Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by GreatLaker »

AltaRed wrote:I am on Office 365 Personal and understand the subscription limitations, but I buy it for the One Drive cloud storage that comes with it. It is worth it for the $70/yr. The problem with the new Quicken model is the 'sticker shock' attached to it. I'd have no problem at $30/yr.
That puts it into perspective. $70/yr for Ofc 365 including Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook, plus 1TB of cloud storage, vs. Quicken Home&Business for $90/yr. The market for Quicken might be smaller (but huge installed base), and it must be customized somewhat for the Cdn market, but still Quicken's new pricing is high in comparison.

Similar to AR, I'd likely buy it at $30, but not $90. I really like all the historical tracking and easy reports and charts from Quicken.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Quicken's CEO, Eric Dunn, has made an Official Response to peoples' comments about the move to a subscription model.

To see the comments to Mr Dunn's post you'll need to click "View all 97 replies and continue this conversation" and then go to page 4 of the thread.

So far the comments are considerably less than positive.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

I appreciate the efforts of the Quicken team to be engaged in the discussion and the recent post by Eric Dunn, Quicken CEO. And to Bylo for keeping us updated on FWF and the BH forum.

That said, I'm not at all encouraged by their response and tend to agree with most of the comments that have been posted in response. Without a doubt I'll be adding my voice to the comments after I've had some time to collect my thoughts so that I don't reply in four letters haste.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by adrian2 »

Descartes wrote:If you enter your data manually then what is the tangible value that Quicken provides you versus a bespoke spreadsheet?
Not trolling just a genuine question from someone who has never used Quicken or the like.
I should have known better than to respond (sigh)...
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

Picking up on Bylo's link, the following is what I just wrote to the CEO Eric Dunn
I have been a Canadian user of Quicken since the beginning of 1995. Best I can recall, I have upgraded to the most recent version of Quicken every 3 years, i.e. the Service Period. I understand the trend towards subscription based products and while I don't personally like it, i.e. functionality does not change enough to warrant it, my primary objection is the pricing of your subscription model. It is a steep (not modest) increase in pricing for those on a 3 year cycle.

As an example, I subscribe to the Microsoft Office 365 Personal software suite for USD$69.95 per year. With that, I get a suite of widely used software programs AND 1TB of One Drive cloud storage. The cloud storage component alone makes that worthwhile. You would take a lot of the anger out of your business model change with competitive pricing, e.g. $30/year or so. Without that, you will drive subscribers away, moving to alternatives that, while not necessarily currently as complete and sophisticated as Quicken, will eventually pick up the slack over time from disgruntled Quicken users. Don't be greedy.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Shakespeare »

adrian2 wrote:
Descartes wrote:If you enter your data manually then what is the tangible value that Quicken provides you versus a bespoke spreadsheet?
Not trolling just a genuine question from someone who has never used Quicken or the like.
I should have known better than to respond (sigh)...
If you don't do much trading and don't have a non-registered or business account a simple spreadsheet may be sufficient. [Records? It's an RRSP/RRIF; I don't need no steenking records. :lol:]
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by adrian2 »

Shakespeare wrote:If you don't do much trading and don't have a non-registered or business account a simple spreadsheet may be sufficient. [Records? It's an RRSP/RRIF; I don't need no steenking records. :lol:]
1. I (still) do lots of trading.
2. I do have a large non-registered account, together with accounts for other family members.
3. I do have a CCPC TDDI account.
4. I find immensely valuable the bank & credit card bookkeeping provided by Quicken (again, I manage accounts for a handful of family members, with many accounts for each).
5. (Related to #4) To me personally, the organized view of upcoming bill payments and income due, with customized reminders for each of them is again very useful.
6. Selecting from the plethora of predefined reports and graphs, coupled with the ability to create an ad-hoc one with a few clicks and parameter definitions, is used again and again.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Shakespeare »

I was aware of your position. But it does not apply to all of us here, particularly those who are light traders.

