Alternatives to Quicken

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Peculiar_Investor
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Quicken 2007 question

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Now that I'm using Quicken 2007 full time, I found another UI bother/bug.

I have set my opening screen to be Cash Flow Centre. However, in the section for Spending and Savings Accounts, I cannot get Quicken to hide accounts. I have a number of accounts that I've closed over the years. In the Account List, then are marked as "Hide in Quicken". Yet they show up in the Spending and Savings Accounts screen. And to make it even more annoying, under Cash Flow Alerts, I'm being told that I haven't downloaded transactions for a closed, hidden account!

Anyone else (Bylo) encounter this problem and have a workaround/fix?
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Bylo Selhi
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Re: Quicken 2007 question

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Peculiar_Investor wrote:Anyone else (Bylo) encounter this problem and have a workaround/fix?
Nope. I don't use Cash Flow Centre. I use Quicken only to track investments. Hidden accounts and securities seem to work just fine for me.
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Re: Quicken 2007 question

Post by AltaRed »

Bylo Selhi wrote:
Peculiar_Investor wrote:Anyone else (Bylo) encounter this problem and have a workaround/fix?
Nope. I don't use Cash Flow Centre. I use Quicken only to track investments. Hidden accounts and securities seem to work just fine for me.
Ditto here. I did go into Cash Flow Centre to see if hidden Spending and Savings accounts (previously closed) show up and they do not.
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Bylo Selhi
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

Another stab at the stock quote bug:

Image Image
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Post by WishingWealth »

From what I see they finally automated the crazy/convoluted fix for the Help file.
On this one, they were blaming MS.

WW
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Re: Quicken 2007 question

Post by Wallace »

Bylo Selhi wrote:
Peculiar_Investor wrote:Anyone else (Bylo) encounter this problem and have a workaround/fix?
Nope. I don't use Cash Flow Centre. I use Quicken only to track investments.
How would you track physical gold, Bylo? The way I did it was to enter it as a stock with the number of ounces as the number of shares. I enter the POG manually each week as the "share price" There must be an easier way to do it but if so I haven't found it yet.

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Bylo Selhi
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Re: Quicken 2007 question

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Wallace wrote:The way I did it was to enter it as a stock with the number of ounces as the number of shares. I enter the POG manually each week as the "share price" There must be an easier way to do it but if so I haven't found it yet.
The NAV of streetTRACKS Gold Shares ETF is NYSE:GLD. That seems to be ~1/10th of POG. Assuming that's close enough, just use that symbol and declare a 10:1 share split on your holdings ;)
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Post by milo »

How do you put canadian mutual fund codes in quicken 2008?
e.g. i want to put TD Cdn equity efund ?
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Post by AltaRed »

milo wrote:How do you put canadian mutual fund codes in quicken 2008?
e.g. i want to put TD Cdn equity efund ?
Select Securities from the icon bar, then Edit the security you want to edit. You will get a dialog box and then you put in the AAA111 or AAA2222 code in the Symbol box. Just make sure you have Mutual Fund selected in each of the Type and Exchange boxes as well.

Added: I assume you have already set up the mutual fund in Quicken in its own account (each mutual fund needs to have its own Account).
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Post by milo »

Thank you,
in the edit security details I failed to pick "mutual fund" in the exchange field. It works now
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"Open" equivalents to Quicken/MS Money

Post by LurkyDismal »

Does anyone know of an 'open office' financial managment tool like Quicken or MS Money?

My versions of both licensed softwares are old and do not really want to invest in upgrades, but would like to revive managing my expenses with a program.

Thoughts?
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Post by IdOp »

There is something called GnuCash, which has been touched on in this thread.
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Better than Quicken for Canadians?

Post by queerasmoi »

Is there an investment tracking software package that works better for Canadians than Quicken?

I'd really like...
- To be able to download historical prices properly for all securities
- To enter things like reinvested capital gains distributions without playing funky workarounds to get the right numbers popping up taxwise
- To enter actions such as journalling shares between U$ and C$ accounts, and perhaps even the possibility of tracking options properly

...in addition to the features that _do_ work in Quicken. :)

Wishful thinking or reality?
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Re: Better than Quicken for Canadians?

