Alaskan Apple Users Group Blog

Satisfactory

by Ron Schoedel, AAUG Member

For the last 14 days I have been using the new program Quicken Essentials for Mac (hereafter QEM). Having stuck with Quicken 2006 for the last five years (good grief…it really has been half a decade since a major Quicken update on Mac…the 2007 version was really a minor upgrade of 2006’s release, which came out in late 2005), I was pleased when QEM actually, finally saw its release on 25 February, after several false starts over the last couple years. My first impression is that this is a beautiful program, aesthetically pleasing. It looks like a sibling or cousin of Apple’s own iLife and iWork suites. As one who has used Quicken since 1994–and has seen the interface change very little since then–this is a big deal! No longer does Quicken look like a System 7 program. Mac GUI fans rejoice.

With about a decade of records in my Quicken data file, I knew one of the first tests of QEM’s abilities would be the data conversion process. QEM boasts the ability to convert Quicken files from both Windows and Mac versions as well as Microsoft Money. I fed a copy of my Quicken data file into QEM’s companion File Exchange Utility and waited a few minutes which it churned out a QEM-version of my financial history. The time involved was pretty brief, and the process was mostly painless.

Upon reviewing my imported records, I found a handful of transactions that had apparently been labeled as “Orphaned” in the notes. Clearing these up caused me a little bit of a headache, as did weeding out a few unexplained duplicate transactions and a couple of transfers that were orphaned but did not get labeled as orphaned. I expected there to be some corrections necessary, so I was not too upset. After fixing these transactions, I was off and running.

Unlike prior versions of Quicken that spawn all sorts of windows across the screen, QEM functions in one window, much like modern Apple-made software like iPhoto. And following that theme, all of your accounts, reporting tools, and important functions reside in a pane occupying the left part of the screen, while the rest of the window shows the data you are working with. The source pane can be hidden, to give you more room to work with transactions.

The newly designed Accounts Summary view is a much nicer replacement for the old-style Quicken Insights window. Accounts Summary is clean, easy to read, sports visually pleasing graphics, and offers an immediate glimpse at your net worth and a quick breakdown into assets and liabilities.

Setting up accounts for online banking is easy. One can do so either by connecting within the program, or by downloading a file from your bank’s website, importing it, and connecting it to a pre-existing account (or using it as the basis for a new account). Updating online accounts is a one-click process once you’re set up. QEM goes where previous versions of Quicken could not, and now I am happily using online banking within QEM for two checking accounts, five savings accounts, and 3 credit card accounts. QEM supports more banks than any other version of Quicken. Nice job, Intuit.

Prior to QEM, I had to download files from various bank websites and engage in a time-consuming import process. QEM has simplified my online banking processes exponentially. There’s even a button in QEM to update all of your online accounts at once. The one oddity I experienced with the new online banking involved matching transactions. A few downloaded transactions did not automatically match pre-existing entered transactions. I learned that I could drag the duplicate transaction onto the one it should match, a very elegant solution. The Mac user interface is all about drag and drop. It’s nice to see Quicken support it.

When viewing the register, a major change is its change to one line per transaction. I like the new layout. Entering dates, payees, and categories is made easier with autofill that tries to memorize your spending habits. The pop up with previous payees and categories makes pointing and clicking your way through transactions possible, which many will find more enjoyable than typing. While I like the one-line register, I’d prefer it if there were a color differentiation between inflows and balance amounts. Payments show in red figures; it’d be nice if inflows were displayed green (or at least if such an option were possible). And unless I am missing something, in-field math computations are no longer possible. Used to be you could just type raw figures into an amount field with math operators, such as 4.99+5.21+8.78 and Quicken would total them up for you. I could not get QEM to do any such math. I actually used this quite a bit in older Quicken and was sad to see it missing in QEM.

