See my Quicken 2020 for Mac Review for the most recent review.
I have been using Quicken to manage my finances since 1989, making this my 30th anniversary with the program. Though I started on a Mac, and use a Mac today, the vast majority of my use has been on Windows. A little over two years ago, I switched to the Mac version of Quicken which I wrote about here.
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. In this post, I’ll share an update on how it’s gone using the latest version of Quicken, Quicken 2019 for Mac.
My Background
I began my career in public accounting, and while I no longer provide accounting or auditing services to clients, I am still a licensed Certified Public Accountant here in the state of Washington. My finances mirror those of many mid-life families: a half-dozen investment and retirement accounts, college savings accounts, a home, etc., though working for a publicly-traded company these past twenty years has also allowed me direct experience with stock options, restricted stock units, and a variety of employee benefit programs that follow that kind of employment. I’ve always tried to be disciplined when it comes to money, a natural-born planner, and I’m comfortable managing my own finances. With this background and financial situation, I have had many opportunities to evaluate and tug on the boundaries of Quicken as a personal finance program, particularly on this evolving Mac version of the software.
Quicken for Mac – A Painfully Slow Evolution
For most of my time on Quicken, I used the Windows flagship version of the program. I switched over to Mac for most things about 15 years ago, except for Quicken which initially wasn’t available at all, and early versions were either too basic or too buggy. I had to run Windows virtually inside a Mac which was a hassle, so I was eager to move to the native version of Quicken. 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. 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. I planned to run parallel systems between Mac and Windows, but that became too much effort, so in January 2017, I switched entirely to Quicken Premiere for the Mac. 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. While I take issue with how slowly the Mac version has developed, particularly in light of the abilities of its Windows counterpart, Quicken is still superior to any other personal finance program on the Mac if you need robust investment tracking. 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. For this type of financial management, Quicken is still the only personal finance software game in town.
Quicken 2019 for Mac
Quicken 2019 for Mac was released with little fanfare in November 2018. Since I purchased a 20-month subscription to Quicken Premiere last year during an Amazon.com Black Friday sale, updates like the 2019 edition have been provided at no additional charge. I didn’t even notice the name had changed since it came through as a regular software update.
The software saw a half-dozen meaningful updates throughout 2018, suggesting the annual renaming to a new year is more marketing than substance these days. So, the improvements I’ll note here relate to software updates during all of 2018 vs. just since the 2019 rebranding.
What’s Better
Performance. Last year, I complained of performance delays when switching investment views and exiting this program. These lags have mostly been corrected. Quicken claims that portions of the program are four times faster in 2019. Opening and closing the program is much quicker, and, while I still see the occasional beachball icon when viewing investments, the overall program seems faster and more responsive. I’m using a newer iMac to run Quicken, so your mileage may vary, but my experience has been positive.
Investment Tracking and Analysis. Long a sore spot on the Mac, investment tracking and analysis continued to see updates in 2018. It’s been a while now since I’ve used the Windows version of Quicken, but I no longer feel like I lack analysis features for my investments. I can view investment returns by class of investment (stocks, bonds, cash, other), security, holding period, etc., and drill into lots of purchases for my original cost basis, current gain or loss, and most recent market changes. I’ve read reports that others are still having difficulty with accurate investment return results, but in my case, it’s working flawlessly. This is a big deal to me, and it’s nice to see the improvements Quicken made to the Mac platform.
New Export Capabilities. I have complained about the lack of decent reporting in Quicken for Mac and will discuss that more in the next section, but some of this has been mitigated by Quicken’s new export to Excel functions which are available in more areas now, including investments. This allows you to copy data out of Quicken into a spreadsheet for analysis and reporting. I’ve used this function for the past two years in creating my own “Budget to Actual” report in Excel, but now you can do this with a lot more of your financial data. I was never all that happy with even the most robust reporting available in Quicken’s legacy Windows product and found myself using this copy/paste function a lot to do my own report creation and analysis. Not everyone will use this functionality, but for Excel nerds, it’s a handy addition.
