The coming of “” 32bit app usage in the fall 2018 macOS release finally forced my hand: I was going to have to update my single longest-used app, Quicken 2007. I’ve been using Quicken in some form since 1994, but stopped with Quicken 2007—I found the newer versions worse than Quicken 2007, so I never upgraded.
Yes, I was using an eleven-year-old app to track our family’s spending and investments. Basically because it worked (most of the time), and I didn’t like any of the alternatives, which I would occasionally test. But Quicken 2007 was showing its age. In addition to its 32bitness, it had other issues: The UI was tiny and horrid, the windows never opened where I closed them (‘s saved layouts to the rescue!), and online access to my accounts was nearly non-existent. Worst of all, it would crash on occasion, necessitating rebuilding all my data files. It was finally time to find its replacement.
New Quicken Editions for 2018. The Windows and Mac versions are nearly identical, with very minor differences. Premier editions and above come with Quicken Bill Pay included for free, a $119/year value. Premier and above also come with free priority customer support.
After —and asking on Twitter—I focused on three apps:,. After looking at all three, I surprised myself by deciding that Quicken was the best tool for our use.
Going in, I was dead set against it, mainly due to its annual subscription structure. (I hate subscription software in general, but as it turns out, this one.) Read on for brief overviews of each of these three apps (with more detail on Quicken) and my rationale for deciding on Quicken. Getting started I was looking for an app that. Imported our historical Quicken data I didn’t want to lose 24+ years of our financial data. Felt like a Mac app I wasn’t interested in something that felt like a port from Windows, or lacked the specific “Macness” one gets in an app written for the Mac.M. Offered accurate investment tracking Our investments are in a few accounts, and I like to monitor them all in one spot.
Included online account access I want to update our bank, credit card, and investment accounts from the source, instead of having to manually enter transactions. Things I don’t really care about are bill pay (I use our bank), reports, budgets, and charts and graphs for anything outside the investments section of the app. As such, I can’t vouch for how well any of these three programs handle those tasks. All three apps imported my Quicken data file, though with varying degrees of success. Moneydance ignored the “hidden” status of accounts, so a lot of old, closed accounts showed up. Banktivity won’t import reconciliations, so none of my accounts were reconciled. Still, these are relatively minor issues compared to successfully importing nearly 25 years worth of Quicken data.
Now, here’s a brief overview of each of the three apps 3 – Moneydance This was the first app I looked at, and I pretty quickly ruled it out. I found the interface not to my liking—there are icons next to each account, which makes the layout look busy, and I found its register view confusing: Notice that entries take up two rows, but the white/blue background alternates every other rowso if you’re glancing at the register, it’s nearly impossible to pick out one transaction unless you click on it to select it. (It’s easy to tell them apart in this four-line partial register, but in the full register with comments on the second line for many entries, everything blends together.) Moneydance is a Java app. And while that doesn’t inherently make it bad, Java’s generic “write once for many platforms” code shows itself in a few places: The Preferences window doesn’t look anything like a native Mac app window, and the buttons in the app are definitely not macOS-style buttons.
Performance-wise, the app feels a bit slow; it takes a couple of seconds to open an account in a new window after double-clicking its entry in the account list. This is true even if it’s an account I just opened and then closed. Due to these issues, I quickly decided that Moneydance was not for me.
2 – Banktivity Banktivity was a strong contender; it was neck and neck with Quicken until I got more into the transition and looked closely at all of our accounts. Its account list view is also laden with icons—folder icons, new activity count badges, and status badges. It looks very busy, but once you get into an account, the view is much cleaner than Moneydance: This view can also be infested with icons, but those can (thankfully) be disabled in the app’s preferences.
In the register view, each entry is two rows, but the alternating background is also two rows, making it easy to see each transaction at a glance. Banktivity has two methods of data download: OFX (free) and Direct Access (subscription required). While many of our accounts offered free OFX support, there were a number that only worked with Direct Access, which is free during the generous 30 day trial period. Outside of that, Direct Access is a $45 per year subscription. Banktivity doesn’t have any of the “non-native” issues I found in Moneydance; the app looks and feels like a traditional Mac app, and opening an account window from the account list is speedy.
