I Want to Buy Quicken but...

financialblonde

I have a Mac and a home business. Obviously the home business version isn't for the Mac. So I want to buy the regular version because I'm sure the multiple accounts are just fine for every account I have anyway. My biggest question is that I want to use it on the iPhone, iPad, and the Mac. I would prefer to keep the data file on my own cloud or machine but I understand I can't do that. But the thing is, what if there is no service where I am, do I enter a transaction on the device I'm on and it automatically enters it on the data file when I get to the internet? What if I enter it in two devices? What if I have 3 different banks and I get a charge on something? Does it automatically enter that charge or do I have to do it when I remember it? What if I enter the info into my quicken app on the phone and then the bank app does it too? Do they sync together and merge? Thanks

financialblonde

This is kind of an RTDM thing, isn't it?

jacobs

Your Quicken data file lives on your Mac, period. But there is a cloud service Quicken offers where you can sync a portion of your data with their cloud server, which you can then access via a web interface and/or a mobile app. you can't do everything in the mobile version, but you can view/edit/enter transactions. The next time you run Quicken on your desktop machines, the data you have update in the cloud server will sync to your Mac. If you have your bank(s) or credit card company(ies) set up to download transactions, then that will happen on your desktop computer and in the cloud data, so you shouldn't need to manually enter those transactions. If you do manually enter a transaction which then downloads from a financial institution, Quicken may auto-match them, or you can simply drag one onto the other and manually merge them.

I would be remiss if I didn't note that one of the areas of Quicken most prone to problems is this cloud syncing process; many people use it without issue, but some people run into out-of-sync day which can create a  mess and require reverting to a prior backup. I don't use the cloud sync for this reason, and many of the longtime users here don't as well. But if that's a feature you need, it's there to be used. Just make sure you maintain copious, reliable backups just in case of a problem.

UKR

If you're thinking about a business accounting software package that can be used by multiple users or shared across multiple devices ("iPhone, iPad, and the Mac"), then Quicken is not for you. Quicken, neither the Mac nor the Windows version, support file sharing or multiple users.
Consider the competition instead: Quickbooks Online or one of the other Quickbooks versions. https://quickbooks.intuit.com/