Reporting Improvements. Reports in Quicken for Mac finally gained the basic and longstanding Windows capability of drilling down to transaction-level detail. The details open in a new window which can be customized and saved as its own report, or exported to Excel. This will be a much-used feature as I prepare my taxes this year. I wish a Budget to Actual report were available in the Mac version, as this drill-down capability would be a big help in more quickly identifying the source of budget variances. Maybe next year.
Other Updates. The Quicken data file is now encrypted on your hard drive, so long as you are using a password to access it. In reading the software release notes, Quicken made some improvements to other areas of the program, but most all of these slipped by me unnoticed. If you use the Bill-Pay feature, things are cleaned up and more intuitive to use. I was flummoxed by the complexity of this service when I first tried it and stopped using it even though it’s a free service as a Premiere subscriber. I feel more confident in paying my bills through my bank’s Bill-Pay feature than Quicken’s offering. This has improved allegedly, though I haven’t tried it again.
What’s Still a Problem
Reporting, Particularly Against Budget. Reporting in the Mac version of Quicken has improved a little, but not near enough. As I mentioned, I still can’t get a report of my income and expense against budget, a staple of the Windows version and basic financial management. Instead, you get a bizarre on-screen visualization of budget performance for the month, or an unwieldy 12 month stacked grid, neither of which I find at all useful. A software engineer without any financial sense must have put these views together. As a workaround, I export actual and budget figures out of Quicken to create a proper actual vs. budget report in Excel. I’ve automated this the best I can, but still takes a time each month to update references and labels, and once in Excel, loses its interactivity and drill-down capability.
Quirky Transaction Download Errors 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. I have a half-dozen banking, savings, and credit card accounts with this bank which is apparently too many. I click the “try again,” and the process completes. I’ve researched this error online and discovered that many users suffer from this across a variety of financial institutions. Quicken’s response is consistent: “your bank’s servers must be busy. Try again later.” Downloading transactions in Quicken on Windows was always a tricky proposition, so I can’t say this is a Mac issue. Just irritating. Editor’s Note: These download errors were fixed in Quicken’s August 2019 (version 5.12.3) update. Thank you, Quicken!
Mobile App is Underwhelming. Quicken’s iPad app has been out for a while. I tried it out when it first came out and was underwhelmed. I tried it again for this review, and I am still unimpressed. I’m not alone: the app ratings are abysmal which many reports of the app crashing or not being able to log in. Quicken also released web access in the fall with similar capabilities.
Trapped Investment Data. One of the biggest reservations I have with the Mac version of Quicken relates to its file export limitations. While Quicken promises a “Data Access Guarantee,” the export functionality of the Mac program remains severely crippled. Investment accounts, and all the related historical transaction details, cannot be exported. This limitation affects not only your ability to move back to the more robust Windows version of Quicken should you grow tired of the Mac’s shortcomings, but also impacts your ability to switch to other personal finance software products on the Mac if you decide to give up on Quicken altogether. The lack of this basic export function feels intentional to me to keep customers from leaving the product.
If you are using the Windows version of Quicken and you have investment accounts, you should be very cautious before migrating to the Mac version. You’ll likely be able to move everything over to the Mac, but you’ll be stuck with limited choices of ever leaving. Shame on Quicken for taking our financial data hostage.
Closing Thoughts
So, after all these years, where do I stand with Quicken for Mac?
Like a year ago, I feel like Quicken could be so much better, but it’s still the best software, on the Mac or the PC, for complicated personal finance. Quicken for Mac is good enough that I’m not willing to go through all the work to revert back to the Windows version and deal with running a virtual PC on my Mac. I’m disappointed that my Mac data file can’t export to other software programs. I hope future Quicken versions will finally improve enough to be on par with Windows, though experience makes me very skeptical.
If you’re a Mac user with an extensive investment portfolio, but still on the Windows version, I would recommend staying that more robust software until the Mac version allows proper data exporting.
