Originally published at: Quicken 7.9 - TidBITS
Allows attachments on accounts, provides default actions for scheduled transactions, and adds a Security Detail view. ($59.88/$83.88/$119.88 annual subscription, free update, 3.2 MB, macOS 11+)
Already, this version addresses a minor irritation I had with Quicken. Attaching invoice and statement scans with transactions has proven very easy and valuable. But there was no good place to store statements, other than in a $0 transaction that never reconciles. This update gives me a central place to store those scans.
The interface is a non-modal window that can display thumbnails or a sorted list. It is possible to rename attachments by invoking a contextual click on the filename.
Since I have adopted the convention, and pursued it fanatically over many years, of naming files with a prefix in the form YYYY-MM-DD, that allows me to see account-level attachments in chronological or reverse-chronological order with no fuss.
Quicken lives after its long years of stagnation under Intuit.
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This is as much a review of 3rd party finance programs with bill pay as it is about Quicken. I started with Quicken after Dollar$and$en$e went bust in the 80ās It got its start on the Mac and was a great program with good support till it added Windows support. Then Intuit essentially abandoned it for years until it spun it off and now has become a primary loan company that also does Quickbooks. I abandoned it years ago after its database became corrupted on a regular basis after around every 6 months of use. Before Quicken 10 it was a full featured product with all the bells and whistles but with 10 they essentially stripped it down to basics and from what I read about it, it has been slowly adding some features to it.
Of the 3 finance programs with internal bill pay that run on Mac, Quicken, Banktivity, and Moneydance, it is the most expensive if you want a full featured product. Of the 3, Moneydance is the only one leftthat is not subscription based.
Why do I refuse subscription programs for finance programs? These programs are basically tools that store your personal data that offer an interface to manage. As subscription based you are forced to pay a fee to access your own data that you have provided to the App. I continually ask myself, what happens if I stop paying? Will I still be able to access my own historic and achieved data with the program if I stop paying? What happens if I can with the current version but it becomes incompatible with a future release of macOS? Will I be able to update without a subscription to access my old data? What happens if Quicken goes bankrupt? Will I still have access to my old and current data? When it comes to financial information these are very important questions you should be asking. And these are some of the reasons I refuse to use subscription software for finance management, especially when the data is stored in a proprietary format.
What all 3 of these programs have in common, based on my experience of using all 3, is mediocre to abysmal tech support and often challenging graphic and unfriendly user interfaces. To the best of my knowledge only Quicken offers basic phone support. That said based on research and personal that is abysmal. My bank uses Quicken technology for bill pay that is supported by Quicken and my experiences with utilizing it for functional issue has been horrible. Given where I live, I pass by their corporate offices to go to medical appointments and seriously considered having to āpound on their doorsā to attempt to get decent support.
Given the complexity of my finances, having bill pay within the App is an extreme convenience which is the only reason I keep using any of these 3 Apps. As you may have guessed, I now use Moneydance but I reluctantly say I am not enamored by it, given its interface design, and tech support. Both Quicken and Banktivity in my experiences have been substantially worse. Frankly if you are not in need of bill pay within the App, I would suggest distancing yourself from all 3. Should Moneydance switch to subscripion based paradigm, my plans reluctantly will be to switch to another highly rated finance without bill pay and subscriptions then using the online bill pay from my bank. This will lower my productivity but is better than having to possibly pay for life to access my own historical data.
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Interesting. You have specific choices you are making: no subscription software is a big one.
You also characterize all three applications as having āchallenging and unfriendly graphic interfaces.ā Is that based on current experience with any of them, considering that you donāt use them?
I have no reason to doubt your assertion that their tech support is abysmal or horrible, only because Iāve absolutely not needed it in the 30 years Iāve used Quicken. But it might help to know what you mean by that, perhaps with an example or two.
Iāve just finished a year of using Quicken to administer an estate, and am delighted with how readily it adapted to a situation where I needed to set up asset and liability accounts, legacy accounts to track the assets coming in, and the reports I needed for the probate court. If I had needed to track stock values Iām sure that would have worked out too, but no need.
