Avoiding the Quickening
August 23, 2021 9:30 PM Subscribe
Please help me decide if there are alternatives to Quicken that meet my requirements.
TL;DR: Quicken sucks lately. Need an alternative with WebConnect-like services to automatically retrieve and enter transactions, automatic bill entry, and manual bill reminders.
I have done extensive searching online, but sadly nearly everything I can find that discusses differences between personal financial software usually has some sort of caveat or small print that their blog or whatever is sponsored by / ad-supported by at least one of the software vendors, resulting in my complete loss of trust in anything they have to say.
I currently use quicken fairly simply:
- Checking / Savings / Credit Card / Loan account registers from national banks and locally-based Credit Unions
- Bill reminders, including automatic entry of monthly expenses and simply reminders that I have to enter others
- Retirement account tracking (403b) - just tracking balances, not individual allocation buckets
My biggest requirement is download of transactions from all banks, on-demand, into my register with some control over the actual entry allowing me to check each entry so I recognize and categorize it. But most banks seem to offer only QFX/Quicken files as a specific vendor format to download to; otherwise it's mostly CSV or excel. Does other software rely mostly on .csv downloads? The only institution I can't download automatically via Quicken is Principal; I have to manually download the qfx file to import it and it contains all the individual funds, etc. in my account that I don't really need or want to track within Quicken.
Other requirements:
Ability to pull reports based on account / category for any given period of time
Flexible reminders
Ability to split a given transaction into multiple spending buckets (eg. mortgage principal vs. interest)
I don't care about online "Bill Pay" stuff; all the bills are either scheduled ACH withdrawals from the business / utility or I go to their site and pay online myself. I don't care about investing capabilities other than being able to track my 403b.
Free is nice of course but willing to pay. Quicken switched to a subscription pay service a couple years ago and their product has gone way downhill since. It's slow, kludgey, and chock-damn-full of annoying bugs that get no response when you try to contact support. If they would just fix the bugs and not make my screen flicker for 5 seconds while it thrashes between registers trying to figure out what it wants to do with the check I just entered into the register, it would be so much better. /vent
What personal, unbiased ideas do you all have? I looked briefly at Personal Capital, but it looked waaay too complex for my needs, yet at the same time not appearing to meet my requirements for transaction downloads, etc. Not to mention they spammed the hell out of me after I signed up for a trial run before I unsubscribed.
TL;DR: Quicken sucks lately. Need an alternative with WebConnect-like services to automatically retrieve and enter transactions, automatic bill entry, and manual bill reminders.
I have done extensive searching online, but sadly nearly everything I can find that discusses differences between personal financial software usually has some sort of caveat or small print that their blog or whatever is sponsored by / ad-supported by at least one of the software vendors, resulting in my complete loss of trust in anything they have to say.
I currently use quicken fairly simply:
- Checking / Savings / Credit Card / Loan account registers from national banks and locally-based Credit Unions
- Bill reminders, including automatic entry of monthly expenses and simply reminders that I have to enter others
- Retirement account tracking (403b) - just tracking balances, not individual allocation buckets
My biggest requirement is download of transactions from all banks, on-demand, into my register with some control over the actual entry allowing me to check each entry so I recognize and categorize it. But most banks seem to offer only QFX/Quicken files as a specific vendor format to download to; otherwise it's mostly CSV or excel. Does other software rely mostly on .csv downloads? The only institution I can't download automatically via Quicken is Principal; I have to manually download the qfx file to import it and it contains all the individual funds, etc. in my account that I don't really need or want to track within Quicken.
Other requirements:
Ability to pull reports based on account / category for any given period of time
Flexible reminders
Ability to split a given transaction into multiple spending buckets (eg. mortgage principal vs. interest)
I don't care about online "Bill Pay" stuff; all the bills are either scheduled ACH withdrawals from the business / utility or I go to their site and pay online myself. I don't care about investing capabilities other than being able to track my 403b.
Free is nice of course but willing to pay. Quicken switched to a subscription pay service a couple years ago and their product has gone way downhill since. It's slow, kludgey, and chock-damn-full of annoying bugs that get no response when you try to contact support. If they would just fix the bugs and not make my screen flicker for 5 seconds while it thrashes between registers trying to figure out what it wants to do with the check I just entered into the register, it would be so much better. /vent
What personal, unbiased ideas do you all have? I looked briefly at Personal Capital, but it looked waaay too complex for my needs, yet at the same time not appearing to meet my requirements for transaction downloads, etc. Not to mention they spammed the hell out of me after I signed up for a trial run before I unsubscribed.
Interesting, since the overall impression here is slightly different. As with the post above, this may be more commiseration than anything useful as an alternative.