Unfortunately, you can’t do that with a double-click, as that brings up the account’s info panel; you need to right-click and choose Open in New Window from the contextual menu. That’s a big time waster for me. On the investment side, I had issues with two stocks that had had stock splits. Because I wasn’t downloading investment data in Quicken 2007, I had manually entered the splits using Quicken’s split tool. Banktivity didn’t handle this correctly, so our balances were way off in those two accounts. In the end, I decided against using Banktivity due to its cost ($65 up front, plus $45 per year), the overabundance of icons in the layouts, its inability to import reconciliations from Quicken, and its difficulties handling some investment data.
1 – Quicken 2018 When Quicken 2018 was released as a subscription product, I with the change, as I have a big issue with “software as a service.” But as I dug into the app, I discovered that their subscription: If you stop subscribing, you can still use the app to enter and track financial data; you just lose access to the online components and Quicken’s support services. That allayed my fears of needing to subscribe forever, just so I wouldn’t lose access to my financial data. Unfortunately, there’s no free trial of Quicken, but they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee, so I paid and started testing.
What I found is an app that, for the most part, takes everything I liked about Quicken 2007 and modernizes it. As I hoped, Quicken handled the import of my old data perfectly, bringing across the reconciliations and handling investments properly. It’s also speedy, opening new account windows promptly when double-clicked. I like the minimalist one-line register views—they’re clean and easy to read: (If you need to see the details, you can double-click to see an expanded view.) You can choose one of four levels of line spacing for the register—they include Comfortable, Cozy (pictured), Compact, and Tiny. None of these affect the font size, just the row spacing.
(I wish the font size were changeable, but it’s not.) Unique to Quicken among these three apps is the ability to change the visible columns, as well as the column order, on a per-register basis. As seen at right, there are a large number of columns you can choose to view—24 in total. I like that it’s just as easy to hide columns you don’t want to see.
Once you’ve added and removed columns to your liking, you can drag the remaining visible columns into any order you wish. Quicken includes two methods of online access: Direct Connect and Quicken Connect. Both are included in your annual subscription cost, and between the two, I was able to get all but one of my accounts working for online access.
(Oddly, that one account did work with Banktivity.) Why I chose Quicken Certainly there’s some value to continuing with the app I had been using: The import went perfectly, and I felt immediately comfortable in the app. But given how horrid Quicken was for many years of Intuit’s onwership, I was prepared to be disappointed. But Quicken is no longer owned by Intuit—two years ago, they were.
That’s both good and bad; it’s good that they’re out from under Intuit’s lack of interest in the Mac app. But it’s possibly bad in that an investment group only buys a company for one reason: To later sell it at a big profit. But to get to the point where the company is worth a higher valuation, they have to offer things that customers want. And to me, it seems “new Quicken” is trying hard. After buying, I received an email thank-you from the CEO, explaining where they’ve been and where they’re trying to go, and thanking me for being a customer—sure, it’s a form letter, but it’s more than I ever got from Intuit. The in-app help options, as seen at right, are extensive and include a link to the community forums as well as an in-app screen sharing feature. The help file itself is detailed and well indexed, making it fairly easy to find what you want.
(Though it is a complex app, so there’s a lot to look through.) The app is a real Mac app, with none of the weirdness that comes from a Java app. Buttons look right, the prefs look right, shortcut keys work as expected, etc. Finally, there’s the issue of cost. Quicken for Mac comes in three versions: Starter ($35/year), Deluxe ($50/year), and Premier ($75/year).
The lays out all the differences. For us, as we need to track loans and investments but don’t need bill pay, Deluxe was the obvious choice. Right now—and probably for quite a while, I’d imagine—a two-year Deluxe subscription is $69.98, bringing the cost per year to $34.99, which is a bargain. By comparison, the first two years of Banktivity would cost us $155, or $77.50 per year.
If there are no more discounts after the first two years, Quicken will then cost us $5 more per year than would Banktivity, which means it would take roughly 17 years to spend the $85 we save up front. Quicken 2018 isn’t perfect, but for us, at least, it’s a very nice upgrade from Quicken 2007, and its reasonable cost and “not-really-a-subscription subscription” model work well for our family. Wyn: I’d never heard of them, so thanks for the pointer. However I’m one of “those” people: I despise web apps, and can’t use them, and that seems to be what they are now? (Their prior version was a traditional Mac app, it appears.) Beyond that, if I’m reading the site correctly, all my data is stored on their server somewhere? That’s also not for me—I want my financial data on my machine, away from the cloud.
