad, my Android phone, or any other device with a web browser. I know I could do the same with Dropbox, Amazon cloud, iCloud, etc; but since I also prefer Outlook to Gmail's web interface and I use Excel's advanced features that aren't available in Google Sheets, I'll be sticking with MS for now.

 

[pb4uski]

While I plan to use Quicken as long as I can without paying the potential price increase (I'm ok with $25 a year but $75 annually is not going to happen)... I recently took over as treasurer of an association so it seemed a good opportunity to download and use Gnucash.

It's ok... not near as good as Quicken... and the reporting capabilities are poor at best. I'll use it for basic tracking but will probably use some downloads to LibreCalc for reporting.

 

[Gotadimple]

While I plan to use Quicken as long as I can without paying the potential price increase (I'm ok with $25 a year but $75 annually is not going to happen)... I recently took over as treasurer of an association so it seemed a good opportunity to download and use Gnucash.

It's ok... not near as good as Quicken... and the reporting capabilities are poor at best. I'll use it for basic tracking but will probably use some downloads to LibreCalc for reporting.

I'm using MoneyDance for myself and for a condo association. Works well, most reporting is OK. If I need something special, I export a file to Excel and customize.

- Rita

 

[FreeBear]

I moved away from Quicken last year, no regrets. I switched to iBank (now Banktivity). I do not recommend it either. I inexplicably lost 4 months of data with this software. So I am back to using spreadsheets. I miss Quicken's powerful reporting feature, but we simplified our finances a lot since DW retired so it is no big loss.

When w*rking, I just saved a fixed and growing percent of my paycheck. I spent the rest and didn't worry about expense tracking, so no need for Quicken or anything else. I retrospect, I wish were more mindful with my money before FIRE, but I got here anyway and had some fun and bought some nice toys along the way. Now I track everything on open source spreadsheets like Libre Office or Open Office. The manual downloading and sorting of data seems a bit tedious, but it appeals to the engineer in me. Massaging number is my kind of fun

It does if the file is of a proprietary nature i.e., only that software can read it. In Lightroom the files are not proprietary but in Photoshop the .psd files (I think) are. But you can still read/edit them if not too advanced in the cheaper Photoshop Elements software, which is not subscription.

And of course in Lightroom or Photoshop you can export anything to one of several open-source files such as .jpg.

Long time photog and photoshopper here. I used to willing pay for every-other upgrade; it wasn't worthwhile to upgrade with every release. I resent the Adobe subscription model. Part of the issue is that I've very erratic in my passion for photo. Months will go by without even touch a camera or photoshop. Fundamentally, I hate forever-long fixed costs that tend to lock me in. At some point, I may switch to the open source GIMP editor, but I'm using PS 5 for now because it gets the job done efficiently and is fully paid off, like a good used car!

As for photo files, I've switched to standard tiff format instead or the default psd for working files and use jpg only for output to web pages. In general, I'd like to keep my digital data as portable as possible. Oh, I enjoy file art printing, and perhaps these prints will be viewable much longer than the original data files.

 

[Hermit]

While I plan to use Quicken as long as I can without paying the potential price increase (I'm ok with $25 a year but $75 annually is not going to happen)... I recently took over as treasurer of an association so it seemed a good opportunity to download and use Gnucash.

It's ok... not near as good as Quicken... and the reporting capabilities are poor at best. I'll use it for basic tracking but will probably use some downloads to LibreCalc for reporting.

I'm using MoneyDance for myself and for a condo association. Works well, most reporting is OK. If I need something special, I export a file to Excel and customize.

- Rita

I tried out both GnuCash and Moneydance the last couple of days. One of the focuses I had was trying to report on asset allocations by asset type such as large and small cap stocks, etc. as well as stocks/bonds/cash across multiple brokers.

My overall opinion is that GnuCash is an accounting tool that you can get some reporting on investments if you set things up correctly. I think it would be hard to do anything beyond performance and value reports. You can track investments and balance your investment statements and review overall investments across multiple brokers. You do have the ability to put the data in a fully featured database and write scripts to do whatever you want to do with the data. It will work nicely as a check/credit card register and allow you to report on spending by categories (defined as expense accounts).

Moneydance has more home finance features. You can do budgets and investments as well as check/credit card registers. The investment reporting capabilities are better than GnuCash but much more limited than Quicken. You do have a Python scripting interface to access and report on the data.

These are just my impressions after a few hours of playing with each tool with a very limited set of data. I will stick with my current Quicken 2016 until I can't use it any more. Then I will probably go to Moneydance and augment that with investment reporting capabilities at Vanguard where I can add data on investments with other brokers if needed. I may even write a few Python scripts if that is what I need to do to get the reports I want.

 

[Katsmeow]

Well, this makes a difference to me. I am actually not that opposed to a subscription model. However, the prices being given seem like highway robbery.

I bought Quicken 2017 a few months ago and was transitioning to it from YNAB4. I had elected not to go to YNAB's subscription, cloud based model.

I didn't mind the fact it was a subscription, nor did it bother me it was cloud based. I honestly don't understand why some don't like it. If a hacker somehow got access to the data, so what? They would know my spending habits but wouldn't have my account info.

The reason I hadn't done the new YNAB was I didn't feel it was as full-featured as YNAB4.

But, this subscription stuff for Quicken will probably cause me to do the YNAB subscriptions (which is $40 a year for me). I've been a little dissatisfied with Quicken. I do love the fact that I can attach my receipts to transactions in Quicken. I already scan in all receipts so I love that feature. I also like being able to have sub-sub-categories.

YNAB doesn't allow either of that.

While Quicken does many things that YNAB doesn't do, I find that Quicken is often very inflexible and I don't like the interface. I prefer YNAB. So, I reactivated my trial on YNAB to see how it has developed over the last year. It is better so I probably will just sign up for that subscription model and will let Quicken go...

As a test I exported 1 weeks worth of transactions from my Chase checking account to a QIF file and tried to import it into Quicken 2016. In Quicken a QIF Import window opened up and there was a note stating that "QIF import is not available for checking, savings, credit cards, 401K, and all other brokerage accounts". In the QIF Import window you're given a drop down menu to select the account to import the QIF file to and all of my accounts that fall in any of the categories above were not available to select. So I guess the answer to my own question is that although QIF files can be used in newer versions of Quicken their use seems to be very very limited.

Oh, there is a workaround on this. For something like a checking account, import the QIF file to a cash account in Quicken (which you can do). Then, move the transactions into the Checking account you want them to be in. That worked fine for me.