Quicken 2020 for Mac – A Long-time User’s Review

Welcome to my third annual review of the personal finance software, Quicken for Mac. I have been using Quicken to manage my finances since 1989: first on the Mac, then a long stint on the Windows version, before switching back to the new-and-improved Mac version four years ago. I wrote about the process of switching from Windows to Mac 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, Quicken 2020 for Mac.

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. If you’re a Quicken Windows version thinking about switching over to the Mac, this review should be useful.

My Background

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 finances mirror those of many mid-life families eyeing retirement: a half-dozen investment and retirement accounts, college savings accounts, a home, etc. My work for a publicly-traded company for the past twenty years has allowed me direct experience with stock options, restricted stock units, performance shares, deferred compensation plans, 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 at the boundaries of Quicken as a personal finance program, particularly on this evolving Mac version of the software.

Quicken for Mac – An 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 almost twenty years ago, except Quicken. Back then, Quicken on the Mac was too basic for my needs. Instead, I used a virtualized version of Windows inside the Mac to use 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. With all its shortcomings, 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 consumer-targeted personal finance software game in town.

Quicken 2020 for Mac and the Subscription Business Model

Since my last review of Quicken for Mac 2019, there have been seven updates to the software, occurring every four months or so. These updates, both major and minor, have continued to push the Mac platform forward, perhaps even narrowing the gap between its Windows big brother. I am heartily glad of this development. 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 typically renew in November and watch for Black Friday sales at Amazon. This has brought my annual cost to around $40, which I consider a bargain given how much I rely on this software.

I remain vigilant, however. Quicken’s private equity ownership period hits the five-year mark in April 2021. 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. We’ll have to wait and see if this happens with Quicken.

New Features in Quicken 2020

Web Access. Touted as their number one feature request, Quicken introduced access to your financial system via the web in 2019. This is surprisingly robust and complete. 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. It doesn’t appear you can pay bills from the web platform, nor can transactions from investment accounts be downloaded. 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). One glaring omission is two-factor authentication as a security measure. Having access to all your financial data with just a simple user name and password feels very risky. I’ve turned off web access for this reason, but will turn it back on when better security measures are in place.

Bill/Check Pay. Quicken revamped its bill-pay functionality in 2020. Paying bills from within Quicken is only available for Premiere subscribers, and the previous incarnation made no sense to me. I’ve tinkered with the new version, but haven’t used it. My current process for online bill paying through my bank works well enough for me.

PDF Bill Downloading. Another new feature is Quicken’s ability to automatically download bills and credit card statements in PDF format for review and filing. This is a convenient way to access these bills without having to navigate to the vendor’s web site, type in credentials, and search for the latest bill or statement. It seems to work well, unless it doesn’t. For some reason, it won’t download my cellphone statement from AT&T, though it knows how much it is. Of the dozen vendors I set up, it provided a PDF about half the time. This feels like a work-in-progress, but it should improve over time.

Improvements and Updates

Reporting. Quicken made some improvements in reporting available on the Mac in their newly designed Report Center. Reports are now better organized and easier to customize and save. A few additional reports were created, but sadly, we still don’t have any budget to actual reports, which is a mainstay of personal financial management.

Transaction Renaming Rules. Long a sore spot on the Mac, Quicken added some new functionality in properly renaming downloaded transactions. This is a welcome addition. 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. 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). 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. Here’s an example transaction from a grocery store purchase:

AplPay VASHON THRIFTVASHON3402234

The new renaming rule I created scans for two bits of text: “AplPay” and “THRIFTVASHON”. If those two rules match, it renames the transaction to “Vashon Thriftway”. The renaming engine can even look back into history and apply these rules to clean up old transactions. This was a very helpful addition.

Budgeting Improvements. Quicken’s budget tool received an important update. You can now include account transfers and investment income in your annual budget. This is especially important for retirees or those soon approaching retirement age.

What’s Still Lacking or Needs Improvement

Reporting, Particularly Against Budget. Reporting in the Mac version of Quicken has improved, but you can’t create a report of your actual results vs. budget, which is an essential financial planning tool. 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. 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. month-to-date actual results. I’ve been waiting for this basic actual vs. budget report since 2016, a report that has been available in the Windows platform forever. 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 in Excel. I took the time to automate the workbook in 2019, so it takes just moments to create. 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. 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 for Quicken. 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.

Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray. The Windows version of Quicken allows you to analyze your investment portfolio in much greater detail than on the Mac using Morningstar X-Ray. This tool looks inside your mutual fund investments to properly report your asset allocation (i.e. stocks, bonds, cash) and any concentrated positions of a security. This investment scrutiny is not available on the Mac. For example, if you own a mutual fund that invests in both stocks and bonds, you really have no way of knowing your actual asset allocation within Quicken. I’ve hacked together a way to export my investment holdings into Excel to accomplish this, but it’s another pain-point for investors using the Mac version of 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 with many reports of the app crashing or not being able to log in. The web view is much, much better.

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

After three years of using Quicken for Mac, where do I stand?

While there’s still plenty of room for improvement — say, a budget to actual report — Quicken is still the best consumer-level software for Mac users with complicated finances. 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 (or Quicken for Windows). 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 investment portfolio, but still on the Windows version, I would recommend staying with 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.

1. Quicken was acquired from Intuit by HIG Capital in April, 2016. ↩