Post by adrian2 »

queerasmoi wrote:To enter things like reinvested capital gains distributions without playing funky workarounds to get the right numbers popping up taxwise
You don't need any funky workarounds - just enter two transactions which is what Barclays describes it's happening:
(1) a reinvested capital gain (supported by Quicken)
(2) a share consolidation (supported by Quicken)
It would be nice to have a new transaction type combining the two but AFAIK these distributions are a unique Canadian "feature" and would confuse a non-Canadian(e.g. US) user as to what it really means.
queerasmoi wrote:To enter actions such as journalling shares between U$ and C$ accounts
There are various ways in which transaltion of forex it's permissible; you would have to pick what's the applicable forex and, in your example, make sure the transfer is done at cost.
queerasmoi wrote:perhaps even the possibility of tracking options properly
I do have quite a bit of options in my portfolio; what exactly are you looking for?
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Post by queerasmoi »

I realize these things can be done as series of other transactions. And that's not what I'm looking for. I'd like to see a software package regionally customized to use the language that Canadians use for their finances. Who cares if if would confuse non-Canadians? They aren't the target audience. And as for options, I don't actually use them but in case I ever do, it'd be nice to just enter them as they are and not fake them out as something else.

Out of my whole list the biggie is the first one - historical prices need to work properly for Canadian securities. Right now Quicken will only download them for American ones. It's not like the data is unavailable to the public... why is this such a difficult feature to implement?
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

queerasmoi wrote:I'd like to see a software package regionally customized to use the language that Canadians use for their finances.
Problem is that the market is too small. Assume the cost of development is $1M. (Which BTW I think is very conservative.) Then you'd need to sell at least 10,000 copies at $100 each just to break even. Assuming you'd have to split revenue 50/50 with your sales/marketing channel, that's 20,000 copies. Then there's support, profit, etc. Realistically you'd need to sell at least 50,000 copies. I'm doubtful that there are that many Canadians who'd pay $100 each to replace Quicken (or twice as many people who'd pay $50 each, etc.)

And all that assumes the data feeds are free, e.g. that you'd inhale that stuff from sites like Yahoo. Then there's the cost of developing relationships with the banks, brokers, etc. do you could download transactions, statements and the like.

While I'd love to be able to replace Quicken with something better, I just don't see the business case.
Right now Quicken will only download them for American ones. It's not like the data is unavailable to the public... why is this such a difficult feature to implement?
Price download has been working OK for me for the past few months, so I don't understand the comment. Just curious but what would you do with historical prices in Quicken that you can't now do with the data at Yahoo?
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Post by travesty »

Note also that you can even upload the history from Yahoo in csv format into quicken - giving you even more historical data than that available for US equities (although volume figures are not included). I've done this for all Canadian securities in my account, and it takes perhaps 3-5 minutes per security.
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Post by queerasmoi »

travesty wrote:Note also that you can even upload the history from Yahoo in csv format into quicken - giving you even more historical data than that available for US equities (although volume figures are not included). I've done this for all Canadian securities in my account, and it takes perhaps 3-5 minutes per security.
Interesting to note - thanks for the tip. Sadly, the structured product TCT.UN has no historical price data on Yahoo. It's on Google Finance but I can't see a download option. (edit: I pulled this off anyways by fiddling with Google Docs. Not the most intuitive way to do it)

And in regards to the person not understanding my comment, I have Quicken 2007 (is there any big difference from 2008?) and it has a button specifically labelled "Download US Historical Prices". Clicking the button fails to find any history for any of my Canadian securities.

As for historical prices in Quicken... my portfolio was managed by my parents for the last 10 years and they entered transactions in Quicken. I'd now like to see how my portfolio performed over those years but Quicken has very little in the way of historical prices. Therefore it can't show me anything very dynamic until those prices are in.
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Alternatives to Quicken

Post by hrifraf »

This is an attempt to return this thread to it's original topic.

Can anyone recommend an alternative to Quicken for the purposes of accurately accounting for investment transactions? Note that I am looking for accounting functionality for a Canadian taxpayer. My requirements do not extend to performance analysis (I have other tools for that.)

I am hoping to get recommendations from users with hands-on experience.