It just seems like you used a different application than I did. If your experience is still being shaped by the Intuit years, your review sounds right. But Quicken today is not anything like the abomination it was in those years.
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As I stated in my comment I currently use MoneyDance. My comments are based on a horrible experience I had with Banktivity support several years ago, and experience I had with Quicken support about a year ago when attempting to setup Bill Pay with the Bank I use as Quicken provided the technology used for this as ell as the support for it. I am charged ~$50 a year for this by my bank which goes to Quicken so technically I am a customer of theirs. I have not used their App for years but the one before Quicken 10, I believe it was 7.1 had a somewhat crude but somewhat user friendly interface. My reasons for leaving Quicken and not intending to go back are the following
- Database corruption on a regular basis
- Poor tech support
- Reduction of features from 7.1
- Cost
- Subscription based.
As mentioned, of the 3 know finances program for Mac that support internal bill pay, Moneydance is now the only one that is not subscription based. The fact that I am now using it, should not suggest that I highly recommend it. However it seems to have the least amount of issues of the 3. If someone came out with a new finance program for the Mac that supported internal bill pay, a modern,user friendly GUI, not subscription, with decent support, and was stable, I would be switching. Is that to much to ask for?
My basis for evaluation of GUIās are the guidelines set out by Bruce Tognazinni, who actually authored Apple Interface Guidelines in the 80ās and has patents on some of the commonly used elements of current GUIās. Much of those guidelines and what makes a good GUI are documented on his website, http://www.asktog.com.
I think the intent is to attach account statements to the account by right or control clicking on the account in the account list and then selecting Attachment ā Add Account Attachmentā¦
This is described on the first page Whatās New on Quicken 7.9.
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Yes. You can also drag and drop them on the accountās listed name in the sidebar. Itās all very Mac-like; more than one way to accomplish a task, and if you think something might work a particular way, try it and most likely it will.
It happened I wanted to move the old statements from the individual entries I had made for them in the account to the central Account Attachment repository, so it was much easier to open that non-modal window and have a big target for drag and drop. The method you describe would not have worked at all in this particular instance, but would be great if I had a file to which I could navigate in the storage hierarchy.
Thanks for your response. I understand why you would not want to go back to a Quicken like the instance/crapola that was Intuitās 7.1 .
The current version might actually check off most of your boxes, but would definitely fail the subscription requirement. The new developers are bending over backward IMHO to recapture the HIG zeitgeist by offering multiple ways to accomplish a task, working within the MacOS framework rather than trying to make it Windows, and rolling out updates every 4 months or so that actually add back the features that Intuit crapified for their own definition of value.
It may indeed be too much to ask that a one-time license fee pay for that. I opted out of the Adobe universe for that reason, and no amount of spin on their part will persuade me to opt back in.
At least for me, though, I donāt understand how a smaller company could stay in business by selling a software product, providing free updates to it over a period of years, and never ever generating revenue for development again for that license. It seems like too much to ask for a product such as Quicken, which is expected to work with a universe of bill pay interfaces, stock quote sources, and still cope with Appleās annual MacOS updates. Add to that technical support for those users who need it, and itās a lot of cash. Where does that come from?
If you took away the āinternal bill payā and ādecent supportā requirements, I could see a developer trying to fill your bill. In fact, you and I both have seen several of them try over the past decade, and as you well know they have all fallen into one or another thought trap that hinders their application from being The One True Finance Program.
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There is a happy medium, which many developers (e.g. Mike Bombich) seem to use successfully.
Give free updates for bug fixes and minor features, but charge for major-version upgrades, where significant new features and/or platform support is added.
Yes, some big companies, like Adobe, have abandoned this in favor of subscriptions. But other other big companies, like Microsoft, give customers the option - either a subscription (which gets updates all the time) or a perpetual license, which only gets bug fixes and security patches, forcing you to buy a new license a few years later to get new features.
