I’ve used some version of Quicken for 35 years. That puts me in a stodgy demographic that manages money in a certain “this is how I’ve always done it” way. For the uninitiated, Quicken is a personal finance software program that helps manage your checkbook and credit cards, pay your bills, keep to a budget, and track investments. It’s available on Windows and Mac, though there are differences in capabilities between the two. There are companion apps for iPhone and iPad, but they feel like afterthoughts, lacking key functionality of the desktop software. Quicken Classic is sold as an annual subscription across three offerings: Deluxe, Premier, and the recently released Business and Personal edition.
Seven years ago, I switched from Quicken Premier for Windows to the less capable Mac version. I’ve written previous blog posts about using Quicken on the Mac: in early 2018 when I switched and follow-on updates in 2019 and 2020. In large part, I was critical of the Mac version of the software, particularly its inability to export investment data.
In the intervening four years since my last post, Quicken has improved in many ways, including the ability to export all its data, including investments, to Quicken for Windows. With this critical functionality in place, I thought it was time to provide an updated and favorable review of the Mac version of Quicken and how I rely on it to manage almost every aspect of my financial life.
Why Quicken
I began my career in public accounting and held a CPA license in Washington state for over thirty years. I spent most of my career as a finance executive with a large publicly traded company, which allowed me direct experience with stock options, restricted stock units, performance shares, deferred compensation plans, and various employee benefit programs that follow that kind of employment. I’ve always tried to be disciplined when it comes to money, and I’m comfortable managing my own finances. With this background and financial situation, I have had many opportunities to evaluate and push the boundaries of Quicken as a personal finance program.
It takes time and expense to maintain a system like Quicken. Many manage their money with simpler apps or just by scanning their accounts online. For me, the effort of a system is worth it. With Quicken, I know what’s going on with my spending and income in relation to expectations every week. Every expense has a monthly budget that fits within a long-range plan. The impact of gyrations in the stock market is personalized with a press of a button. My entire financial history is accessible from Quicken’s search bar. Bills always get paid on time. Checks never bounce. I am rarely surprised at the end of a month, quarter, or year. The peace of mind I get from using Quicken far outweighs the cost.
As a disclaimer, I don’t work for Quicken or have any financial interest in the software or related services. Quicken doesn’t offer a free trial to evaluate, so unbiased reviews from actual users are helpful. I read almost everything I could find before switching to the Mac in 2018. Consider this update an act of paying it forward.
Recent Improvements
Since 2020, there have been dozens of software updates to Quicken. Unlike those early years when I first moved to the Mac, Quicken has now become a pleasure to use, and I consider it a stable, trusted system. Here are a few of the improvements that made the most significant impact on my use:
Error-free Transaction Downloading. The team at Quicken has vastly improved the technology involved in downloading transactions from banks, credit card companies, and brokerage firms. When I first used the Mac version, download errors would pop up continuously. Those days are happily behind me. I’ll go weeks and months between download errors, which seem to resolve after a day. My experience is limited to just a few institutions, so your own mileage may vary.
Investment Analysis and Dashboards. The Mac software now provides overall investment allocation between stocks, bonds, and cash, even with mutual funds that own a blend of assets. This update essentially removed the need for me to separately analyze my investments in Excel. In addition, a new dashboard provides a valuable snapshot of investment performance and holdings that rivals and, in some ways, exceeds my brokerage tools. Quicken’s investment section has become quite good.
Bill Manager. Quicken has refined its bill tracking and payment capabilities in a big way. The Premier version of Quicken offers free bill paying, but I prefer to send these occasional checks directly from my bank. I use their bill manager service, though, which does some pretty innovative things. First, it can download PDF statements automatically without having to log in to the payee’s website each month and hunt around for the statement. It also automatically schedules the payment based on the due date and records in the payment register. You can make payments directly from Quicken, but my recurring bills are paid automatically, so recording the transaction is all I need. A couple of companies I pay aren’t included in Quicken’s Bill Manager service, but these can be added manually. Second, I get a nice cash balance forecast as these future bill payments are scheduled in the register, preventing possible overdrafts or shortfalls. Bill Manager solves a problem I didn’t know I had, and I’m glad I have it.
Snappy Performance. The software runs faster thanks to performance improvements, particularly with newer Silicon Macs. I use Quicken on an M1 MacBook Air and an M2 Mac Mini. Both perform exceptionally well.
