Mac version still hopeless.

Len

They've upgraded it considerably, but it still falls way short of the Windows version. After setting up from a Windows backup file and updating, there are accounts still out of balance. Apparently their help desk has to view my financial information to help (which I really don't understand the need for and will never do) or I have to reconcile line by line going back 24 years in some cases, or put in a fake transaction. I also don't see where it has the option for an investment checking account, or a cash forecasting graph. Ugh...

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @Len, 

Thanks for reaching out to the Quicken Community, though I do apologize that you are experiencing these issues. 

Before I can further assist you, I require some more information. Which financial institution(s) are you experiencing the incorrect balance with? What is the connection method? You can see the connection method by navigating to Settings > Downloads > Connection Type. Are you receiving any error codes or messages? 

I look forward to your response!

jacobs

@Len Quicken Mac is by no means hopeless, but I understand your frustration with your conversion making it feel a bit hopeless. Some people's conversions from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac are pretty much right on the money; others find some account balances off and need to do some troubleshooting to get things back in alignment. Quicken Support can help, but you're saying you're unwilling to let them connect to view your Mac, where they cold examine the conversion log files, search for placeholder transactions, and other steps to try to make things right. That's fine… but then it means you need to do the digging.

You shouldn't need to "reconcile line by line going back 24 years" though. Pick one account where the balance is off. (I'd start with a banking account — cash, credit card, checking — if one of those is off, just because there are fewer issues than with investment accounts. Next, do you still have access to your Windows computer? If so, check the account balance at year-end at, say, five year intervals going back to the beginning; then compare to Quicken Mac on the same dates, and you'll quickly be able to pin down where things go wrong. Sometimes, it's as simple as a wrong opening balance transaction; once corrected, you may be in balance. But if you find the old balances are correct but something's off between, say, 5 and 10 years ago, then check the balances of each of those year ends to determine which year things go wrong. Then check quarterly in that year, and so on, until you find where there's a discrepancy. This process sounds daunting, but pinpointing where the two Quickens diverge should only take you a few minutes using this approach. If you don't have your Windows computer, then how far back do you have bank statements? Use the same approach to try to zero in on where the two programs diverge.

Len

Thanks all for your comments. To be fair, I like the look and feel of the Mac version. I started from scratch again (3rd time) and got it to match up. Deal killers for me with the Mac version are not having the option to "show cash in a checking account" in an investment account, and I don't see tax planner anywhere. Also not sure I see specific lot tracking for investments. They should call it Quicken lite...

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jacobs

Len said:

Also not sure I see specific lot tracking for investments.

It's there. You can see your individual lots a few ways. In the Portfolio if you set the filters to view by Portfolio Value and by Security. Click on the ">" icon to the left of any security to expand it to show the individual lots. When you have a Sell transaction, there is a "Specify Lots" button at the bottom of the window, which will open a window to specify the number of sales sold from any of the lots. 

Len

No Tax Planner, no cash account for investment, no Quicken Mac for me...

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jacobs

@Len I've only been a Quicken Mac user, and have never used Quicken Windows. I've briefly looked at the Quicken Support page for the Tax Planner, and I'd be interested to know what you do with the Tax Planner that is essential for you.

Many of the things I saw listed under the Tax Planner can be done in Quicken Mac pretty easily, even though it isn't grouped together under a Tax Planner menu item. Quicken Mac does have a Tax Schedule report to see all the tax-related information for your taxes, so I'm curious what other functionality in the Windows Tax Planner you consider important enough that it's a deal-breaker for not using Quicken Mac.

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jacobs

@DocGer I wasn't suggesting the Tax Planner wasn't useful or helpful. I wanted to understand what it provides that Quicken users find essential.