Intuit could do the same thing, should they want to.
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Just to be clear, though, Intuit is not involved with Quicken any more. Thank whatever entity you thank for that.
I have a Microsoft 365 subscription, too, and find it worth it for now. At some point Iāll go looking for a perpetual license and stop paying an annual toll.
Quickenās license seems reasonable as long as they provide services and keep the product free from major stuff like database corruption. Intuit overpromised and underdelivered on that score, and steadily pushed out features that they couldnāt figure out (or allocate resources to implement) on MacOS.
And again, even though Microsoft is dealing with platform complexities I couldnāt begin to understand, they are not providing financial services that constantly shift. Again, I never understood how Intuit could charge a relatively low license fee for a major version, claim to support it (or abandon it as the case may be) for multiple years, then come back with a new offer after half their user base abandoned their product as unusable.
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For anybody interested, thereās an earlier discussion of Quicken and personal finance software here:
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There is a happy medium, which many developers (e.g. Mike Bombich) seem to use successfully.
Give free updates for bug fixes and minor features, but charge for major-version upgrades, where significant new features and/or platform support is added.
Precisely what would benefit consumers the most! You then donāt pay for the Hope of a useful upgrade, but rather pay for the immediate availability of an update, knowing precisely what improvements have been made.
IMO the main problem with subscriptions is the endless payments for an ambiguous return, not knowing if and when it will might come, nor knowing if any changes will be worth the additional cost. The largest cost of a product should be the initial purchase.
My view on subscriptions depends on the size of the company offering a product, how I use a product, and the duration of warranties and guarantees.
For software, Iām much more open to subscriptions or hybrid (minor upgrades included, major versions paid) subscriptions when an application is sold and maintained by a small or medium size business, switching costs in terms of both time and money are high, and I have compelling reasons for a company to remain in business on an ongoing basis.
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First of all, I liked 7.1 and would likely be using it if it was not subscription, stripped of features like 10 was and had a stable db that did not corrupt. The GUI was not great but it served all my needs at a fair price. True, support was abysmal, and based on my most recent experience with Quicken, it still is, but that is similar to its competitors.
Your latest response got me to thinking. In some ways Moneydance (MD) is a form of subscription software as well but in a way I can live with it. I pay my bank $60 a year for the bill pay service that goes to Quicken and MD $24 a year for downloading transactions in a private safe manner. What I do not pay a subscription for is the App to continue to access my own data. Paying a company a fee to access my own data is a showstopper for me. That is also why I have abandoned PDFPen when Nitro took it over. While I understand the need to pay for a continuing service I am not about to pay a company an annual fee for a tool which is what an App is.
You make a good point about a small companies need for an income stream to stay in business. There are other creative ways that companies can generate income without charging a subscription fee to use a tool and possibly locking up a customers own data. Obviously MD found a way, along with charging an upgrade fee for a major revision with new and dramatically updated features every few years. Another way would be premium tech support, perhaps 24/7 by phone with something like a fee of $50/call with it being refunded if the issue was a software bug. How about an optional special use services with a one time fee per year that does not lock up your data like an enhancement that will use your current years data to prepare all the forms needed to pay/refund your taxes or working with a financial institution for custom brokerage services and financial advice.
My point being that there are other potential income streams than a subscription based App that locks up your data unless you agree to pay for life and perhaps after to your estate managers and decedents.
In my opinion subscription Apps also damages innovation and fixing bugs as so long as the money keeps rolling in the developer has little incentive to improve the product or correct issues with the only incentive being if the customer base starts depreciating.
Yes. That is the fair solution. At any point, you should be able to stop paying and walk away with what you purchased and have everything keep working.
Where it gets more complex with Quicken is that youāre no longer just buying a desktop app, youāre buying access to online services that link to banks. And Quicken deserves to be compensated for that ongoing access.