Investment Data Export. Until late last year, Quicken for Mac’s export capabilities excluded investment data. This meant I could not move back to Quicken for Windows or any other competing personal finance apps without losing all my investment history. I hated having to rely on this one particular version of software for all my precious financial data. Luckily, Quicken has now fixed this shortcoming, and Mac users of the software can breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Mac Version Still Lags Windows
Despite the many improvements to the Mac version of Quicken, it still lags behind the Windows version in a few key areas:
- Reporting in the Windows version is more robust, customizable, and allows comparisons to budget.
- Windows Investment analysis is more in-depth with Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray and performance benchmarking.
- Tax Center in Windows makes income tax planning easier by calculating estimated taxes using actual tax brackets on recorded income.
Other planning tools like Lifetime Planner, Debt Reduction, and Savings Goals haven’t made it to the Mac yet, but these tools always felt a little gimmicky. I didn’t use them on Windows, so I don’t miss them on Mac.
Quicken Risks and Alternatives
This is an interesting time for legacy software companies like Quicken. I suspect their loyal customers look a lot like me: retired or near retirement, comfortable with desktop apps, lugging along a decade or more of historical data within their app, and resistant to change.
Most new entrants into the personal finance technology space are mobile app-centric. Some don’t even offer desktop apps. Quicken has recently entered this space with its Simplify mobile app and likely believes it represents most of its future growth, which explains why it recently rebranded its desktop software to Quicken Classic.
Intuit, the former parent company of Quicken, recently announced the shutdown of its personal finance app, Mint. Mint is one of the most popular and longest-running app-based finance tools, so its demise sent shockwaves through its customer base. Indeed, this announcement caused me to look more carefully at my use of Quicken and think through what steps I would need to take if the service were similarly shuttered.
I think that the risk is relatively low. Aquiline Capital Partners acquired Quicken in 2021. Typically, private equity firms maintain ownership from five to seven years, so Quicken is in the sweet spot of ownership. Aquiline will be focused on investment and growth vs. the cost-cutting and profit harvesting that comes near the end of the investment horizon as they look to sell their asset. This is good news for Quicken’s current customers.
And yet, I can’t help but feel that users of Quicken software are on borrowed time. Highly regarded mobile apps like Monarch Money and Copilot will continue to improve and introduce more and more capabilities. Eventually, Quicken will be forced to mothball its desktop software as everything moves to the cloud and apps. This is one of the reasons I’m happy that Quicken for Mac’s export function now includes investment data. I might not need this now, but someday I will.
As a safeguard, I create and archive two export files from Quicken every quarter. One is simply the Quicken Transfer File (QFX) you can export from the file menu. I also download a CSV file of all my Quicken transactions by selecting All Transactions from the sidebar and choosing Export Register Transactions to CSV from the File menu. This yields a 60,000-row text file I can access with Excel to search and sort every transaction stored in Quicken for the past 30 years. Between these files, I’m confident I could move my history to a new finance app without too much trouble, even if Quicken stopped working altogether.
Recommendations
Quicken Classic for Mac has a lot going for it in 2024. The software is intuitive, stable, and a pleasure to use. I am pleased with Quicken’s decision to allow a complete export of my data, including investments, should I ever need it. As a Mac user, I have no desire to revert to the more capable Windows version through Parallels or some other clunky virtualization process.
Quicken’s subscription cost is fair for the value I receive, and the frequent updates are delivered almost monthly (as I write this, Quicken released Version 7.5.0, which introduced more new enhancements). Almost all personal finance apps use a subscription business model, and many are more expensive than Quicken. Buying an annual license during Black Friday sales in November can save 30-40% off the regular subscription rate.
For someone with 30 years of history with Quicken, I’m in no mood to switch platforms, given the state of the app today.
And yet, if I were just starting out, would I choose Quicken? I doubt it. From a clean slate, I would probably choose one of the more innovative mobile apps that deliver the power of personal financial management to your pocket or tablet. I plan to test drive a few of these over the coming year to better understand these next-generation tools.
Until then, Quicken for Mac will remain my everyday companion and financial advisor. If you’re a long-time Quicken for Windows user considering switching to the Mac, it’s an excellent time to make the leap.
