Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

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Peculiar_Investor
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Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

My Quicken 2013 Home and Business version is reaching Intuit's 3 year sunset point. :( I regularly utilize the ability to download bank statements, so I'm going to need to upgrade.

I haven't seen much (any?) discussion of the merits/problems/new features of Quicken 2014, 2015 or 2016. I long ago gave up on Intuit Canada providing any useful new features in new releases of Quicken and that an upgrade every three years to maintain the ability to download financial transactions is essentially a service charge. Sadly for long-time Quicken users with extensive data, there really isn't any viable alternative solution.

Has anyone upgraded to Quicken 2016 Home and Business? Any gotchas or significant changes that caused grief for long-time users? Is a boxed version available anywhere for less than the $109.99 that Intuit Canada charges on their site?
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Bylo Selhi »

<RANT>
I resent having to pay that "service charge" for what's essentially a functionally-stabilized product.

Worse, I'd argue Quicken has become a functionally-destabilized product. Q15 introduces new bugs that weren't in my previous paid Q13 version. For example Copy/Paste is broken in several ways. It's clear that Intuit knows about these bugs but hasn't fixed them. So what is that "service charge" actually providing me? Should I pay another $110 in the hope that Q16 fixes the bugs that they introduced in Q15 that weren't in Q13?

Even worse, Intuit sold their Quicken division to a private equity firm. Who knows what they'll do with the product, especially the Canadian version?

Quicken is for Sale – What Does this Mean for You? "It’s obvious that Quicken hasn’t been a focus for Intuit for years with release of minor new features on an annual basis, the constant introduction of new software bugs, and outsourced tech support from India..."

Quicken 2016 for Windows Review — Manage Bills in One Location "If you are unaware, this will be the last update by Intuit, as they have sold Quicken to a private equity firm. I’m not sure what to make of this news or what it means for the future of Quicken. I hope the new owner makes Quicken a better product and more in tune with the needs of today’s users. Read on, though, as I have my doubts..."
</RANT>
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

I generally concur. I don't recall any worthwhile features over the past number if versions. If it were possible I would pay a small charge to extend the sunset of my current version rather than purchase a newer version.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by adrian2 »

FWIW, I'm still on Quicken 2012.
Have never used the download feature and have no plans to start using it.

My Quicken file contains all the household finances since arriving in Canada more than two decades ago.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by ig17 »

adrian2 wrote:FWIW, I'm still on Quicken 2012.
Have never used the download feature and have no plans to start using it.

My Quicken file contains all the household finances since arriving in Canada more than two decades ago.
Do you download bank and credit card transactions?

If that's a Yes: how do you do that with a sunset version? Do you download an external file and then import it?

If that's a No: how can you claim that your "Quicken file contains all the household finances"?
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by adrian2 »

ig17 wrote:Do you download bank and credit card transactions?
No, never did.
ig17 wrote:If that's a No: how can you claim that your "Quicken file contains all the household finances"?
Because I keep it up-to-date with everything that happens in my bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts et al.

It has scheduled transactions/reminders for bills, income etc.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by ig17 »

adrian2 wrote:Because I keep it up-to-date with everything that happens in my bank accounts, credit card accounts ...
How exactly do you do that, if you don't keep track of the individual transactions?
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by adrian2 »

ig17 wrote:
adrian2 wrote:Because I keep it up-to-date with everything that happens in my bank accounts, credit card accounts ...
How exactly do you do that, if you don't keep track of the individual transactions?
I don't download them; I enter them by hand (as individual transactions).
To me, that makes it easier to follow what's going on, figure out if something is fishy etc.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Wallace »

Quicken is "crippleware", pure and simple. Every three years they cripple the product to make you buy a new version. Unfortunately it is the only product out there that does what it does.
I've never understood why there isn't an open source program that would blow it out of the water. It's only math, after all, and that's a basic computer function. Perhaps programmers don't find it challenging. Or perhaps they feel that people who have enough money to count deserve to be soaked.

I just pay the bribe fee every three years and hold my nose.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Wallace wrote:I've never understood why there isn't an open source program that would blow it out of the water.
Actually there is: GnuCash "is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports."
Perhaps programmers don't find it challenging. Or perhaps they feel that people who have enough money to count deserve to be soaked.
Or perhaps we all underestimate the strength of the force of inertia. In my case it's been preventing me from making the switch away from Quicken ;)

Q: Which is the best way to import data from Quicken? ("Note that you cannot import a QDF file into GnuCash, and there are no plans to add "QDF" support anytime soon." Now that would be too easy :( )

Importing Quicken Data Into GnuCash
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by good4u »

adrian2 wrote:
ig17 wrote:
adrian2 wrote:Because I keep it up-to-date with everything that happens in my bank accounts, credit card accounts ...
How exactly do you do that, if you don't keep track of the individual transactions?
I don't download them; I enter them by hand (as individual transactions).
To me, that makes it easier to follow what's going on, figure out if something is fishy etc.
This is exactly what I use Quicken for as well. I started using Quicken in the early 1990's and have been using it to the present day entering every transaction by hand and keeping everything segregated by bank account and credit card account. Then when I receive my statements, I can quickly reconcile against what I have recorded to identify any errors or fraudulent charges which have happened from time to time over the years.