But my contrary response is that this all creates new charges for consumers. We used to be able to direct connect to banks and pull down our data. Now Quicken servers sit in between as aggregators. Does that simplify things for consumers? Iām not sure. Does it simplify software for Quicken? For sure. My team has written similar software that aggregates various kinds of API fetches into a āservice brokerā so that most of our plumbing can be reused, and custom code is only required to handle differences facing the remote end, in this case the banks. But all that just means that Quickenās code has gotten easier to manage, and as a thank you to customers, the latter now have to pay for online services since that code doesnāt exist on the desktop. Quicken: one point, Customers: zero.
Reminds me a little of Visa. Banks could issue private credit cards, but thatās a lot of work for them. And itās miserable for points of sale, who donāt want a special connection for each bank. The solution is that Visa sits in the middle as a proxy / clearinghouse between all banks and all consumers. So Visa does the heavy lifting, and the bank just owns the money. Points of sale just need to support āVisaā, so they and their customers have a better experience. Visa gets paid by the sellers.
Back to online banking: do you remember that banks used to charge us extra for āonline bankingā? And banks that wanted your business waved the fee. But behind the scenes, banks used to foot the bill for the online services. And the free market managed the process by competing for your business. If they want my money in their bank, then part of the deal is they foot the bill for letting me download my transactions.
Iād like to see that again. Let Quicken bill the banks for the online services and make it free again for users of the software. Then, the charges from Quicken to consumers can be limited to one-time software purchases, and paid major upgrades, Not āsubscriptionsā.
Thatās my modest proposal.
The situation with online banking is a bit more complicated. jwellās post was not quite right, saying that there is no subscription associated with Moneydance; there is no subscription if you donāt add the online banking option. If you do, there is a monthly subscription cost (or you can get the whole package as a subscription). In a blog post from 2021 justifying the price, they describe the reason for the subscription and the need to use a 3rd party aggregator:
Iām pretty sure that Quickenās process is similar.
I use Moneydance but do not pay for the online banking feature; I just manually download the necessary files from my financial institutions when they become available.
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For reference, if you do decide to stop subscribing to Quicken:
What is the Quicken Data Access Guarantee? | Quicken
āThe Quicken Data Access Guarantee means that whether you renew your subscription or not, youāll always have full access to and ownership of your data. You can view, edit, export, and manually enter transactions and accounts, even after your subscription ends. As always, your Quicken data is stored on your local computer. Access to online services, such as transaction download, quotes, and mobile sync, along with access to Quicken Support, will end if your subscription does.ā
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Donāt you have to create an account in order to use Quicken? I seem to remember that from a couple of versions I tried after they were taken over. That is another of my deal breakers, why am I creating an account to access data thatās on my own machine? According to the snippet posted, if you cancel the subscription you can still use your data, but if you have an account I would think they can still hold it hostage.
Diane
In the last several years, I have tried banktivity, moneydance, and Quicken classic.
I forget why I stopped using banktivity and the reason was a real showstopper. 
I made several attempts to get the subscription service add-on for online banking to work with moneydance and never could get it to work. And the one time payment for the app is only good for two years of updates, so itās really a long-term subscription.
For the time being, I use Quicken classic on the desktop without Web or Phone app. It works well enough. The online banking works except when it doesnāt. It strikes me the online banking interactions really are a moving target even for a company like Quicken.
For those who want a one time app payment with updates (security and features) forever and ongoing online banking access, I think youāre being unrealistic in this marketplace. Youād probably be better off rolling your own, such as a spreadsheet with some way to download files from your financial accounts and import the files into the spreadsheet. You control your data on the desktop and youāre never locked out. Of course, youāre never locked out of your Quicken data if you believe the blurb that was shared by another user a few comments above. I believe the blurb, by the way. Iām also trying to figure out a way to roll my own.
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As with most apps, you do not immediately need to upgrade to the newest release. Moreover, an upgrade is available for users of earlier versions at a substantial discount. With Moneydance, as with other non-subscription apps, it is common for folks to skip releases and upgrade only when other changes to their systems make their version unusable or if new features in the upgrade make it worth the price to them.