I’ve been a user of Intuit Quicken for the past few years after being a loyal user of Microsoft Money (and MoneyDance earlier, when I felt I needed to run Linux on my home machine). While I think I’ve settled on the software that works best for me, I’m not completely satisfied.
I’m waiting to try out the up and coming Mint to see what features it might add for me, but until then, I’ll continue relying on Quicken for Windows.
The 2008 version of the software should be released in the next couple of months, so the new version is most likely finalized by now. If these improvements aren’t included by now, I’ll have to hope for the next version to be released a year from now.
So here are my ten suggestions for improvements, most of them minor enhancements. At the end of this post, I am giving away a free copy of Quicken Premier 2007, the version which is best for those customers with investments but no self-employment income to track.
1. Restricted Stock Units. When I was granted restricted stock units a year ago, to vest in 2009, the best option for recording the grant was as an employee stock option grant. It’s not exactly the same. For example, the tax due is calculated differently.
There are probably other, more complicated financial instruments that can be added to the software just for a more complete package.
2. Real Background Downloading. Probably the biggest hyped new feature in Quicken 2007 was “background downloading” of transactions via Direct Connect, as well as a way to use Web Connect (logging in to the bank’s website and manually downloading transactions) from inside the software. It doesn’t really work that well. By the fourth interim update to software, there have been some improvements, but some things just don’t work right while the software is downloading transactions.
Entering transactions — particularly in investment or retirement accounts — is tricky. For some reason, using the “Enter” key to input new transactions doesn’t work while Quicken is downloading in the background. The downloading process is also much slower than it was in 2006. This could use some improvement for the new version.
3. Double-entry Accounting Mode. For sticklers to accounting rules, every debit should be matched with a credit. That means rather than dealing with expense categories, you have expense accounts. For a simple example, you would record the act of buying a computer as a transfer from a cash account to an asset account called “Dell notebook computer” (or “computer equipment”). Double-entry accounting mode would be an initial set-up option in this ideal world.
This feature would make accounting geeks happy, but most people are fine with the single-entry method in which transactions are categorized and not balanced.
4. Monthly Reports. I like Microsoft Money’s automatic monthly reports that consist of a number of mini-reports, which together provide a complete financial snapshot at the end of each month. In Quicken, I have to view several different reports in order to get the same information. I think the entire report configuration interface in Quicken can use a redesign. It is quite flexible in terms of configuring each report, but I’d like to be able to define my own structure for saving reports.
5. Airline Miles. This isn’t that much of a big deal, as I already use a hack to use asset accounts to track miles and points. Other people who earn and cash in their reward travel more often than I do, business travelers for example, might benefit from accounts and reports designed specifically for tracking miles.
6. Mobile integration. Right now, the best way to use Quicken on the go is with third party software, Pocket Quicken. If I’m already paying for the software, I don’t want to have to pay again for a mobile version that won’t expire in 14 days.
7. Bring Back QIF Support. In the past few years, Intuit has begun eliminating support for the QIF file format, one that Quicken created originally and quickly became a standard for transmitting transaction information over the Internet. The official stance is that the QIF format is not as flexible as the OFX/QFX format. I think it’s a money issue. Regardless, many financial institutions are still hanging onto QIF, refusing to change their systems to support QFX. I’d still like my software to communicate with those banks and brokerages.
8. Improve the User Interface. For the 2007 versions, Intuit redesigned the graphical user interface throughout the software. It’s pretty, but it’s slow. It also doesn’t have basic interface customization options such as selecting which columns are displayed or changing the width of columns on the register screens.
9. Automatic Tax Liability. One thing I don’t include in my net worth right now is my full tax liability for all my accounts. Quicken should be able to calculate this automatically with just a little help from the user to fine tune some assumptions.
10. Quicken Bill Pay. Yes, Quicken has a bill payment feature which costs $9.95 a month for the first 20 payments and extra if you go over that limit. The service lacks the most basic feature I would like: the ability to pay bills without taking the money for the payment from my bank or credit card accounts. Yes, I want the bills to be paid without having to pay for them. If Quicken were to include this simple “feature,” I could get past the other shortcomings.
Don’t forget, I promised a giveaway. I have one copy of Quicken Premier 2007, which is the most complete version of the software except for Home & Business. If you’ve made your way through this entire post, then you deserve to win. Therefore, I will give all who choose to participate two entries in the contest.
All I ask is that you participate in a discussion by sharing what you do like about Quicken (or MS Money), what you don’t like about Quicken (or MS Money), or what you think about someone else’s contribution to the discussion.