QEM brings a new feature to money management called tags. Just like the tags used in blogging, tags in QEM allow the user to classify any transaction to any number of tags that can be useful in sorting or generating reports. Using tags allows you to keep the number of “categories” to a minimum while still allowing maximum access to transactions. For example, I have a Travel category. All of my vacation related expenses have been categorized as Travel since I started using Quicken years ago. But with tags, I can break out transactions by each particular vacation destination. For a trip to Wales this summer, I’ve already tagged several transactions “Wales”. Looking at my Spending Reports, I now can immediately break out expenses related to my Wales trip, setting aside all other “Travel” expenses. This could also come in handy for two automobile households: categorize expenses for both autos as “Auto”, but tag individual transactions by vehicle name. A visual-centric “Spending Cloud” is available to give you a comparative view of your tag or category totals by displaying more used tags larger and less-used tags smaller. Again, much like the tag clouds often seen on blog sites.

QEM’s approach to scheduled transactions has caught up with how I have used scheduled transactions for years. I like to see about 3-6 months ahead, so I entered recurring transactions in my registers for months in advance. QEM now allows me to show these future transactions as scheduled, but dims them a bit. I also have the option of setting how far in advance I want scheduled transactions visible: 15, 30, or 90 days.

Other welcome interface advancements include hiding and showing columns according to my preferences, resizing columns, and a Spotlight-like “find feature” which blows the old Quicken search tool out of the water. Everything in the new Search happens in the QEM main interface, as opposed to popping up multiple windows and making you try to figure just where something was found.

QEM is full of small interface refinements, making it the sort of program that–if you had never used Quicken before and had never grown accustomed to now missing features–would make you delighted to be a Mac Quicken user. Unfortunately, beneath the shine and polish of the new QEM lay some holes, which some users may find rather large.

What’s missing? Check printing, integrated bill pay, advanced budgeting features, investment tax lot accounting, and TurboTax integration seem to be the main missing features. Intuit says that these features are used by a minority of Quicken users, such as BillPay which was used by only 6%. I used to use check printing, but honestly, since about 1999, I only write maybe 1 or 2 checks a month. I pay all my bills at the billers’ websites, never through Quicken. I am not missing out on any of these features, personally, but if you use any of these then you’d be best off to follow Intuit’s own advice and stick with Quicken 2007 for the time being. Fortunately, I am one of the 80% for whom the QEM feature set seems to be enough.

My summary: what it does, it does well. I genuinely like Quicken Essentials for Mac. I am going to enjoy using it. It meets my needs. A new Mac user picking up QEM would immediately feel at home, with it’s interface that is similar to iTunes, iPhoto, etc. I do like how QEM functions. It is a very nicely designed product. It is comfortable, intuitive, and clean in its design. If I were to buy QEM, though, I would be a bit upset that Windows users (or even Mac users of the last version, which remains for sale) get so much more for the same price. It has been annoying for years that Quicken Windows users got more for their money than Quicken Mac users. For QEM users to get fewer features than the version they maybe replacing, at the same price, and with no discount…well, that seems to be a poor marketing strategy. There are a couple worthwhile but lesser-known competitors whose products are priced less than QEM. QEM would be a lot more competitive at a lower price, say $40. The lack of an upgrade discount for current Quicken owners is not only a departure from tradition, but has been seen as something of an insult by many longtime Quicken users.

I think selling QEM side by side with Quicken 2007 for the same price looks bad. This seems akin to Apple shipping its computers with OS 9 as the default system almost a year after OS X was first released: an implicit admission that while the new version is “cool”, it’s not quite ready for prime time. If Intuit isn’t interested in lowering the current price, they ought to give buyers of QEM 2010 a very significant discount (I’m thinking 50-70% off to compensate for both the reduced feature set and the lack of an upgrade discount this time around) when the next version comes out (much like Apple gave out copies of OS X 10.1 free to those who bought OS X 10.0). Even Apple refunded original iPhone buyers when the price was lowered a few months after release. Such moves go far toward winning and maintaining customer loyalty, and given the reactions to QEM I have seen in the blogosphere, loyalty to Intuit is suffering quite a bit following QEM’s release. Which is a shame, because as I said above, it really is a good product in its own right.

It was bold of Intuit to dump the old code base and switch to an entirely new product. When Apple did this itself with OS X 10.0, we long-time Mac users had many similar complaints with respect to OS X vs. OS 9 and earlier. Within two updates, Apple got things squared away and all was forgiven, and OS X now rules. Perhaps given time, QEM will follow in those steps.

Conflict of interest disclosure: Intuit provided a free copy of QEM for the purposes of this review.