Are you a Quicken for Mac user, or a Windows user thinking of making the switch to Mac? Let me know your questions and feedback in the comment section below.
i use QM2007. i export two financial reports to excel spreadsheets where i do analysis. i need the info in these reports to do investment assessments and buy/sell decision making. the QM2007 reports are Performance (ROI) and Portfolio Value. can you tell me whether the same information can be exported to excel from QM2019?
Hello Robert – Yes, Quicken 2019 for Mac can do that. I’ve never been happy with Quicken’s built-in investment reporting so I do something similar to you every quarter. You can export an Excel file, or simply copy and paste the investment view in Quicken into an existing Excel report (that’s what I do) with both Performance and Portfolio Value. Here are the columns for each that end up in Excel:
Performance:
Avg. Annual Return IRR (%) YTD
Avg. Annual Return IRR (%) 1-Year
Avg. Annual Return IRR (%) 3-Year
Avg. Annual Return IRR (%) 5-Year
Portfolio Value:
Quote
Price Day Change
Price Day Change (%)
Shares
Cost Basis
Market Value
Gain/Loss
Gain/Loss (%)
I copy these reports into Excel and then use a lookup formula to bring the data into a pre-defined analysis report I use to evaluate my holdings. This gives me a much more flexible way of evaluating my investment performance.
I took this a step further and created a custom report of my investment income in Quicken over the previous 12 months. I am able to copy that transactional report into Excel and then update a pivot table to give me dividend and interest income and yield for each of my investments using the same lookup formula technique. It gives me a pretty comprehensive view of investment performance. Total time to create the report each quarter is super easy – maybe two minutes.
Hope this helps!
Bob
wow. thanks for such a thoughtful response. i have a question about quicken and its “booking” of re-invested dividends, but need to formulate the question carefully before i inquire with you about it. again, so kind of you to dialog like this. bob beck
p.s.: pivot tables! i had them demonstrated to me recently. powerful and (to me) confusing.
hi mr. breen,
i can’t seem to find a user manual for quicken for mac. to your knowledge or opinion, is self-study the intended way of learning how to use the app? thank you.
bob beck
Hello Bob – Yes, no traditional software manual exists for the Mac version of Quicken. I believe there is one still for the Windows version, but these standalone manuals not as common anymore in favor of contextual help (under the Help menu) and web resources. There’s a pretty good “getting started” guide within the Help menu section of Quicken itself.
I’ve been using the program for so many years, I haven’t needed much training help as the versions are remarkably similar year to year. When I do need help, I first search in Quicken’s help files if it’s something simple like renaming an account, or setting up a recurring transaction. Most times though, I’ll search google to see if anyone else has tackled the question or problem. For example, a few years ago I had an investment transaction occur with one of my bond funds that I could not for the life of me figure out how to record. After spending a good hour on it, I turned to google. I found the answer in under a minute. Amazing resource!
But, at the end of the day, it was primarily hands-on self-study over many years that helped me learn the most about Quicken.
Hope that helps and thanks for the comment!
Bob
I used Quicken on a PC for 28 years. Now, I have moved to an iMAC and am having thoughts about what financial software to use. I only need a simple “checkbook register” with access to tax information for filing taxes. I do not need a connection to my other financial accounts. What do you recommend I use? Quicken for MAC or another program?
Thanks for your response!
Hi Vicki – Thanks for your question.
First of all, welcome to the Mac ecosystem! I hope you will enjoy the switch from Windows. It sounds like your personal finance software needs are pretty basic. If you don’t need to track investments, I’d be inclined to use a more Mac-friendly program. I’ve stuck with Quicken for the long haul, so I don’t have any firsthand experience with other software options, but I do have the results of a poll I created from a group of about 5,000 Mac power users on what personal finance software they use. Here are the results of that poll in order of their chosen software:
Banktivity (19)
YNAB (17)
MoneyDance (9)
Mint (7)
Quicken (4)
MoneyWiz (4)
IFinance (3)
Excel (3)
The number in parentheses is the number of votes received. Banktivity or You Need a Budget (YNAB) were the most popular choices. Sad to see Quicken so low on this poll as a longtime user…. You might check out one of these two to see if they have a free trial. Good luck!