(By the way, as I was preparing this post, Quicken crashed while attempting to access the Quicken Bill Pay feature.)
Update: This contest is now closed! The winner will be announced tomorrow. Please feel free to keep commenting and adding your thoughts for Quicken 2008.
Updated February 6, 2012 and originally published May 16, 2007. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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This contest is now closed! The winner will be announced tomorrow. Please feel free to keep commenting and adding your thoughts for Quicken 2008.
Recently financial institutions had to add multilevel authentication. Intuit has not caught which makes the pin vault and automatic download useless. I hope this is addressed in 2008′s version.
I know the contest is closed, but I wanted to chime in anyway. I definitely miss #4 from Money. If Money hadn’t dropped pocketpc support, I might very well still be with them. Maybe not, though. I didn’t like the changes from 2004 to 2005.
I would like to see better support for e bills/Statements. All my e-bills get logged online with my bank, but Quicken does not recognize them. I have to set up transactions in Quicken, but some bills do not come at the same time each month so i always changing due dates.
BofA is getting close to having most functionality of Quicken online with their My Portfolio feature. Now if they can clean up their interface online I may switch only to using my bank.
I just need one stop shopping for my finances. i do not want to go between different applications.
After Wachovia started charging me $6 for the downloads, I switched to ING Direct. It is free, quicken-friendly, AND pays 4% on checking
I keep waiting for US Savings Bond support. I have a slew of them from my youth, and tracking them in Quicken currently is a major pain. It’s extra annoying now since they make up such a small part of my portfolio, but its seems to be as hard to keep track of them as it was
To do so, one must enter each as a separate security, add each again in an account, then enter each yet again into the US Treasury’s Savings Bond Calculator, then enter value data for each security, then possibly a go through again to add additional entries for each if a reasonable recent history is desired (i.e. not have a large unrealistic jump at the time values are entered).
It would seem so simple for Quicken to just understand the few different bond types and the rules for each to automate all the above to a single set of entries based simply on purchase date and ammount.
I agree withe the person that previously complained about MS Money and Quicken desired file format, having to obtain from the banks the data directly and paying a ridiculous charge for it, probably because MS and Intuit are charging royalty fees to the banks.
I depend very heavily on Quicken to track my net worth and retirement. Overall, I like the software and it saves me a lot of time. Here are the things I do not like:
- That they charge for BillPay. Since I pay for the software and for upgrades regularly, I don’t see why I should pay another recurring charge. So I pay bills through my bank which is free.
- The downloads tend to be problematic. I often run into issues when my bank posts the transactions a day later than my mutual fund account. The placeholder transaction generation functionality is very poor and almost always gets it wrong. With my bank and my credit union I have ongoing download issues although it works like a charm with my credit cards.
- I agree with the person that restricted stocks and performance unit tracking is sub-standard.
- I don’t like the reporting interface at all especially reporting investing returns.
- I also agree that the performance is way too slow for this day and age. The UI is non-standard and chews up too much real estate.
every couple years or so I give money and quicken a try – but like your point #2 – I still have not been able to get the entire process automated. Last time, it was because they didn’t have my credit union listed. So, I will probably give it another go in 2008 to see if they have gotten to a completely automated process where I will not have to type any transactions in – we shall see…
I would like to see a straight forward method for tracking annuities.
Also can the Mac 2007 version be improved to the look and feel of the PC version? The converting/ importing from Windows to Mac COULD definitely be revised. I lost the historical mortgage data with the conversion along with bring forward data inaccurately for my credit card accounts creating a major problems with the checking account payments.
So you aren’t having a problem with quicken downloading transactions more than once? Whenever I update my bank accounts, it seems some of the transactions are literally downloaded twice, and if I don’t go thru and check each one I end up with a really wrong balance!
Can’t seem to make it work for me.
Plus I use paypal for 90% of my business transactions and that is a complete disaster with the auto update in quicken. It just does not work! I’m very disappointed b/c reading the quicken box, this software was what I needed- but it just doesn’t seem to do what it said it could.
Have used Quicken for over ten years and purchased the 2008 upgrade in mid March. I have had 2 corruptions of the data in the last two weeks. (I am the only user of the PC and there have been no changes other than the upgrade). The last re verification lost considerable data.
Beware. I’m going back to 2007 since I’ve made very few entries so little time lost at this point. Something is very much wrong.
I would like to get Quicken. I have plans to start up a business in 2009 and need quicken by the new year so my accounting person can learn how to use it. Hopefully it will work for a dog kennel/ranch enviroment. It is so expensive that I would really like to win one.
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