I basically need three things, each of which is provided by a Lotus spreadsheet:

1. What is my portfolio value today and the asset allocation?

2. What is my rolling 12-month delta? If it's positive, I'm fine; if it's negative, I may have to cut spending.

3. How much am I spending and on what?

I recognize Quicken would do all 3 spreadsheets, but my Lotus data goes back to 1989 and Lotus still works in W10.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by ModeratorW »

As previously stated upthread, please restrict your comments here to the issues surrounding Quicken 2017. There is another thread (alternatives) to argue and debate alternatives to Quicken.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Shakespeare »

So split it and rejoin.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

AltaRed wrote:
I have been a Canadian user of Quicken since the beginning of 1995. Best I can recall, I have upgraded to the most recent version of Quicken every 3 years, i.e. the Service Period. I understand the trend towards subscription based products and while I don't personally like it, i.e. functionality does not change enough to warrant it, my primary objection is the pricing of your subscription model. It is a steep (not modest) increase in pricing for those on a 3 year cycle.

As an example, I subscribe to the Microsoft Office 365 Personal software suite for USD$69.95 per year. With that, I get a suite of widely used software programs AND 1TB of One Drive cloud storage. The cloud storage component alone makes that worthwhile. You would take a lot of the anger out of your business model change with competitive pricing, e.g. $30/year or so. Without that, you will drive subscribers away, moving to alternatives that, while not necessarily currently as complete and sophisticated as Quicken, will eventually pick up the slack over time from disgruntled Quicken users. Don't be greedy.
Actually got a call back from a lady in the 'office of the president' as followup on my message. Re-emphasized to them to price competitively and not get greedy or they will lose subscriber base. Angering users as they have is not good for business.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Hogwild »

Hoping Intuit/Quicken/Quickbooks won't be greedy is like hoping Microsoft will go open source. I just don't see it happening. Ever.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Hogwild wrote:Hoping Intuit/Quicken/Quickbooks won't be greedy is like hoping Microsoft will go open source. I just don't see it happening. Ever.
Just in case you missed the news from last year, ​Intuit sells Quicken unit to H.I.G. Capital | ZDNet or Intuit sells Quicken to private equity firm in management buyout | Computerworld so Intuit and Quicken are now separate. Both articles provide some good background on what's happening with the new subscription model roll-out.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Wallace »

CROCKD wrote:
Wallace wrote:I downloaded KMyMoney and have imported the qif file generated by Quicken.
I have been thinking of also doing this as a backup for when or if Quicken 2011 does not work anymore. I have always manually entered my data.
Let's know how KMyMoney works out.
I've spent several days playing with it. If I were starting out from scratch I would definitely consider it rather than Quicken, but I have 20 years worth of data in Quicken and the time and effort needed to put that all in KMyMoney is not worth it for me. I produced and imported a QIF file from present data and it gave me 356 errors that would need correcting.
Besides, I'm retired now and no longer have dozens of bank entries to download. So I'm going for Adrian's solution, will keep my 2014 version and download manually. I already do all the investment tracking manually anyway. That way my data will stay in the same format until I take the one-way magical mystery tour.

Also - I'll be able to come to the FWF beer bashes with all the money I save. :beer: :thumbsup:
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by crimsondr »

I just looked at the Quicken USA site and it doesn't appear it's a subscription model anymore? The US price is now $109.99 whereas before I remember it being less than the Canadian version. However, the Canadian version is still subscription based.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

crimsondr wrote:I just looked at the Quicken USA site and it doesn't appear it's a subscription model anymore? The US price is now $109.99 whereas before I remember it being less than the Canadian version. However, the Canadian version is still subscription based.
Quicken has not yet gone to subscription model in the USA, and just started in Canada with that model for the 2017 version. They are using Canada as a test bed before they decide their USA way forward. They have said as much.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by crimsondr »