It may be the most amazing solution ever, but those two things will stop me from ever using it. Regards; -rob. Hi Rob, thanks for the article. I’m in the same boat as you, needing to reluctantly transition out of 2007 but I DO need the reports function. Like you, I track family spending and finances but depend on the “Income Statement” report every year to send to my accountant.
It’s a terrific report and I count on it to bring all categorical expenses into one one handy report, and you can even click on each item to reveal the list of underlying individual expenses if necessary. I don’t think I could ever do without it. But, I must change to something else, even if it means buying a cheap Windows computer just to run Quicken with all the bells and whistles again. It’s a very sad situation for sure. You are so right about that being a desperate move, to Windows. But what leads me to look for other options now is that I can’t get my new Discover card to download transactions, getting the dreaded OL-226 error. The Discover rep said downloads don’t work with a Quicken over 3 years old.
Also, my Schwab stopped downloading a couple of years ago but I like Quicken so much that I’ve been doing that manually. I need for those to download. And, there’s no longer any support, even chat forums, for Quicken Mac 2007. Nail after nail in that coffin, sadly.:-(. Just to be clear, Quicken is a personal finance tool, not a business tool, so the tools are basic.
While there’s no balance sheet, there is a net worth report to see assets vs. You can also see loan amortization info, though not in as much detail as you could in 2007. Anyway, make sure the moneyback guarantee is still in place, and if so, give it a try with an import from 2007. I wasn’t expecting great things, and while it’s still not 2007, it’s more than met my personal needs so far. Hi, I’ve used Quicken 2007 for Mac (and prior versions dating to the early 90’s) for my 1099 businesses with fine success. It’s very easy to keep track both income and deductible expenses using categories (create categories like “Office Expenses”, “Employee Gross Pay”, “Business Travel”, etc.) and at the end of the year, simply run an “Income Statement” which shows all the expenses totaled you need to see.
You can also run a category report which shows each expense itemized. I ASSUME and hope Quicken 2019 uses the same way to keep track of things because you can import your Quicken 2007 file into the new version. I haven’t done this yet though I will in the near future. The only things I don’t keep track of are equipment and car depreciation — I leave that stuff to my accountant. Hope this helps. I haven't run a single day this year.
Wait, before you call me lazy that day was Sunday: I took it off after 12. When the web division manager says 'Ship it!'
But the developers say 'It's not ready yet!' And the manager replies. Plus Recapture Of Government Fees That Others Simply Have To Pay But We Can Pass Along To You Because You Suck. True. I think the bigger question is have they done this before? Or is this like the promoted '$449 with. 'Apple Targeting Users of Older iPhones With iPhone XR Email Campaign' Target me all you want, but if the notch st.
Quicken was traditionally known as one of the best personal finance software options for desktop users. However, the Mac version had traditionally lacked the features found in the PC version, and that was disappointing to many users. While last year's version was a big improvement, it still wasn't there for everyone.
After using Quicken for Mac 2019 for several weeks, we're happy to see that Quicken has continued the improvements over prior years. It's not as robust as we'd like to see yet, but it's definitely been moving in the right direction. So, how did Quicken for Mac 2019 do? Honestly, it's an incremental improvement over 2018.
But we like the direction it's going, and if you can get a great deal on pricing (which you typically can on or when they have a sale), it could be worth it. Key Features Of Quicken For Mac 2019 Quicken For Mac continues to build on the many traditional features that Quicken users expect. As always, it comes with great spending tracking (compared to other online options like and ), it has investment tracking, and budgeting. For 2019, they have improved the usability of the platform, but the navigation is still a little challenging. Even after using Quicken for about a week, I still find it hard to get to different reports.
It's not intuitive. They also improved the web interface for Quicken. If you don't want to use the desktop software, and prefer a web version (like what you get with Mint), you can have that now. But I prefer the app over the web version.
Here's what the home screen looks like. The pricing for Quicken For Mac 2019 continues to be a focus point for most users. Quicken changed their pricing model last year to a subscription-based model, instead of a one-time fee.
I see this as both good and bad. It's bad, because many Quicken users kept their software for years, and never upgraded.