Bob, I’ve been following your reports on Quicken for some time. I’ve used Quicken for Windows for many years (27) but use Macs primarily so I’ve wanted to swtich to Quicken for Mac for years. My hesitation is driven by: does not retain past budgets, cannot produce budget to actual reports, does not retain past tax summary reports or produce tax summary reports or share budget reports via email. Have these issues been fixed in your opinion. I am encourged by your positive comments on improvement to Quicken for Mac. Best regards from Bainbridge Island, WA. Jorge
Jorge,
Thanks for your questions. As to budgets, Quicken for Mac does retain prior budgets. I can access the annual budgets I’ve created since I began using the Mac version. This also allows me show budget to actual reports for any past month or year. Budget files don’t survive the transfer from Windows to Mac or vice versa, so if you were to move from Windows, I’m pretty sure you would lose this history (my budgets only go back to 2016). Unfortunately, you still can’t create a standard budget to actual report within Quicken Mac, nor can you email it. There is an interactive budget tool in Quicken, which presents a graphical view of one month vs. budget or a tabular view of the year, which are helpful but not how I like to analyze budget results. I still do this analysis by copying and pasting the annual budget view from Quicken into Excel. From there, I use a standard budget template with formulas to pull in the month and year-to-date figures. I created this five or six years ago, and it works fine. A quick copy/paste from Quicken to Excel is all it takes. I figured Quicken would eventually add this functionality, but they still haven’t. I’m glad I built the Excel tool.
Tax reports in Quicken for Mac were recently updated and are pretty good. You can pull up a complete tax report for any year. They recently added the ability to export these tax reports in a TXF format, which I assume is used by tools like TurboTax. What still needs to be added is the ability to estimate actual taxes like Quicken for Windows does using tax brackets and rates. I pull the information on taxable figures from Quicken and do my own calculations in Excel.
As a current Quicken for Windows subscriber, you might download the Mac software and export your data to the Mac to see what you think. I recall having to spend some time working through a few import errors back in 2017. Hopefully, the process has improved since then.
Best of luck, and thanks for reading!
Thank you for this article and especially for your paperless essay. That has helped me get rid of a lot of useless paper!
My question: Do you still balance your checking account? I have always done so with the idea that I could catch any mistake by the bank, but I’ve never found one.
Thank you,
Pete
P.S. Another choice for software is Banktivity. I have not tried it but it’s native to Mac and could be an alternative to Quicken Classic for Mac.
Hi Pete,
Yes, I do reconcile my checking account and also my credit card accounts. I only do this every three or four months, and like you, I’ve never found a bank error. I have found transactions that Quicken brought in incorrectly or failed to import though, so reconciling accounts has been a good practice for me to keep the books straight.
I had a look at Banktivity a few years ago. I might take another peek at your suggestion. Thanks!
Hi Robert,
Wow, when I read your article, I felt like it was reading me all over again! Ha Our careers are different but our paths to Quicken for Mac are pretty similar. I came across your article because every now and then I like to review Quicken up against Mint (before shutdown), Personal Capital (before Empower), now Monarch Money and Copilot Money. Also reviewed Simplifi. So glad I didn’t use Microsoft Money back in the day. 🙂
I’ve been a longtime Quicken user for about 20 years or so. My background started in Accounting with the end goal being a CPA before switching my career to IT in my early 20’s. However, my analytical mind is still there. Around 2014, I got my first Mac but was still using Quicken for Windows by RDP’ing into my Windows Box. There just wasn’t a good Quicken alternative for Mac. In 2015, Quicken for Mac was available which I got excited about but was raw. I was coming from Quicken Premier. Tried importing my data and didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Waited another year and a half or so until sometime in 2017/2018 (I think). The Data import was A LOT better and transferred flawlessly. I think a part of it is I kept my Investments simple by just entering manually like a checkbook register. Now, if available, I use the Simple Tracking method. However, one account still requires manual input since it doesn’t connect. I also never liked or used downloaded transactions until the past couple of years now for a few accounts and it’s been solid. It saves a lot of time to the point I may expand to more accounts. Last I checked, although it works with Synchrony, it just doesn’t name the accounts as well, so I just sync one of them. Otherwise, it’s error free and when there is an error, it’s resolved quickly in a day or so. I’m so with you in that Quicken for Mac is a solid product. My current Quicken data file goes back to 2009 (Have older versions archived) and no plans to create a new one anytime soon. I do create daily backups. Thanks for the .CSV tip! Didn’t know that was an option and will start doing that now.
