Import of old data was smooth and uneventful.The coming of " not without compromise" 32bit app usage in the fall 2018 macOS release finally forced my hand: I was going to have to update my single longest-used app, Quicken 2007. This year, I upgraded to Quicken 2017 from Quicken 2007, for Mac. Every purchase/transaction that goes through our household is categorized. I have been using Quicken on the Mac for self-employment taxes for 17 years or so - lots of deductions, categories to track expenses, etc.Why? Basically because it worked (most of the time), and I didn't like any of the alternatives, which I would occasionally test. When I was trying to login to Quicken Mac 2017, twice or 3x it asked from to.Yes, I was using an eleven-year-old app to track our family's spending and investments. In fact within a few months of the original release, Quicken for Mac 2017 was already updated with fixes and new features, most of which have been demanded by users.Mac users last saw a new version of Quicken, Intuits personal finance app. We HAD a 2012R2 server with Quickbooks 17 and Office 2017 on it, the hardware was quick but not.Quicken on Thursday announced the 2017 editions of its personal finance apps for Mac and iOS, which include a variety of enhancements, particularly in the core Mac suite.Open the Subscription release of Quicken for Mac. The file cannot be imported if Quicken is running. Open Quicken for Mac and Update your online accounts and scheduled transactions. It was finally time to find its replacement.When you are converting from Quicken for Mac 2015, 2016 or 2017, follow the steps below. Worst of all, it would crash on occasion, necessitating rebuilding all my data files. In addition to its 32bitness, it had other issues: The UI was tiny and horrid, the windows never opened where I closed them ( Moom's saved layouts to the rescue!), and online access to my accounts was nearly non-existent.Going in, I was dead set against it, mainly due to its annual subscription structure. Accounts with personal financial management software.After reviewing lists of alternatives—and asking on Twitter—I focused on three apps: Bantivity, Moneydance, and Quicken 2018 for Mac.After looking at all three, I surprised myself by deciding that Quicken was the best tool for our use. Between our new Online Banking and Quicken.
Included online account access I want to update our bank, credit card, and investment accounts from the source, instead of having to manually enter transactions.Things I don't really care about are bill pay (I use our bank), reports, budgets, and charts and graphs for anything outside the investments section of the app. Offered accurate investment tracking Our investments are in a few accounts, and I like to monitor them all in one spot. Felt like a Mac app I wasn't interested in something that felt like a port from Windows, or lacked the specific "Macness" one gets in an app written for the Mac.M Imported our historical Quicken data I didn't want to lose 24+ years of our financial data. ![]() ![]() Quicken 2017 Personal Free OFX SupportUnfortunately, you can't do that with a double-click, as that brings up the account's info panel you need to right-click and choose Open in New Window from the contextual menu. Outside of that, Direct Access is a $45 per year subscription.Banktivity doesn't have any of the "non-native" issues I found in Moneydance the app looks and feels like a traditional Mac app, and opening an account window from the account list is speedy. While many of our accounts offered free OFX support, there were a number that only worked with Direct Access, which is free during the generous 30 day trial period. In the register view, each entry is two rows, but the alternating background is also two rows, making it easy to see each transaction at a glance.Banktivity has two methods of data download: OFX (free) and Direct Access (subscription required). It looks very busy, but once you get into an account, the view is much cleaner than Moneydance:This view can also be infested with icons, but those can (thankfully) be disabled in the app's preferences. That allayed my fears of needing to subscribe forever, just so I wouldn't lose access to my financial data.Unfortunately, there's no free trial of Quicken, but they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee, so I paid and started testing.What I found is an app that, for the most part, takes everything I liked about Quicken 2007 and modernizes it. 1 - Quicken 2018When Quicken 2018 was released as a subscription product, I tweeted my displeasure with the change, as I have a big issue with "software as a service." But as I dug into the app, I discovered that their subscription isn't really a subscription: If you stop subscribing, you can still use the app to enter and track financial data you just lose access to the online components and Quicken's support services. Banktivity didn't handle this correctly, so our balances were way off in those two accounts.In the end, I decided against using Banktivity due to its cost ($65 up front, plus $45 per year), the overabundance of icons in the layouts, its inability to import reconciliations from Quicken, and its difficulties handling some investment data. Because I wasn't downloading investment data in Quicken 2007, I had manually entered the splits using Quicken's split tool. Full hd video player for mac(I wish the font size were changeable, but it's not.)Unique to Quicken among these three apps is the ability to change the visible columns, as well as the column order, on a per-register basis.As seen at right, there are a large number of columns you can choose to view—24 in total. None of these affect the font size, just the row spacing. It's also speedy, opening new account windows promptly when double-clicked.I like the minimalist one-line register views—they're clean and easy to read:(If you need to see the details, you can double-click to see an expanded view.)You can choose one of four levels of line spacing for the register—they include Comfortable, Cozy (pictured), Compact, and Tiny. (Oddly, that one account did work with Banktivity.) Why I chose QuickenCertainly there's some value to continuing with the app I had been using: The import went perfectly, and I felt immediately comfortable in the app. Both are included in your annual subscription cost, and between the two, I was able to get all but one of my accounts working for online access. Once you've added and removed columns to your liking, you can drag the remaining visible columns into any order you wish.Quicken includes two methods of online access: Direct Connect and Quicken Connect. The help file itself is detailed and well indexed, making it fairly easy to find what you want. After buying, I received an email thank-you from the CEO, explaining where they've been and where they're trying to go, and thanking me for being a customer—sure, it's a form letter, but it's more than I ever got from Intuit.The in-app help options, as seen at right, are extensive and include a link to the community forums as well as an in-app screen sharing feature. And to me, it seems "new Quicken" is trying hard. But it's possibly bad in that an investment group only buys a company for one reason: To later sell it at a big profit.But to get to the point where the company is worth a higher valuation, they have to offer things that customers want. That's both good and bad it's good that they're out from under Intuit's lack of interest in the Mac app. By comparison, the first two years of Banktivity would cost us $155, or $77.50 per year. For us, as we need to track loans and investments but don't need bill pay, Deluxe was the obvious choice.Right now—and probably for quite a while, I'd imagine—a two-year Deluxe subscription is $69.98, bringing the cost per year to $34.99, which is a bargain. The comparison page lays out all the differences. Quicken for Mac comes in three versions: Starter ($35/year), Deluxe ($50/year), and Premier ($75/year). Buttons look right, the prefs look right, shortcut keys work as expected, etc.Finally, there's the issue of cost.
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