So is the Tax Planner part of the software updated at the start of every year to keep up with the annual changes in tax rates and tax laws? I use TurboTax for calculating my estimated taxes, and there's a lot it needs to know to properly calculate our tax situation. And even then, there's a fair amount of guesswork I need to do because neither Quicken nor TurboTax can guesstimate in advance what capital gains and dividends I'll have in order to calculate my estimated taxes. And yes, there are some things I need to calculate manually, but they're pretty much a once-a-year thing, and I've been doing it that way forever, so I guess it doesn't bother me.

Len

The value I get from Quicken is forecasting:

"jacobs" - There are other, free, ways to track bank spending and investments. Tax planner lets you forecast and play what-if, reports don't.

"DocGer" - I did read your comments, but have not figured out a way to be able to use the cash balance in an investment account together with my other bank accounts in the Projected Balances section of Bills and Income.

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Chris_QPW

I suffer the same as @jacobs in reverse, as in I have never used Quicken Mac, only Quicken Windows, but I do pay a bit of attention to what @jacobs has posted and as such have some idea of what is going on.
I'm sure I will be corrected if I get this wrong.

Quicken Mac doesn't have a linked check account for an investment account, but from what I understand it doesn't need one.

Why would Quicken Windows need a linked checking account?
Let me first state that no matter what is at the financial institution, the linked checking account isn't downloaded as a checking account.  What is actually happening is that Quicken is downloading the investment account data, if this option is on, and Quicken gets a "cash transaction" it pushes that transaction to the linked checking account.  In other words, the linked checking account is a "virtual account".  Now why would this be needed?  Because of the fixed format of the investment accounts in Quicken Windows.  There are actually some "checking transactions" in the investment registers, but they either don't work or are cumbersome to use.  By pushing the cash transactions to a virtual checking account that allows the user to deal with them in a format that is more familiar and easier to use.

From what I understand Quicken Mac's investment accounts allow "checking transactions" in the investment account, and as such don't really need the virtual linked checking account.

On the Tax Planner, I find it to be a double edge sword.  I have had it cost me a penalty because I didn't understand all of its limitations at the time.  Like any "tax estimator" it works well for some people's situation and not so well for others.  Personally, I use my tax program for trying to estimate things like my estimated taxes.  One has to realize two things about it.  It was created in the late 1990s and other than updating the tax category tables it basically hasn't changed since then.

The Lifetime Planner (which used to be called the retirement planner which is more accurate of what most people use it for) most of it was created in the 1990s too and suffers from the same kind of not being properly updated.  It still uses 70 1/2 for the RMD date for instance.  Having a lot of features in Quicken Windows is a double edge sword in that a lot of those features don't get updated when they should.

On the Projected Balance graph, I see some people trying to use it for long term planning.  It was never designed for that, and I can certainly see how it would fail in that role.  Its main purpose as far as I can tell is for what I use it for, cashflow over the next month or so.

Len

> @Chris_QPW said:
> I suffer the same as @jacobs in reverse, as in I have never used Quicken Mac, only Quicken Windows, but I do pay a bit of attention to what @jacobs has posted and as such have some idea of what is going on.
> I'm sure I will be corrected if I get this wrong.
>
> Quicken Mac doesn't have a linked check account for an investment account, but from what I understand it doesn't need one.
>
> Why would Quicken Windows need a linked checking account?
> Let me first state that no matter what is at the financial institution, the linked checking account isn't downloaded as a checking account.  What is actually happening is that Quicken is downloading the investment account data, if this option is on, and Quicken gets a "cash transaction" it pushes that transaction to the linked checking account.  In other words, the linked checking account is a "virtual account".  Now why would this be needed?  Because of the fixed format of the investment accounts in Quicken Windows.  There are actually some "checking transactions" in the investment registers, but they either don't work or are cumbersome to use.  By pushing the cash transactions to a virtual checking account that allows the user to deal with them in a format that is more familiar and easier to use.
>
> From what I understand Quicken Mac's investment accounts allow "checking transactions" in the investment account, and as such don't really need the virtual linked checking account.
>
> On the Tax Planner, I find it to be a double edge sword.  I have had it cost me a penalty because I didn't understand all of its limitations at the time.  Like any "tax estimator" it works well for some people's situation and not so well for others.  Personally, I use my tax program for trying to estimate things like my estimated taxes.  One has to realize two things about it.  It was created in the late 1990s and other than updating the tax category tables it basically hasn't changed since then.
>
> The Lifetime Planner (which used to be called the retirement planner which is more accurate of what most people use it for) most of it was created in the 1990s too and suffers from the same kind of not being properly updated.  It still uses 70 1/2 for the RMD date for instance.  Having a lot of features in Quicken Windows is a double edge sword in that a lot of those features don't get updated when they should.
>
> On the Projected Balance graph, I see some people trying to use it for long term planning.  It was never designed for that, and I can certainly see how it would fail in that role.  Its main purpose as far as I can tell is for what I use it for, cashflow over the next month or so.