Bob
Thank you so much for your input. I will definitely check out both of the items that ranked highest on your poll.
Robert-
Thank you for your thorough review of the new Quicken. Like you, I have been a user of the old Quicken (Mac) since it first came out and I have decades of transactions in it, including every investment transaction I ever made. I’ve been following the new Quicken evolution for a while, and now am in the process of migrating to it because future MacOS versions (Catalina +) will no longer run QM2007.
My general impression of the new version is, unfortunately, very similar to yours.
The old Quicken (QM2007) feels and looks to me like a professional accounting tool. The investment features are good (real IRR between any dates), the reporting is very flexible and the drill down is excellent, multi-year budgeting with good actual vs budget reports. But there are major limitations – like not knowing when you will run out of room for more quotes or more transactions.
The new Quicken does improve on several of the weaknesses of the old – unlimited transactions, automatic quote downloads, encryption, good connectivity for downloads, mobile, and it will run on the modern OSs for a long time to come.
But every time I look at the interface, my heart sinks a little. The look and feel of the thing is as if (as you say) it was programmed by a software person as opposed to a financial person. My complaints include such things as IRR that can only be calculated over fixed periods, no asset allocation (even though the data seems to be there), Net Worth over time that requires endless scrolling to see the entire report, an import routine that does not maintain the correct value of investment transactions, and on and on. And things like the Spending Cloud totally baffle me. What professional accountant uses that??
But, I’m now taking the plunge and am not looking back. I only hope that the folks at Quicken try to take inspiration from the older versions, and continue to add and improve features at a much faster pace than has been the case to date. When I see people in the Quicken Community voting for the next features of choice, I fear that the software could end up as a kludge of things bolted together without any guiding philosophy. I also hope that Quicken’s business model works so that they can stay in business for the long term.
By the way, nice Nordhavn. Greetings from Whidbey Island where it’s a beautiful summer evening.
Great observations, Scott. I agree with everything you’ve written. Your other option would be to move to the Windows version of Quicken via Parallels, but that brings a whole new set of complications. I’ve made the same decision as you and share your hope that Quicken continues to improve the Mac version of their platform.
Great review. I have been using Quicken 2007 forever but need to move because of the upcoming MacOS upgrade (as with Scott above). Right now I use 2 separate data files – one for home and one for work. Will I still be able to do that with Quicken Deluxe 2019 or will I have to buy 2 separate subscriptions?
Thanks Ron. You can definitely use multiple Quicken files with the same subscription. You had a good run with Quicken 2007!
Scott and Ron. Were you able to migrate data from your Mac Quicken 2007 onto your new 2019. Any trick to do this. What version of 2007 do you have?
It’s interesting that all of the alternatives seem to be about what version of some other app to change to away from Quicken 2007. But there is a way to keep QM2007 running; it’s very easy to set up a separate partition under MacOS that’s running Mojave. The only problem I’ve seen so far is that the partition that QM2007’s data files are on must be HFS+, not APFS, but that’s also easy.
Run Catalina and later on other partitions, and you should be all set.
I miss a real multicurrrency in qmac ,I can’t transfer betweeen accounts with different currencies like in quicken for windows, linked transactions
So I have been a Quicken Windows user since 2008. My current PC(Dell) is driving me crazy and running Quicken 2019 has been incredibly slow and frustrating. I am in the market for a new laptop and been going back and forth between the Macbook Air or the Pro (latest 2019 models). So couple of questions.
1. The Pro is a bit more in price as compared to the Air but it does have that quad core processor. Is the Pro overkill for running the basics such as spreadsheets, google docs, websurfing and of course a 100MB Quicken data file?