Quicken has always been a big horrible 90's-plus-bolt-on-features software package, but very much like Windows, it's also really the only general-purpose game in town. There are definitely better options for specific use cases, but nothing that is competitive with the overall feature list. The market for this sort of thing just isn't that big. Many younger people are being taught to use online services and go paperless, with notifications and automatic withdrawals, and the occasional overdraft being seen as more-or-less normal. Comprehensive financial tracking, account reconciliation, tax recordkeeping, and all of that just isn't a thing for the younger generation, and owning a PC and running a big fat app like Quicken is a nonstarter.
In my opinion, that kind of means that not only are we never likely to see a ground-up modern rewrite of Quicken, but we're also not really likely to see a viable competitor, although there are much more limited alternatives such as YNAB and others already mentioned.
Quicken spun off from Intuit several years back and went to a subscription model that makes for a more stable income model for them. This was a bumpy but generally positive transition, as a bunch of longstanding issues with Quicken were addressed under the new management, and things like the Quicken mobile app have actually become usable. Being able to pay developer and support salaries is a positive development. I saw a bunch of stupid problems with Quicken vanish over the period of a year, a few new ones appeared, but ones related to the overall design (being based on a very old 90's software core) are likely to remain forever.
On the other hand, automatic downloads from certain financial institutions still have a tendency to break. This seems to be institution-specific. We have accounts at a number of banks/CU's, and download and reconciliation experiences vary widely depending on the specific bank.
The Quicken-having-an-epileptic-seizure-screen-flickery thing seems to be made better through some combination of fast storage and fast CPU. Moving to a new faster machine with NVMe SSD made Quicken much more enjoyable last year.
posted by jgreco at 5:19 AM on August 24, 2021
Quicken has always been a big horrible 90's-plus-bolt-on-features software package, but very much like Windows, it's also really the only general-purpose game in town. There are definitely better options for specific use cases, but nothing that is competitive with the overall feature list. The market for this sort of thing just isn't that big. Many younger people are being taught to use online services and go paperless, with notifications and automatic withdrawals, and the occasional overdraft being seen as more-or-less normal. Comprehensive financial tracking, account reconciliation, tax recordkeeping, and all of that just isn't a thing for the younger generation, and owning a PC and running a big fat app like Quicken is a nonstarter.
In my opinion, that kind of means that not only are we never likely to see a ground-up modern rewrite of Quicken, but we're also not really likely to see a viable competitor, although there are much more limited alternatives such as YNAB and others already mentioned.
Quicken spun off from Intuit several years back and went to a subscription model that makes for a more stable income model for them. This was a bumpy but generally positive transition, as a bunch of longstanding issues with Quicken were addressed under the new management, and things like the Quicken mobile app have actually become usable. Being able to pay developer and support salaries is a positive development. I saw a bunch of stupid problems with Quicken vanish over the period of a year, a few new ones appeared, but ones related to the overall design (being based on a very old 90's software core) are likely to remain forever.
On the other hand, automatic downloads from certain financial institutions still have a tendency to break. This seems to be institution-specific. We have accounts at a number of banks/CU's, and download and reconciliation experiences vary widely depending on the specific bank.
The Quicken-having-an-epileptic-seizure-screen-flickery thing seems to be made better through some combination of fast storage and fast CPU. Moving to a new faster machine with NVMe SSD made Quicken much more enjoyable last year.
posted by jgreco at 5:19 AM on August 24, 2021
Best answer: It sounds like Pocketsmith might fit your use case. I switched to it from Mint about 3 years ago and it's been a joy to use.
I can automatically pull bank feeds (they use Yodlee for this) or import qfx, ofx, and csv formats from my bank and credit union accounts.
They offer reminders and excellent forecasting. The reporting is super flexible and basically unlimited. They can automatically categorize transactions, but like you, I choose to manually categorize transactions as they come in.
I do have my retirement account tracked, also through a bank feed.
They really offer so much, their support is outstanding, and they give you all the control, security, and privacy you'd want when dealing with your money. I really can't recommend it enough!
I think they have a free tier if you want to try it out, I've been on the annual plan and it's been so worth it. I do have a referral code (all customers have one) that I'm happy to share if you DM me. I'm also happy to answer any questions about Pocketsmith. It's just really good software!
posted by spbb at 6:28 AM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I can automatically pull bank feeds (they use Yodlee for this) or import qfx, ofx, and csv formats from my bank and credit union accounts.
They offer reminders and excellent forecasting. The reporting is super flexible and basically unlimited. They can automatically categorize transactions, but like you, I choose to manually categorize transactions as they come in.
I do have my retirement account tracked, also through a bank feed.
They really offer so much, their support is outstanding, and they give you all the control, security, and privacy you'd want when dealing with your money. I really can't recommend it enough!
