Thursday 3 March 2011

Personal Finance - quicken, mac


This is not Quicken Essentials for Mac 2011. I don't know if that product even exists (the version I received listed 2010 on the spine, but showed no year on the front of the box). I don't know whose error created that listing, Intuit's or Amazon's, but this is the same Quicken Essentials for Mac that became available in February 2010.



It took a lot to get past all of the hundreds of negative reviews and try out this product. I wish that I hadn't waited. I upgraded from Quicken 2007 for Mac and find QEM to be superior. Here are the improvements:



1. Massively better UI. Quicken 2007 utilized a multi-window design that was confusing and complex. QEM uses one window and an iTunes-like interface. It's much easier to use.

2. Many more banks are directly supported. In Quicken 2007, for two accounts I would have to download QFX files and import them into Quicken 2007. No longer--all of my accounts are direct connect in QEM. However, note that there are reports that Intuit stores your bank passwords on its servers instead of locally in QEM.

3. Much better database functionality. Find/Replace in Quicken 2007 was a total kludge. In QEM, you can review your list of payees and categories and make global changes. You can also do bulk edits. Both are tremendously helpful in keeping years of financial records well organized.

4. Less steps for downloading transactions. A one-click update all accounts works with less clicks than the equivalent function in Quicken 2007 (which required being on the right tab of the right window to execute).



The only problems are that the auto-matching feature when you download transactions appears to be poor and the above-mentioned issue of Intuit storing bank passwords. There are certainly features missing from QEM that were present in Quicken 2007, but not ones that I used (and for everyone complaining that QEM doesn't print checks, it now does as of version 1.5). I also had no problems importing about 10 years of data from Quicken 2007 to QEM.



All in all, I wish that I hadn't listened to all of the negative reviews. QEM is a huge improvement from Quicken 2007 and really does everything I need easily and effectively. Quicken Essentials for Mac - Financial Software - Mac - Quicken - Personal Finance'


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