7/12/18: An update from our CEO, Eric Dunn

Quicken Kathryn

Here's a message from our CEO, Eric Dunn:


I’m Eric Dunn, the CEO of Quicken Inc., writing to give you a progress update on several topics including our Quicken ID conversion, bank connectivity, product quality improvements, Customer Care, and Quicken for mobile and web.


 


Quicken ID


Last summer I wrote about the final step towards independence as a standalone company: the change from Intuit’s login system to the Quicken ID.  This change happened last fall.  Overall, customers tell us it went smoothly.  We did receive feedback that you were being asked to sign in too often. We have tuned the operation of the Quicken ID over the past few months so that the requests to sign in are considerably less frequent, while still providing strong security for your online activities.  I hope you have seen the difference!



Connectivity and Bank Downloads


Another area where we are making improvements is in bank connectivity.  Quicken currently accesses your financial institution data using a combination of two connection methods:Direct Connect and Express Web Connect (“EWC”, also called “Quicken Connect” on the Mac).  We are now beginning to work with banks to use an improved version of EWC that leverages server-to-server connections using the banks’ own sign in systems, with the objective of providing secure, reliable downloads. We are deploying this with our first bank partner,Capital One, this month (see the details here.) Over time, we expect to see this approach used more widely, and I am optimistic that this will increase the reliability of data downloads to Quicken.



Quality


We are also focusing on product quality.  With the shift to the membership model, we will continue to have new releases of Quicken each fall (Quicken 2019 coming soon!), but the improvements will already have been delivered to Members in our monthly releases (all members will always get the latest version of Quicken,including 2019 when available.)  In addition, our emphasis, particularly on the more mature Windows platform, has shifted from new features to making existing functionality work better.  Making Quicken work better involves smoothing out the user experience, improving performance (we have significantly sped up startup for Quicken for Mac and plan to do so for Quicken for Windows in the next few months), and, yes, fixing bugs. I believe this new approach has already enabled us to deliver the best Quicken versions ever, and we will continue to improve from here.



Customer Care


Although we hope that most customers won’t need to contact us for help with Quicken, if they do, we have a large and well-trained Customer Care team available to help.  We support our customers out of call centers in three locations: Tucson, Arizona; Boise,Idaho; and Guatemala City, Guatemala. All of our agents are equipped with modern cloud-based support technology including screen-share for all supported versions of Quicken.  With these capabilities, I am pleased to report that, in post-contact surveys, our customers tell us that we are currently providing the best-quality Care since we began these measurements almost a decade ago. 


A special note about Care: please be aware that companies other than Quicken Inc. often advertise support for Quicken, including in Google searches, and charge high prices for what our customers tell us is poor service.  Our own official Quicken care is available for FREE to every Quicken 2016, 2017 customer and subscription member (currently 2018) at www.quicken.com/support or (650) 250-1900.



What’s Next


Finally, a word about the future.  We understand that getting it right with Quicken for Windows and Quicken for Mac is the top priority for most of our customers.  But many of you have also told us that as your own use of technology shifts away from the desktop environment you need us to support new platforms.  We’ve been working on this and building it in way that makes cloud sync optional, so that customers who only want to store their Quicken data on the desktop can continue to do so.  At the end of this month we will release an all-new mobile app which works better, looks better, and does more than the existing app.  We also have a Beta testing progress on a web-based companion app, with functionality similar to the mobile app.  Our Beta testers tell us that it’s a winner!  We plan to release it to all Quicken Members later this year.





As you can see, we have been busy.  Our goal as a company is to make the experience of being a Quicken member great.  We’ve made progress; there’s more to do; we will keep working on it!   If you have feedback for us, I encourage you to provide feedback to this thread in our community.


 


Thank you for being a loyal customer!     


 

Unknown

Most of the improvements are just fine, but  being able , in the mac version, to adjust the print type face, size , font and style, isn't going to happen. Right?   Around here, there is a saying we use  when someone says they are working on it, have referred it and deep down inside we know that " I think you are pissing on my boots and telling me it is raining."   the guy you referred me to  essentially said it is a very low priority and probably never will be considered or worked on.   Wow.

Unknown

Thanks for the improvements. Can you expand to involve international accounts? I work in international business and am frequently abroad, yet there are few to no solutions to track personal finances. I'd like everything in one place.

cahwyguy

The major annoyance to me is the fact that updates require administrator access. I don't normally run with admin access (I'm a cybersecurity person), so that means I have to log out of everything, log in as administrator, update quicken, make sure it works, log out, log back in as me -- losing at least 1/2 hour of time. If you can make it so quicken doesn't require admin, that would be wonderful. Think carefully about what privileges Quicken requires -- and it really shouldn't require all that many.

lablover57

Please Please Please have thorough testing before you launch an update.