I upgraded my Quicken versions a couple of times over the past two decades but I don't think it is necessary for my purposes. The program seems to work fine and I make sure to take regular backups and run the Validate/Repair function at least monthly to avoid any problems down the road.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by brucecohen »

Like Adrian I enter transactions by hand. The only times I've bought a new Quicken version is when I bought a new computer and found I couldn't load my previous Quicken. I'm now using Home and Business 2015. As Bylo said every new version seems to have more bugs. For example, old versions used to automatically memorize new payees. Now you have to do that manually. On one hand that's good because it doesn't clutter up the payee file with one-time vendors, but it's a pain to have to keep remembering to memorize new recurring payees.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by CROCKD »

I have used Quicken for several years and am currently running Quicken 2011. Like Adrian and good4u I don't download anything but enter all my data manually, household expenses and investments. Each time I have upgraded it has been the result of getting a new computer. On my previous laptop I got my son to partition it and was running a version of Linux on one side. I played around with Gnucash and quite liked the way it worked with its double entry bookeeping system. However I have a couple of decades of Quicken records. If there was any easy way to convert them to Gnucash I would change over in a heartbeat.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by ig17 »

adrian2 wrote:I don't download them; I enter them by hand (as individual transactions).
To me, that makes it easier to follow what's going on, figure out if something is fishy etc.
I just counted our transactions from Jan 2016 to Apr 2016.

Our two chequing accounts (his and hers) averaged 32 transactions per month combined. The main credit card averaged 77 transactions per month. We put every possible expense on this card to maximize the cash back. That's a total of 109 transactions per month that I currently download.

I am in the same boat as P_I. My Quicken 2013 is going to sunset at the end of May. I think I will pay the extortion fee.

$109.99 + HST = $124.3
$124.3 / 36 months = $3.45

There is no way I'm entering 109 transactions by hand to save $3.45 / month.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by OnlyMyOpinion »

I'm sticking my neck out here because I've never used Quicken - I download my visa and chequing account records from TD as csv files and then work in Excel. But I have heard you can convert csv files to qif files and then bring into quicken?
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by AltaRed »

I have Quicken Home and Business 2016.... for the reasons already stated. I've found nothing new/useful. I did buy it a bit 'early' this time when Intuit had a "discount" price offer of about $90 I think. Like others, I have over 20 years of data in Quicken and I am a hostage.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by adrian2 »

ig17 wrote:Our two chequing accounts (his and hers) averaged 32 transactions per month combined. The main credit card averaged 77 transactions per month. We put every possible expense on this card to maximize the cash back. That's a total of 109 transactions per month that I currently download.
Not only do I enter a similar amount of transactions by hand, but I reconcile each and every one of them with paper receipts / slips, manually reconciling the accounts.

My convention is:
- preliminary reconciled "x" means checked against the receipt;
- finally reconciled "X" means also checked against the monthly statement;
- "X" with a question mark in the memo field means I can remember it, and accept it as per the monthly statement, but could not find the receipt (when it finally surfaces, I clear the "?").

Have I mentioned all the investment accounts transactions? And I do a lot of trading around the edges...
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by t705cda »

I also use Quicken (2014) but only for investments tracking.

FYI, for those manually entering or using excel this is a macro I use to create and import a QIF file into Quicken. It saves me time and data entry errors.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Some other sources of conversion software are http://xl2qif.chez-alice.fr/ and https://www.propersoft.net/

Unfortunately Quicken's current data format (QDF) is proprietary. I'm not aware of any software that can convert QDFs into a format that other software can process. As a a result one has to export accounts in Quicken Interchange Format, set up securities manually, etc. This can be a tedious task which is why I've tried to avoid it for so long.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by pmj »

adrian2 wrote:
ig17 wrote:
adrian2 wrote:Because I keep it up-to-date with everything that happens in my bank accounts, credit card accounts ...
How exactly do you do that, if you don't keep track of the individual transactions?
I don't download them; I enter them by hand (as individual transactions).
To me, that makes it easier to follow what's going on, figure out if something is fishy etc.
That's exactly how I do it, and for exactly that reason.

I'm still with Q99. I'd be happy to pay a reasonable annual service charge to maintain download capacity across all accounts, because it speeds-up the process of checking those transactions, but I can live without it. I can still download TD chequing transactions!
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Took the plunge and purchased Quicken 2016 Home and Business. At least Intuit gave me a small discount ($20) as an existing owner.

Went to install the software this morning and found one new feature, the requirement to have an Intuit ID? as of Quicken 2014.
Intuit Canada wrote:The Intuit ID is a universal access ID for Quicken online services and product registration.
Not exactly sure why I need yet another ID to get between me and my financial institution, so I'm doing a bit of research on it before creating one. Unfortunately I haven't found a means to bypass Quicken 2016's insistence that I have one before it will complete the upgrade from Quicken 2013. Any ideas?
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by AltaRed »

I just shrugged and got an Intuit ID. I have pretty much resigned myself to having to subject myself to that kind of abuse for almost anything/eveything.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by ig17 »

I ran into a bug in Quicken 2016:

1. Download Amazon Visa transactions as QIF file.
2. Import QIF file in Quicken.

Bug: downloaded transactions list remains empty after the import, so you can't accept the new transactions.

I found the solution here:

https://qlc.intuit.com/questions/130896 ... sa-account
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by queerasmoi »

I bought Q16 a few weeks ago and couldn't sign in. Turns out the download they send you from the official store requires an upgrade but doesn't know how to upgrade itself until after you've signed in (which it can't do until it's upgraded!). Once I downloaded the patch everything was fine.

My verdict: Nothing looks substantially different. However now that I am earning income again I don't mind paying once every 3 years.
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Re: Quicken 2016 upgrade - feedback and comments

Post by bill2009 »

I'm still using quicken 2011 but it stopped downloading quotes a few months ago. I guess there's a 3 year and a 5 year "age out" limit or the 3 years is new. I do like getting quotes downloaded so I guess we'll spring for it although as I recall we had a lot of fuss and no great benefit when we went to 2011.

AHA: I have a copy of Q13 in my slush pile:
@peculiar_investor: Was/is your q13 still able to download quotes? I don't care about transactions.
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