For users, this was fine - because you could avoid bad rollouts like Quicken for Mac 2017. However, to continue to receive updates and banking information, you had to update every few years anyway or Quicken would cut you off.
It's good, because my hope is with more recurring revenue, Quicken can continue to improve their software and ensure banking connectivity. Quicken For Mac 2019 has three price points this year. I think 90% of users would benefit simply using the Deluxe version, which is $49.99/yr at full price. Here's what the pricing looks like. It's hard to say if Premier is worth the huge additional price. I think Deluxe is the best value, for the added features of investment and loan tracking. But I've never used BillPay, and I highly recommend that most people don't use a service like BillPay because not only does Quicken charge more, but many banks charge for the service as well.
Note: For Windows, there is also a Home and Business version. However, we think most consumers with a small business would benefit more from using a tool like, versus using Quicken Home and Business.
Special Promotional Pricing As you probably already know, Quicken is notorious for running promotional pricing all the time. Recently, they were offering 40% off their prices - which I think is a fair price for the product. I would have a hard time paying $49.99 per year for Deluxe, but paying $29.99 per year makes much more sense - especially considering that I would typically upgrade every 2-3 years, this aligns much better with the pricing I'd expect.
However, in our search for deals, we found that Amazon.com is offering a 14-month subscription of the Deluxe version for $38.49 (which is 30% off full price). Given the $49.99 price is $4.17 per month, Amazon's deal is $2.75 per month. Still not as good as Quicken's own sale, but the second best deal we've found. Quicken World Mastercard Another interesting product/feature that Quicken launched this year is the Quicken World Mastercard. The Quicken credit card provides real-time transaction notifications in the Quicken mobile app, and offers integration with Quicken for Mac desktop. This card also gives you a free year of Quicken Deluxe when you spend at least $500 in the first 90 days.
If you already have a subscription, you'll get a 1 year extension. The card offers 2x rewards points on all your qualified spending, and has no annual fees. Given that this card is really about integration with Quicken, we're surprised that you don't get Quicken free every year as long as you spend at least $500 per year. Otherwise, all the rewards are on par or below the other.
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About Robert Farrington. Robert Farrington is America's Millennial Money Expert, and the founder of, a personal finance site dedicated to helping millennials escape student loan debt to start investing and building wealth for the future. You can learn more about him One of his favorite tools is, which enables him to manage his finances in just 15-minutes each month. Best of all - it's free!
He is also diversifying his investment portfolio by adding a little bit of real estate. But not rental homes, because he doesn't want a second job, it's diversified small investments in a mix of properties through. Worth a look if you're looking for a low dollar way to invest in real estate.
You’re totally right on that long term value – that’s why I’m not sure at full price. However, at $29.99, now we’re talking $300 over 10 years – which is on par with what Quicken users have been paying for the last 10-15 years anyway with required upgrades. You have to remember, Quicken pays to have access to that bank connectivity. I’ve heard it costs about $1 per account per year for a service like Quicken.
When you think that the average user probably has 5-10 accounts linked, their ongoing data expense alone is $5-10 per each user. It makes sense that on that cost alone they can’t offer bank connectivity forever at a single one time fee. I’m concerned about the inability to track “Transfers” to loan accounts in the Budgeting function. Our family was setting up a budget that involved 13 loans including 11 student loans that have to be paid for out of our checking accounts every month.
This obligation is a substantial portion of our family budget, yet cannot be tracked with the latest version of the Quicken Deluxe for the Mac platform. Many other users in the Users Forum complain about this deficiency and Quicken promises that they are aware of it and plan to make changes. Is this a fatal flaw for families that need to budget loan payments, or are you aware of a workaround that will address this problem.
So I’m confused. Is it because when you setup the loan, it only counts the interest as the expense and not the full amount (since part of it was a transfer)? What I’ve found to work is renaming the split (I had to do this in prior versions of Quicken as well, and early versions with Credit Card Payments even) – “Student Loan Payment”. You could even get specific by loan type. It looks like this: Then, when you go into your spending and budgeting, you can see it here – just look at the line for both Student Loan Payment and Loans (which is interest and I could also rename). I have been using Quicken Mac 2007 for all this time because my stock data has multiple lots with different purchase dates.
