When Mint and Intuit announced the latter would be acquiring the former, the Quicken team and Aaron Patzer, the CEO of Mint, now a vice president of Intuit’s personal finance division, claimed that their two similar online product offerings, Mint and Quicken Online, would continue to co-exist. This made little sense to me.
In fact, I asked, “How long will it continue to make sense to maintain two highly similar services under one roof?”
We now know the answer is, “Not long at all.” The acquisition has passed regulatory requirements and is now official. With this news, Intuit has also announced that Quicken Online will cease to exist within six to nine months. This phase out will move Quicken Online users over to the Mint software.
It makes more business sense for Intuit to consolidate these similar product offerings, and I figured that in time either this would be the case or Mint’s software would be re-branded with the “Quicken Online” name.
I am not a heavy user of either Mint or Quicken Online. I prefer the desktop software. With Patzer heading the development of the desktop software as well, I expect some improvements in a year or so with the next or subsequent yearly release.
The news in personal finance today is that Intuit, the makers of Quicken and TurboTax, purchased internet start-up Mint, a service that has come into its own in the past few years. The two companies offer competing products: Quicken Online and Mint are both free web applications that aggregate your financial information across a wide variety of banks, credit cards, and investment accounts.
We’ve reviewed both offerings at Consumerism Commentary. We offered one of the first looks at Quicken Online as well as an early look at Mint, both from 2007. We’ve also spoken to representatives from each of the companies for the Consumerism Commentary Podcast. On May 3, we spoke with Aaron Patzer, the CEO of Mint and on June 7, we spoke with Barron Ernst, the product manager of Quicken Online. Both interviews offered interesting insights into the software and the philosophy behind the companies.
There has been fierce competition between the two companies as they raced to announce higher user numbers. Intuit challenged Mint not too long ago to substantiate their claims that they were adding 3,000 users a day. Any bitterness seems to have subsided for the time being. Mint seemed to be winning the battle over users, and it’s not a bad move for Intuit to buy the competition.
Each application has its own strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I use the desktop version of Quicken to manage my own finances. I don’t believe the software is perfect, but I prefer it above any of the web-based applications.
With this deal, Intuit obtains customers it was unable to reach and Mint obtains the backing of one of the best-known software brands. Intuit will continue offering both web-based services for free, and there are no current plans to integrate one set of users into the other piece of software. How long will it continue to make sense to maintain two highly similar services under one roof? Consolidating the users of the two separate services into one larger user base would solidify the surviving software’s spot at the summit among other similar services such as Geezeo.
Read Quicken’s announcement | Read Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s opinion
This episode of the Consumerism Commentary Podcast features interviews with Barron Ernst and Linsey Knerl. Barron Ernst is the product manager for Intuit’s Quicken Online and in the podcast, Barron and Tom Dziubek discuss the financial product’s features. Linsey Knerl is one of several authors of 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget. as well as the financial website Wise Bread.
To listen, use the player above (Adobe Flash required), download the podcast here, subscribe to the podcast RSS feed, or use the iTunes link. Note: open links in a new window (Ctrl-click or Command-click) to avoid interrupting the podcast.
[00:00] Introduction from Flexo
[00:44] Interview with Barron Ernst, product manager of Intuit’s Quicken Online
[01:17] — Quicken Online vs. other free financial management sites
[02:38] — Quicken Online’s “Trends” feature
[04:16] — Security at Quicken Online
[05:40] — Quicken Online on your cell phone
[10:07] Interview with Linsey Knerl, an author of 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget
[11:28] — Ways to go green and save money
[15:00] — Saving money on health care
[17:31] — Avoiding tricky supermarket traps
[20:37] — Seeing the world for free
[24:03] End
This week, Quicken Online (reviewed here), a free service, has added a few new features to help you more accurately and efficiently track your spending and manage your finances.
As credit card offer increasingly unfavorable terms and abandon rewards, and as fewer people qualify for credit cards, more are turning to spending using cold hard cash. Until now, Quicken Online has only tracked spending for accounts where transaction information can be directly downloaded from a bank, limited to credit cards, debit cards, and checks. Although users could enter future transactions for these accounts, spending analysis was never complete; even the most dedicated credit card users still use cash once in a while.
To fill in this hole, Quicken Online has added the facility for users to manually enter and categorize cash transactions. Unlike automatic downloads, this relies on the user’s honesty and accuracy. Here’s the cash entry form you will see as you enter a new transaction. Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size screen.
Remembering your cash transactions where you don’t take a receipt can be difficult, so that accuracy may be in question. Quicken Online offers a companion interface for mobile phones at http://m.quicken.com — and soon, a unique application for the iPhone — to allow you to record your transactions while away from your computer. This integration is key. While it may be somewhat inconvenient to stop whenever you use cash and access a mobile application, it will help improve accuracy of your reports.
You want your spending analysis to be as accurate as possible because this is where Quicken Online really shines. The software now forecasts your future spending and indicates your level of overdraft risk based on your recent transactions and account balances.
Another small but worthwhile improvement is the account bar. Quicken Online has improved the way it lists accounts to be grouped by type. For example, credit cards are grouped together, as are savings accounts and loans.
These new features start to roll out to all Quicken Online customers today. Quicken Online is free, so there’s no financial risk to try it out.
Starting today, Quicken Online (review) will be free for all customers. Quicken Online is the web-based financial software that replaces many of the features of the desktop versions of Quicken and competes with Mint (review), Geezeo, and several more emerging web applications.
Until now, customers who wished to use Quicken Online were required to pay a monthly fee. I mentioned in my initial review in December 2007, “For software I will likely not use often [because I prefer the full-featured desktop software], for me it will come down to price. $2.99 per month is actually a very competitive price for an online service, but the other offerings are currently free (though full of advertising).”
The fee elimination will allow Quicken Online to compete with other free web-based offerings. If you’d rather work with the desktop software, as I do, you can find discounts on the 2009 versions of Quicken here.
The other day, I participated in a preview of the new Quicken Online product, scheduled to launch on January 8. This new product is intended to compete with some of the existing money management web tools currently existing, like Mint, reviewed by Sasha here, Geezeo, and Wesabe. Intuit has spotted a need for a more robust solution for managing cash flow, and the targeted audience, “young and responsible,” is increasingly turning towards the web for software.
The philosophy behind Quicken Online is that people are living beyond their means and need help managing short-term cash flow. The most pressing question for many younger earners is whether they will have enough money to pay their bills. Therefore, they haven’t built in tools yet to manage investments. Quicken Online will track your checking, savings, and credit card accounts.
Right away I saw that Quicken Online is very different than the traditional Quicken desktop software. [click to continue…]
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