My thoughts
Ever since they were sold off from Intuit, I think that was the greatest thing for Quicken. The product as a whole has gotten so much better. I agree that it’s stable and a pleasure to use. Even the Mobile Apps and Web App have gotten better. However, they are still an afterthought as well with occasional sync issues. I use the Web App more but I’ve been thinking about using the mobile apps. I also believe the price point for what you get is amazing. I personally wouldn’t want to pay more than $50/60 for a piece of software and surely not $100/year like the others do. At least not yet anyways but that can always change. Also, I love the fact that not only do I have data that goes back to 2009 in one file but I can search for transactions that is fast and reliable. Reports are amazing and highly customizable. My favorite piece of it and what has mostly kept me on Quicken, aside from the history, is the Projected Balances forecast. Love that piece. Really enjoy Bill Manger too even though I just schedule them and enter them. I don’t pay bills from quicken or download bills into it. Maybe one day…
At the end of the day, I feel like we have similar thoughts on Quicken and our path to Quicken for Mac. I also have no plans to ever go back to the Windows version. Been using Quicken for Mac happily since 2017/2018. I didn’t know you can apply the annual Black Friday discount to it. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Final thoughts
If I was starting fresh, I agree with you, I’d probably be looking elsewhere and not Quicken. I will try out Copilot and Monarch Money because I think those are solid innovative applications. However, I’m not sure if they are there yet for my uses just because not everyone does their grocery shopping at an actual grocery store, etc. I’ll still try them out to get a feel for them.
Hello,
So glad I came across your blog. I was long time windows desktop user that switched to having 5 quickbooks cloud accounts for personal and business that’s costing a fortune after 10 years. Now retired so need to keep the data for awhile and have been paying the monthly cloud quickbooks costs for now :((
Question: Quicken Premier for personal and business looks like a good option for desktop if they’ve made improvements since years ago when I tried the Mac version. Do I have to pay a yearly/monthly subscription or can I own the program?? I have a rental property and want to keep it separate for reports. Have you used the Premier Personal and Business? Thoughts?
Hi Connie,
Thanks for your email. I haven’t used the Home and Business edition of Quicken Classic for Mac. That came out just a few months, so it’s pretty new on the Mac. Unfortunately, you can no longer simply buy any version of Quicken; they’re all an annual subscription. However, you can often find discounts through resellers like Amazon, Best Buy or New Egg. For example, Best Buy currently offers a 40% discount on an annual subscription (https://www.bestbuy.com/site/quicken-classic-business-and-personal-1-year-subscription-windows-android-apple-ios/6568557.p?skuId=6568557). This sounds like a better solution for you than continuing with all those Quickbooks licenses!
Thanks for reading and good luck!
Bob
I am delighted to have come across your blog. Like others have mentioned, we have a lot of similarities with Quicken and transferring from Windows to Mac very near the same time. Fun to hear and read about other like-minded analytical money management – and book lover and personal library – people.
I LOVE quicken and honestly do not believe I would ever change.
A note and a question. First a side note, over the past couple of years Quicken for Mac has reached out to some of us who have been dedicated users. Twice now I have been contacted and agreed for an interview to provide feedback on what I liked, how I use it creatively for features they do not yet have, and what I would like to see added. I do not know of any other software company ever having done that or doing with that users. A manager as well as engineer were on the feedback team. In my opinion it shows how dedicated they are to continually improving the product and making it viable. (Even though my former favorite feature in their Windows product still is not yet in the Mac version – savings goals. I do have a way around it after bringing them in, but still.)
Second, question I am looking for a Quicken for Mac (subscription) investment teacher / mentor. I have been using Quicken since the early 1990’s, love money management, very analytical, have been an engineering geek for a living for decades and am exhausted with teaching myself everything. Sadly, while I love money management and have very good at it, and while I have investments, I am one of those who worked with an incredible advisor and yet I know zero about investing, much less how to enter everything into Quicken. He has recently died and I am now motivated to learn. I’ve set up an Acorns investment account specifically to learn before working with other investment accounts. Yes, I reconcile bank and credit card accounts and yes I’ve caught discrepancies so I’m looking to enter investments manually and also want to ‘reconcile’ these investment accounts. Would you happen to know of someone to teach / mentor or direct me to where to learn Quicken investments and investing in general as I am inputting everything into Quicken?
Thank you.
Hi Eileen,
Thanks for your question about finding an investment mentor. I’ve always leaned on reading for this. I read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham when I was first getting started, which helped me understand the fundamentals. Maybe the most important book I’ve read is The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle who argues that a low-cost index fund encompassing the entire equity market is a much better investment vehicle than mutual funds or individual stocks over the long run. The key is to buy and hold, forever. And every year I read Warren Buffett’s shareholder letter for his clear, direct advice on investing. Even if you decide to hire another investment advisor, books and resources like these will teach you a lot and help you ask the right questions.
Quicken is pretty good at automatically entering investment transactions your brokerage account. Over all my years of using Quicken, there’s only been a few instances where I had to make a correction. So, the best way to learn is to review these investment transactions as they happen. I’ve probably seen just about every type of investment transaction there is, so if you ever get stuck, feel free to send me an email.
Thanks again for your question and for reading my blog!
Bob