I bought the 2018 edition because they claimed it will handle multiple lots — and it does, though the import had a few glitches which I was able to work around. But I’m sorry I spent the time doing that, as the 2018 version is severely crippled. It won’t even let you print or export a simple “portfolio value report”: about the most basic function I can imagine; all you can do is look at it onscreen.
Custom reports are all about transactions, not current holdings and values. It claims to generate exportable files for transfer to Q Mac 2007 and for Q Windows, but neither of them worked. So your data goes in, but you can’t get it out, which doesn’t satisfy their “data guarantee.” I discovered this a few days after the 30-day money back period, but was able (after hours unsuccessfully trying to reach a chat agent, and half an hour of phone hold) to get them to refund my purchase price, but I’ll never get back the time I spent fixing the data importing or trying to make it do what it ought to do. I would advise everyone to avoid this product. Quicken Mac 2018 is a glorious flaming waste of time if you want a semblance of tracking investments. I have been using Quicken Mac since 2004. I have diligently been forced into upgrading purely because mac has improved with time and no longer can run older versions of Quicken.
I am now on the 3rd round of customer service calls. (I installed Mac 2018 this morning.) I am an expert Quicken user and know my way around my mac. Importing my data file was a breeze. Thanks for that. My issue – when I sell shares of a security, it doesn’t update in the portfolio or cash. Three rounds of customer service and I am now asked to enter a transaction to sell shares. And a transaction to remove shares.
And a transaction to add a ghost “placeholder.” And if its a full moon maybe your shares will actually appear correctly. The other option is to go into your account and delete every possible transaction relating to the security you just sold. Compliance and data integrity nightmare. The graphics are fun and pretty just don’t actually use the data generated.
Back to the drawing board quicken. $50 annual fee?
Thats laughable! I have been using Quicken 2007 for 11 years. I pay my bills with Quicken, and reconcile my checkbook by downloading bank transactions with Quicken. I believe that at one time, I paid my bank a monthly fee for this privilege, but as far as I can tell, I pay nothing now. How is Quicken 2018 different in this regard?
Once upon a time, I reconciled my credit cards by downloading transactions from my credit card companies. I stopped doing that some time ago, but should I wish to start up again, does Quicken 2018 support that, and is there a charge for that? I would just continue to use Quicken 2007, but I am concerned about the upcoming abandonment of 32 bit applications by Apple. Quicken 2019 has a dreadful user interface. GONE is the ability to run simple reports for this year, last year, date-to-date, etc. With any ease, if at all. GONE is the simple accounts window that you are used to.
GONE is the empty register line at the bottom of your account window waiting for you to fill in the newest transaction (you have to use a “+” “New Transaction” clumsy interface now). I could go on. The people who revamped this app appear to have done ZERO research with real world users. The investment firm who bought Quicken? They’re doing nothing good here. I am one of thousands or millions stuck in Quicken 2007 and LIKE the interfaces in that version.
Why can’t Quicken LISTEN to all the people screaming how unhappy they are with this product? I could care less about the online features.
It’s just not there yet and I would never use it anyway. I have my stuff in the cloud, it’s fine. I use Quicken on a desktop or laptop so the phone app is of no use for me. It’s fine to build that in for those who like it. But you have to perfect, as best as you can, the actual application first and foremost.
Quicken has become bloated and unintuitive over the last few versions. They’ve lost sight of the original idea and purpose.
This is simple bookkeeping. And simpler, is BETTER, when it comes to accounting software. Graphs, charts, and icons are fine, but can we please have the ability to turn them off. I don’t want to look at all the clutter constantly.
Give me an accounts window (without the unnecessary folders for cash, cc, investments), individual account windows when I open them, keep the legacy register format that has been used for many decades (it just plain works and makes sense, newest on the bottom, empty one at bottom ready to be filled in), a way to run reports the way it’s done in 2007 (again, simple, makes sense, easy to get what you want out of it). STOP the incessant altering and revamping. It does not work as well for the end users. Capital, sell this software to someone who gets it and will rework with some thoughtful acumen and intelligence. Forget the subscription plan too.
It’s insulting. People upgrade as needed every couple years or so without be forced into it. Subscription methods set a bad tone between the company and it’s users. Allow users the respect to upgrade when they choose rather than strong-arming them into it from the get go.