Toledo would end the game with 3 starters in double digit scoring.Welcome to my third annual review of the personal finance software, Quicken for Mac. Unfortunately for the Rockets, they were without MAC player of the year TreShaun. Yet there must be even more that Quicken can do for youeven more. You appreciate the convenience of online banking you like being able to track the values of your investments and you havent overdrawn your checking account since you started using alerts. Youve been entering transactions in Quicken for several months now.In this post, I’ll share an update on how it’s gone using the latest version, Quicken 2020 for Mac.New features for 2021. I will miss Quicken but as a family of MAC had to move on since they didnt.As I wrote then, I had very high expectations for the Mac version under new leadership, independent of Intuit, and the financial benefit of a new subscription-based business model. Also known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, this act was signed into law on Mawith the aim of helping Americans who had been financially impacted by the pandemic.Remove the mystery from your finances with Quicken 2014, the one-stop shop. I wrote about the process of switching from Windows to Mac here.The CARES Act offers up to a year of forbearance for borrowers who are experiencing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.My finances mirror those of many mid-life families eyeing retirement: a half-dozen investment and retirement accounts, college savings accounts, a home, etc. I began my career in public accounting, and while I no longer provide accounting or auditing services to clients, I’ve held a CPA license here in the state of Washington for over thirty years. My BackgroundAnd by year's end, many of the major PC word processing a Windows-based PU will look the same when displayed on a Unix workstation or a Macintosh. If you’re a Quicken Windows version thinking about switching over to the Mac, this review should be useful. Quicken is finally catching up with the rest.Unlike other written reviews of Quicken software, my recent experience is exclusive to the Mac platform, though I will make feature comparisons to the Windows version. Up until now, Quicken has stood out as one of the few popular personal finance tools that doesn’t have robust online tools, like Personal Capital.
Quicken for Mac – An EvolutionFor most of my time on Quicken, I used the Windows flagship version of the program. With this background and financial situation, I have had many opportunities to evaluate and tug at the boundaries of Quicken as a personal finance program, particularly on this evolving Mac version of the software. I’ve always tried to be disciplined when it comes to money, a natural-born planner, and I’m comfortable managing my own finances. I finally took the leap in 2016 after Quicken 2017 for the Mac was released, and initial feedback was mildly positive for the first time. Each year I would await the latest incarnation for the Mac, only to be disappointed by the one-star feedback of early adopters on the Mac App Store. Instead, I used a virtualized version of Windows inside the Mac to use Quicken. Back then, Quicken on the Mac was too basic for my needs. For this type of financial management, Quicken is still the only consumer-targeted personal finance software game in town. There may be better cash flow and budgeting software (Banktivity and YNAB, for example), but these apps fall short, in my view, of keeping tabs on the intricate accounting treatment for the variety of obscure transactions that flow from owning stocks, mutual funds, stock options, and employer-granted restricted stock. With all its shortcomings, Quicken is still superior to any other personal finance program on the Mac if you need robust investment tracking. I chose the high-end version because I needed the investment accounting and tracking features.Let me be clear about something before I get into what’s changed in the latest version of Quicken. I typically renew in November and watch for Black Friday sales at Amazon. When Quicken launched its subscription business model in 2016, many customers (myself included) were concerned that that the software would languish, and all the subscription revenue would simply pay down leveraged debt, now that the Quicken corporation was owned by private equity 1.I subscribe to the Premiere version of Quicken, which lists for $80 per year on Quicken’s web site, though I’ve never spent anything close to that in renewals. I am heartily glad of this development. These updates, both major and minor, have continued to push the Mac platform forward, perhaps even narrowing the gap between its Windows big brother. Get shift tab to work on steam for macTouted as their number one feature request, Quicken introduced access to your financial system via the web in 2019. New Features in Quicken 2020Web Access. We’ll have to wait and see if this happens with Quicken. Private equity firms typically sell their investments after a five to seven year holding period, and a company being offered up for sale is often tempted to dress up its profits by deferring expenses or cutting staff. Quicken’s private equity ownership period hits the five-year mark in April 2021. End Of The Year Report For Quicken Password Feels VeryHaving access to all your financial data with just a simple user name and password feels very risky. One glaring omission is two-factor authentication as a security measure. But it’s a handy tool to check in on your finances while traveling without having to pack a computer (access on an iPad Pro using Safari was fine). It doesn’t appear you can pay bills from the web platform, nor can transactions from investment accounts be downloaded. Online transactions from bank and credit card accounts can be downloaded, just like on your Mac, and any edits you make to transactions sync to the desktop version. Another new feature is Quicken’s ability to automatically download bills and credit card statements in PDF format for review and filing. My current process for online bill paying through my bank works well enough for me.PDF Bill Downloading. I’ve tinkered with the new version, but haven’t used it. Paying bills from within Quicken is only available for Premiere subscribers, and the previous incarnation made no sense to me. Quicken revamped its bill-pay functionality in 2020. This feels like a work-in-progress, but it should improve over time. Of the dozen vendors I set up, it provided a PDF about half the time. For some reason, it won’t download my cellphone statement from AT&T, though it knows how much it is. It seems to work well, unless it doesn’t. If those two rules match, it renames the transaction to “Vashon Thriftway”. Here’s an example transaction from a grocery store purchase:The new renaming rule I created scans for two bits of text: “AplPay” and “THRIFTVASHON”. They’ve even added some power-user techniques to suss out the proper renaming of some of the more bizarre credit card transactions I routinely see, particularly with Apple Pay transactions I pay with my watch. That has mostly been corrected now with their new transaction renaming engine (a bug still persists that makes Quicken unable to remember transfers to other accounts as part of a memorized transaction). For years, I would shake my head as Quicken would stubbornly refuse to learn the proper expense category for the utility bill I download and pay every month. What’s Still Lacking or Needs ImprovementReporting, Particularly Against Budget. This is especially important for retirees or those soon approaching retirement age. You can now include account transfers and investment income in your annual budget. Quicken’s budget tool received an important update. This was a very helpful addition.Budgeting Improvements. Month-to-date actual results. Unless you happen to view the 12-month screen on the very last day of the month, the year-to-date totals are useless: the budget total includes the full budget for the month you’re viewing vs. Instead of a report, you get a bizarre on-screen (and unprintable) visualization of budget performance for the month, or an unwieldy 12 month stacked grid, neither of which I find at all useful. Budget, which is an essential financial planning tool. Every time I do an online update of my accounts, I receive the same throttling error for a random set of accounts with my primary bank. Of course, my Excel hack lacks interactivity and drill-down capability, which is important in tracking down the source of budget variances.Quirky Transaction Download Errors. I took the time to automate the workbook in 2019, so it takes just moments to create. How in the world can a software program designed to help individuals and families manage their personal finances not include a budget to actual report?Tired of waiting, I now export actual and budget figures out of Quicken to create a proper actual vs. Budget report since 2016, a report that has been available in the Windows platform forever.
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