Unknown

All I ask is that when you do the "fixes" you list more details about what it is being fixed.  I have reported several issues that were "broke" during previous "upgrades" and with each update, I have to change my file to see if in fact any of my issues were fixed.  An example if this would be entering payments from the "Bills" tab under "Projected Balances", if you change any data while entering the transaction, it changes all future transactions meaning any conformation you put in those fields now follows the the next payment.  I have to just enter the transaction "with bad data" and then go my my register and change the transaction to the correct data.  in other words, twice the work to enter each transaction.

Unknown

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, bring the budget sync feature back to the app.  This feature has been disabled for almost two years now and so annoying!

Unknown

I used to get so frustrated with Quicken and my bank.  Not any more.  Quicken works great now!!  Becoming a member and receiving updates as released is the way to go.  Thank you!

Unknown

Tough room Eric,

I'm a user of Quicken way back to the darned near DOS days - using the Windows version these days. I'm a Home Builder/Semi IT guy.
 I can say that with a few blips along the way, your efforts to take Quicken from the less supported Intuit days to now are a real improvement. Quicken languished for too long under Intuit - IMHO. Certainly saved me having to learn Money.
I use Quicken for my personal and small company stuff, and Q-books for the major two businesses. My primary areas of frustration aren't the standard banking and credit unions downloads. Your team is getting that done.  It is the credit card groups.  I constantly have to manually update various card  accounts instead of getting them to work easily in a clean one step update.  The online computer help works well for my purposes-the people work is a bit hit and miss.
In general your team gets a 95% from this long time Quicken user.  Keep up the great work.

OldTimer

Unknown

Please update the windows version to support high resolution monitors.  The application has issues rendering causing latency.  Would also be great if Home and Business version had a native Mac application

Unknown

Good job thus far but there are a lot of Quicken alternatives out there. [Edited]. Sorry guys but there are viable choices out there other than Quicken. Maybe my opinion will change, but it is what it is.

Unknown

I was wondering if providing the ability to add accounts from companies like Acorns, Betterment, Stash, Stockpile, & Robinhood in to Quicken will happen soon. I really don't have a complete Financial picture because I cannot add these accounts into Quicken.

Unknown

Thanks for all of the updates but the most important update has yet to come. When will you port the Investment Performance Report that you have in the Windows version into the Mac version?

The investment numbers in the Portfolio view are OK but far from adequate. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE replicate your INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE REPORT from your Windows version to the Mac version. It is perfect and exactly what I need. Since moving from PC to Mac I have been unable to PROPERLY track the performance of my investments. When I discovered this I tried migrating back to Windows but found that the investment account do not port; so I am stuck.

I have no idea why an  INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE REPORT is not at the top of your priorities.

Thank you.

David

thecreator

The major annoyance to me is the fact that updates require administrator access. I don't normally run with admin access (I'm a cybersecurity person), so that means I have to log out of everything, log in as administrator, update quicken, make sure it works, log out, log back in as me -- losing at least 1/2 hour of time. If you can make it so quicken doesn't require admin, that would be wonderful. Think carefully about what privileges Quicken requires -- and it really shouldn't require all that many.

Hi @ cahwyguy ,

Right-click on the Installer and left-click Run as Administrator to install.

Unknown

I have been a loyal Quicken user for many years and since your transition my experience has not been a good one. I won't go into each issue but I will provide a link to my community post detailing my biggest issue. I was pleased at first with the response that I received after posting but it would seem that meant nothing. At one point, I was very excited to see in an update that the issue was mentioned yet let down when it was not fixed. It has been three months since I posted this and though your staff has acknowledged that it is a known issue, they do not seem to respond to status requests or seem to want to fix it. This bug has caused me and many others to pay the same bills multiple times therefore costing me more money and time than it's worth.

https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/bill-notifications-return-after-entering?utm_sou...

I'm sure you're aware that experiences like these lead to an unhappy customer base and bad reviews (of which I've written a few). I'd like to be able to go back to those and revise them with positive outcomes but I have yet to be able to do that. I hope that it happens before I find an alternative.

Unknown

I dumped Quicken when they would no long import a qfx file unless you paid for a subscription to connect with Quicken. I do not connect with Quicken in any way but they consider import as a connection activity because I had to connect to my credit card company to download the qfx file. That is BS. I now use Bantivity. It works great and allows imports without paying a subscription fee. Quicken will probably delete this post.

Unknown

Clearly the new communications method being rolled out can only be secure if both the server to server communication properly verifies identity and the quicken user to server connection also verifies identity.  Since nothing was said about how this will be achieved I cannot know if the new communication protocol is secure.  With state actors trying to disrupt our election I think it is reasonable to assume they will go after Quicken sooner or later.  Hopefully those who designed the new approach are aware of this and the potential liability of getting it wrong.