I think they have a free tier if you want to try it out, I've been on the annual plan and it's been so worth it. I do have a referral code (all customers have one) that I'm happy to share if you DM me. I'm also happy to answer any questions about Pocketsmith. It's just really good software!
posted by spbb at 6:28 AM on August 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ah, I missed this in my first reply. They bill themselves as a great alternative to Quicken specifically, including history import.
https://www.pocketsmith.com/quicken-alternative/
posted by spbb at 6:44 AM on August 24, 2021
https://www.pocketsmith.com/quicken-alternative/
posted by spbb at 6:44 AM on August 24, 2021
I just switched to Moneydance from YNAB partly on AskMefi recommends. I think we’re looking for different styles of bookkeeping, but also that the features you want but I don’t are on their list - I just can’t personally attest to them.
Extremely 2000s flavor GUI, especially on Linux, but everything’s there and the keyboard accelerators work so I’m okay with that.
posted by clew at 9:45 AM on August 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Extremely 2000s flavor GUI, especially on Linux, but everything’s there and the keyboard accelerators work so I’m okay with that.
posted by clew at 9:45 AM on August 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I haven't used it like you want, but GnuCash is free and includes online access to maybe all of your institutions. There's a learning curve to the interface, but you seem more aware of the terminology than me, which might smooth things over for you. At the very least, if automated access isn't possible to some institution, I think it will import all of the formats you need as long as you can download the transaction files.
posted by rhizome at 2:54 PM on August 24, 2021
posted by rhizome at 2:54 PM on August 24, 2021
Best answer: I'm several years into a Quicken file myself, and it's very kludge for me too. I haven't found a great replacement. Personal Capital was close, but it broke down for me when it wouldn't let me decide which bucket an account goes in (savings vs retirement, etc).
Something I found that sped Quicken up substantially was to open up each register and go through their Reconcile wizard to flag every transaction as reconciled, even in investment accounts. I think every time you enter a transaction, it recalculates data on un-reconciled amounts, and doing this made it unusable with years upon years of transactions. Once I flagged everything as R, it got snappy again. I usually just hit every register reconciliation at the end of the month so it's only working with a few lines of transactions when I fed new ones in.
As mentioned above, you can also archive years out of the database to cut it down in size, but be aware that doing so effectively splits your data into two sets. So any reporting/transaction stuff in the old file will forever be separated.
posted by msbutah at 3:18 PM on August 24, 2021
Something I found that sped Quicken up substantially was to open up each register and go through their Reconcile wizard to flag every transaction as reconciled, even in investment accounts. I think every time you enter a transaction, it recalculates data on un-reconciled amounts, and doing this made it unusable with years upon years of transactions. Once I flagged everything as R, it got snappy again. I usually just hit every register reconciliation at the end of the month so it's only working with a few lines of transactions when I fed new ones in.
As mentioned above, you can also archive years out of the database to cut it down in size, but be aware that doing so effectively splits your data into two sets. So any reporting/transaction stuff in the old file will forever be separated.
posted by msbutah at 3:18 PM on August 24, 2021
OK, I probably sound really bad, but I'm still using Quicken 2005. I always planned to move to a newer version, but every year when the newer version of Quicken came out, the reviews complained about how buggy the new version was. Every once in a while I make a half-hearted effort to find a new program, but nothing seems to fit.
Maybe it's because I'm using such an older version that it can't ever take enough resources to bog down, and I have 20+ years of records now.
posted by coberh at 9:12 PM on August 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's because I'm using such an older version that it can't ever take enough resources to bog down, and I have 20+ years of records now.
posted by coberh at 9:12 PM on August 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm still using quicken vers 3 for 16 bit windows circa 1992 because I can't find anything as good and simple. I LIKE the old style interface. Every now and then it has to rebuild the index.
Wrote a program to import bank files.
posted by canoehead at 8:08 AM on August 25, 2021
Wrote a program to import bank files.
posted by canoehead at 8:08 AM on August 25, 2021
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As for alternatives, I did a trial of You Need A Budget but ended up staying with Quicken. While I love the concept of the forward-looking "give your money a job," my Quicken use is mostly focused on account reconciliation and occasional reports, so it just felt like it took a lot more time than I wanted to spend on it. I looked at the Personal Capital website and it seemed very slick, while my needs are pretty basic. I've also been meaning to check out Simplifi, the "lite" cloud-based product that Quicken recently introduced as a competitor to YNAB, but I suspect I am so used to Quicken that I won't like it.
Anyway, I guess all that was more commiseration than actual help, but I'll be watching this post for additional ideas!
posted by Sweetie Darling at 4:23 AM on August 24, 2021