Mac version should allow use of the "checking transactions" in the investment account along with bank accounts for Projected Balances, which would take care of my need. Tax Planner is a convenience and has been updated (ie, Qualified Dividends). The challenge for me is most of what Quicken does is available elsewhere for free, so without these features it's not worth it.

jacobs

Len said:

Mac version should allow use of the "checking transactions" in the investment account along with bank accounts for Projected Balances

It does the former, but not the latter. That is, it does allow the use of banking transactions in an investment account. When transactions in an investment account are Type=Payment/Deposit, all the regular fields for a checking register become available, and it works exactly like a cash/checking account. 

However, it does not do Projected Balances for investment accounts. I believe this is largely because while investment accounts allow scheduled banking-type transactions (described in the paragraph above) they do not allow scheduled investment-type transactions (e.g. you can't estimate your quarterly dividends by putting in a schedule dividend transaction). You can add your vote to the Idea thread requesting this feature. Because there are no scheduled future investment transactions, the developers did not build the investment register to show projected balances. And you can also add your vote for the separate Idea thread requesting this feature. 

Len

I found another shortcoming...QW uses the balance in a credit card account for forecasting bills, Mac does not. I do have scheduled dividend transactions in Windows, and have successfully created them in Mac, which also does allow you to forecast balances in Investment accounts. And yes I put an idea in the community site. If all they do is let you track banking and investments, why pay for it? I can get it from my bank, my investment firm, any number of websites for free...

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jacobs

@Len I'm a curious about how you created a scheduled dividend transaction in Quicken Mac. Of course, you can enter live transactions as far into the future as you want, but to my knowledge, there is no way to create a scheduled  investment-type transaction. If you click on an existing Dividend transaction, the menu choice for Transactions > Schedule Selected Transaction is grayed out. Similarly, selecting a dividend transaction and clicking the Schedule icon in the bottom menu bar shows Schedule Selected Transaction is grayed out. And if you select the menu option for Transactions > New Scheduled Transaction, it only creates bill or income transactions.

If all they do is let you track banking and investments, why pay for it?

For me, Quicken Mac is very helpful in pulling all my financial accounts, and my financial history, together in one place. For instance, if I want to find when I purchased an appliance, I can find that in seconds in Quicken, even though I don't remember which credit card I may have used at the time; bank/credit card websites won't let you search for old transactions, won't let you add notes or memos as to what you purchased, and require that you know which account you used for whatever you're looking for. If I want to see my overall portfolio of savings, see how my investments are allocated among different types of secures, see my appreciated gains in taxable accounts, and more, Quicken lets me do that in ways I can't, or can't easily see, or can't see at all, on my brokerage sites. 

In any case, you seem pretty convinced that Quicken Mac doesn't meet your needs — and there's nothing wrong with that — so I won't keep replying. 

Len

I really want to give this a chance but...yet another annoyance...Mac version doesn't import all security prices from Windows. And when you go to import from a file exported from Windows version it won't open saying wrong format!!!!