Unknown

On the issue of bank connectivity, one of your early upgrades to Q2018 stopped Direct Connect with my Bank of America. Your Customer Care rep told me the problem was with my bank (which was never true). He guided me in switching to Express Web which only allowed me to download transactions (NOT initiate payments and transfers). After speaking with Bank of America, I was able to come up with my own workaround until Quicken was able to fix its connectivity issue.

As any long time user of Quicken knows, your products and upgrades are released with little quality testing, and rely on your customer to alert you to the problem. Invariably your "Customer Care" feigns ignorance of the issue and blames someone else. This same thing happened in the Password Deletion Issue caused by an upgrade to an earlier Quicken version: initial denial of responsibility, inference of user error, then finally heralding a fix (which restored my access and transactions but still lost all the expense/income categorization history that made those transactions meaningful).

My advice to fellow users: back-up your data constantly, expect Quicken to not work as it did, then wait for the self-congratulatory fix! 

Unknown

Please Please Please have thorough testing before you launch an update.

i second that.

Unknown

been a user for 15 years now.  don't like the software and think the new changes were horrible but it's too hard to change to anything else (which i'm sure you're aware of)

Richard Alerboom

Thanks for Mac improvements so far, and I, for one, find the comments relative to Windows not needing new features refreshing. On the Mac, you need to get reports finished: Balance Sheet and Income Statement!

Dan18

Please Please Please have thorough testing before you launch an update.

3rd that - I have had significant problems with the last 2 updates and have never had an update issue in using Quicken for over 10 years.

Another desired feature would be the ability to share Quicken in the household e.g with my wife on her pc so we can both use it. It is not really feasible at this time.

Unknown

I have not used quicken in almost a year due to the fact that it would run fine, then stop being able to connect to my bank for weeks. Then it would connect and duplicate everything. Was spending more time trying to fix everything, I’ll just use my banks online system unless there are major improvements.

Unknown

I am a long-time Mac user who used the Mac version of Quicken before Intuit discontinued it and then came out with a vastly inferior version for Mac.  So for a decade now I've been using the Windows version in Parallels emulation.  I would love a full-featured Mac version that has everything the Windows version has and can import my Windows version data files.  Is this a pipe dream or will it ever happen?

Unknown

I have been a quicken user since 2001.  I change the version every 3 years so I can keep downloading transactions from my bank.  I only use the very basic features, always in my laptop, never in other platforms.  I would prefer that Quicken offers a basic bare bones subscription service that allows me to download transactions from my banks and credit card companies, to be used only in Windows PC, but do not require me to pay for expensive development the company is incurring by offering phone and tablet compatibility formats.

Unknown

Quicken has become hopeless. I can no longer reach any of my bank accounts to write checks with.
Customer care was useless and I have given up in frustration after 20 years of using Quicken.

Martin Seligman

Unknown

Thanks for Mac improvements so far, and I, for one, find the comments relative to Windows not needing new features refreshing. On the Mac, you need to get reports finished: Balance Sheet and Income Statement!

And INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE REPORTING. Investment reporting on Portfolio view is pathetic. Bring over the Quicken Windows  investment performance report.

Aaron Allen

Budget App on Mobile Needed ASAP. I'm tired of using Everydollar and having to copy data between multiple apps.

Unknown

[Edited]

I am a dissatisfied QM user. I was happy with QW but so much functionality missing the Mac version and I cannot migrate back.

Intuit are deaf to my requests to bring the Investment Performance Report over from QW to QM. So after 25 years as a Quicken user, its tome to look for an alternative.

Unknown

All I ask is that when you do the "fixes" you list more details about what it is being fixed.  I have reported several issues that were "broke" during previous "upgrades" and with each update, I have to change my file to see if in fact any of my issues were fixed.  An example if this would be entering payments from the "Bills" tab under "Projected Balances", if you change any data while entering the transaction, it changes all future transactions meaning any conformation you put in those fields now follows the the next payment.  I have to just enter the transaction "with bad data" and then go my my register and change the transaction to the correct data.  in other words, twice the work to enter each transaction.

Couldn't agree more!

Andrew King

Thank you for your update on planned upgrades your customers should be expecting. 

I was a 5-year Quicken user who ceased using the product at the end of 2017 and have since opted to use Intuit Quickbooks for small business instead.  What started as a test trial has led me to realize that I am willing to pay more for less functionality as long as ALL the functionality is available via the cloud.  So many businesses and individuals are moving away from self-hosted solutions and I feel that the first personal finance software that truly requires zero local installation will dominate the market.  

My question is whether Quicken users who have remained loyal to the product for years can ever expect a full-feature cloud solution that would not require any sort of installation on a local device?  Having a cloud based application is great as you stated in your e-mail, but if functionality will be limited to what we have seen on mobile applications I feel this is not much to get excited about.  Is this a direction that Quicken is moving towards in the long term?


Thank you,
Andrew