AltaRed wrote:
crimsondr wrote:I just looked at the Quicken USA site and it doesn't appear it's a subscription model anymore? The US price is now $109.99 whereas before I remember it being less than the Canadian version. However, the Canadian version is still subscription based.
Quicken has not yet gone to subscription model in the USA, and just started in Canada with that model for the 2017 version. They are using Canada as a test bed before they decide their USA way forward. They have said as much.
Oops my mistake. And here I was excited that they changed their minds.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

That's the whole point of the Bylo's post and the links he provided. If you have an opinion/comment, let Quicken know by voting and/or commenting on their forum. Hopefully we can get them to change their minds.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

From the Quicken discussion forum, Quicken Inc should reverse its decision to change to a subscription that makes the user's data read-only if they stop paying
Eric Dunn, Quicken CEO wrote:Getting to a single model-year is particularly important: for customers, it means that you will always be on the latest and best version of Quicken without ever having to go through an upgrade process;
My reply there (and here): If that's the message that Quicken thinks they are getting from customers, then I would suggest they need to re-read this whole discussion again. They've missed the point entirely.

Bylo has also been very busy on the Quicken forum raising many very good points, yet Quicken seems tone deaf to all our voices/concerns.

It's looking more and more that Quicken 2016 will be my forever release. I'd rather do manual transaction entry and give in to Quicken's unfortunate change in direction.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

I am pretty sure the CEO knows exactly what users are talking about but have made a 'firm' corporate decision to follow Microsoft's business model for Office software. The talk I had with the lady from the President's office understood completely....and I re-emphasized that if they insisted on moving to that model, then it needed to be cost competitive or users would move elsewhere and there would be incentives for other software developers to fully develop a competing product. I emphasized that greed can be harmful to business health.

I doubt very much they will change given I suspect their purchase price from Intuit was premised on this business model. Lots of folk will thus stay with Quicken 2016 or earlier.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Yabbut ... Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud have been brought up repeatedly as examples of "everyone" moving to a subscription model. But that argument is seriously flawed. They are both largely targeted at the business/professional market, where subscription models as a cost of doing business are common. Both also continue to offer one-time purchase of the product without any "expiry" of functionality.

Quicken is a consumer product. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know of any other consumer software product that has adopted the subscription model.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

I am not defending the model. Only that Quicken appears insistent on moving to that model...and as I said earlier, probably part of their price justification for the purchase from Intuit. Smell something like those sleazy drug company extortions of last year?
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

AltaRed wrote:I am not defending the model
I know. I don't think many are other than Eric Dunn et al. at Quicken.

Although they've given us a platform to express our views and have somewhat engaged in the discussion, I'm just frustrated with their approach on this in particular and their treatment of the Canadian user base in general.

For example, I'm still trying to annoyed about the Quicken lack of release notes for Canadian versions of Quicken and the fact they a) won't answer and b) closed the topic and marked it answered.
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by crimsondr »

Peculiar_Investor wrote:From the Quicken discussion forum, Quicken Inc should reverse its decision to change to a subscription that makes the user's data read-only if they stop paying
Eric Dunn, Quicken CEO wrote:Getting to a single model-year is particularly important: for customers, it means that you will always be on the latest and best version of Quicken without ever having to go through an upgrade process;
My reply there (and here): If that's the message that Quicken thinks they are getting from customers, then I would suggest they need to re-read this whole discussion again. They've missed the point entirely.

Bylo has also been very busy on the Quicken forum raising many very good points, yet Quicken seems tone deaf to all our voices/concerns.

It's looking more and more that Quicken 2016 will be my forever release. I'd rather do manual transaction entry and give in to Quicken's unfortunate change in direction.
So in 3 years I won't even be able to download an ofx file from my bank and import that into Quicken?
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Re: Quicken 2017 [Caution about upgrading]

Post by AltaRed »

Even with existing versions of Quicken, downloading ceases to function after 3 years of issue, circa about May I think. Quicken 2015 will stop circa May 2018 and Quicken 2016 in May 2019 I think. Welcome to software monopolies.

Manual inputs still function though.
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