Here's my background; I used Quicken 2000 for years and was reasonably happy with it. Recently I took on the Treasurer duties for a Club, which came with it's records on Quicken XG2005. Quicken was not happy with two versions on the same computer so, reluctantly, I converted my personal files over to 2005.

I have been very disappointed with the "upgrade". The newer version of Quicken is significantly more complicated than the old version, but less functional. In their attempt to run your life for you and create a "slot" for every type of transaction that they can imagine, I now have to wade through all sorts of transaction types that I will never need in order to simply enter "buys" and "sells". These transaction types cannot be removed or changed (Quicken knows best, after all!).

Other quibbles; Every time I enter a "sale" Quicken drops to the exchange rate box - Why? - It's a $cdn account! Then it wants to know if I am selling all my shares? "Good question - let me check my records and see - Oh, these are my records - Then why isn't Quicken telling me how many I own?" There are more quibbles, but this is enough boredom for one day...

I was pushed over the edge when some of my holdings stopped appearing on the transaction entry "Security Name" list. If I enter the name correctly, it still works, but if I spell the name incorrectly I get a new holding! Must be due to a corrupt database, but reindexing ("validating") hasn't fixed the problem.

Given that the "improvements" to Quicken in the five years between 2000 and 2005 have made such a mess of the program, I am afraid to purchase the latest version. I shudder to think of what sort of added complexities (features) they might have unleashed since then. My needs (accurate accounting) haven't changed at all in the last ten years. I feel that I would be better off with a program that has fewer (unchangeable) "slots", and instead has a bit more flexibility.
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Re: Alternatives to Quicken

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

hrifraf wrote:This is an attempt to return this thread to it's original topic.

Can anyone recommend an alternative to Quicken for the purposes of accurately accounting for investment transactions? Note that I am looking for accounting functionality for a Canadian taxpayer. My requirements do not extend to performance analysis (I have other tools for that.)

I am hoping to get recommendations from users with hands-on experience.

Here's my background; I used Quicken 2000 for years and was reasonably happy with it. Recently I took on the Treasurer duties for a Club, which came with it's records on Quicken XG2005. Quicken was not happy with two versions on the same computer so, reluctantly, I converted my personal files over to 2005.
While I cannot offer any direct experience, check out BetterInvesting - Non-profit Investment Education. They are US based, but offer software for Investment Clubs. They were formally known as NAIC. They have been around for a long time. The Canadian Shareowner Association, which at one time used the NAIC tools, is another option.
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Post by Clock Watcher »

I looked into upgrading my old Quicken99, and it seems that the newer versions "phone home". Is there a way of bypassing that?
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Post by AltaRed »

Clock Watcher wrote:I looked into upgrading my old Quicken99, and it seems that the newer versions "phone home". Is there a way of bypassing that?
Why would you care? AFAIK, the 'phone home' aspects look for software upgrades and changes/additions in possible financial institution downloads. Regardless, I want Quicken to update equity and mutual fund prices whenever I ask it too. So I have had to upgrade from time to time to keep that feature going (currently on Quicken 2007).
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Re: Alternatives to Quicken

Post by AltaRed »

hrifraf wrote:Other quibbles; Every time I enter a "sale" Quicken drops to the exchange rate box - Why? - It's a $cdn account!
It should not ask that if you have your Home Currency set to CAD. If it was set to USD, then it will ask. Did you not select CAD when you installed Quicken?

Assuming Q05 is the same as Q07, check under Tools | Currency List to see what your Home Currency is.
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Bylo Selhi
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Post by Bylo Selhi »

Clock Watcher wrote:newer versions "phone home". Is there a way of bypassing that?
All versions since 1998 or maybe earlier "phone home" to look for software updates. Why would you want to disable that? But if you do, install a software firewall like ZoneAlarm and tell it to block outgoing Internet traffic from QW.EXE. Of course if you do that you'll also lose features like downloading security prices and banking activity, etc.

Again, why would you want to do that explicitly?
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Post by tightwad »

Bylo Selhi wrote:All versions since 1998 or maybe earlier "phone home" to look for software updates.
There must be a setting that turns it off. My Quicken 2002 makes no attempt to access the web. Perhaps it's controlled by Edit->Options->Internet Options->Connection tab->Only during One Step Update. I do not use Quicken to download information from the web.
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