2. Is it easy converting from Quicken on Windows to Quicken in Mac?
3. I am similar to Vicki from an earlier comment in the sense that I don’t use Quicken to track extensive investment accounts, but I do use it alot! I track and run reports for my 6 bank accounts, 4 credit accounts, retirement accounts (which I need to figure out how to do this better), and loans (car and mortgage). I also like the budget tool but have given up on that lately only cause my computer has been so slow. I can’t even back up my data to the quicken cloud because it takes to long and crashes every time (I hope this issue is resolved if I move to a better performing laptop). So the question similar to Vicki is, knowing my history with Quicken on Windows (and I do like it alot!) if I do decide to go the Mac option is it worth it sticking with Quicken or just starting with something new?
Hi Billy,
Thanks for your question. I don’t currently use Quicken for Windows, but I’m almost positive your performance issues will go away once you upgrade your computer. Since you’re on Quicken for Windows and you don’t track a lot of investments, you have plenty of options on a new Mac.
First, you could continue to use Quicken for Windows by installing a PC virtualization program like Parallels or Fusion. This allows you to run Windows apps on a Mac which works pretty well. I did this with Quicken for Windows for nearly a decade on my Mac.
Second, you could move to a new personal finance app that’s been developed and designed for the Mac. Banktivity is the front-runner right now and the software imports Quicken for Windows files pretty effortlessly. There’s a free trial and I would encourage you to try it out. Here’s a link to a recent review of all the personal finance options available for the Mac with Banktivity being the best of the bunch:
https://thesweetsetup.com/apps/favorite-app-managing-personal-finances-budgets/
Finally, you could switch over to Quicken for the Mac. Your Quicken for Windows file should transfer straight over to the Mac version without much trouble. I did this a couple of years ago and even with all my complicated investments accounts, the data came over intact. Performance on the Mac is pretty good on current hardware, and the interface will be familiar if you’re used to Quicken. There’s an OK budgeting function, but the reports against budget are just plain horrible. Also, once you convert to the Mac version of Quicken, your ability to switch back to Quicken for Windows or a program like Banktivity is severely limited. I keep waiting for Quicken to address this, but after three years, I’m not holding my breath. It’s hard for me to recommend the Mac version with this kind of data quicksand.
If I were in your shoes, knowing you use the software a lot, I would try out Banktivity with their free trial. I haven’t used the software, but there are lots of happy users and positive reviews, and the export function from Windows Quicken is pretty simple. If Banktivity doesn’t appeal to you, I would stick with Quicken for Windows running via Parallels. It’s a little more of a pain to use, but you’ll have the benefit of a much more robust software program and your data won’t be trapped like mine is.
Hope this helps!
Bob
Thanks for your quick response Bob! This information was useful as I went out that next day to purchase my Macbook Pro. As I suspected and you called it as well, the performance issues did go away with the new laptop.
I have over 10 years worth of data in my original Windows quicken file and so I decided I wanted to continue with Quicken for Mac and give it an honest shot.
2 weeks later and so far so good. It is a little bit of a re learning curve as the MacOS version, as expected, has some differences from the Windows version. Having used the windows version for 10 years, but already been using a Mac for 5 years, the adjustment to this app in this new OS has been relatively quick. So I guess what I am saying is that thus far, I like it. Now, I have only used it a handful of times (I have been primarily playing with all the other apps on my new Macbook 🙂 ) and I’m still not 100% sold, but I am also not hating it. I’ll continue to play around with it and figure out how to utilize this on the Mac more efficiently and make a better judgment on it after a couple of months.
But again, thank you for your initial posting and response to my question, it truly was helpful in moving forward with this.,
Quicken is also allowing its partners to push ads for their services that have to be acknowledged before you can open your file. So, they are charging an annual subscription and forcing spam-like ads on you to boot. No thanks. I’ll be switching away as soon as I can find something that meets my needs that doesn’t force me to pay for ads.