Please support import and export of CSV file format

cyue

Hello Quicken team,

I was a Quicken mac user for many years till Quicken was reworked in order to move to the newer Mac platform many years. I went with other solutions. Now I want to come back to Quicken and have signed up for the subscription. One thing I am surprised to find out, that Quicken is still holding onto its own QFX format. I believe that Quicken's benefits are (which is why I finally found the time to move back) in the functionalities in managing and presenting data that are well suited for managing home finances. The import and export of the data should be platform and application agnostic, that should be easy and seamless for users.

I have also found that many institutions are no longer support QFX format, which makes entering transactions a painful and wasteful part of using Quicken.

I really enjoy the product so far, being able to easily see my budget and track progress that I have not been able to do well with other solutions. And the visual presentation is overly pleasing. I found a lot of features much more powerful than the Quicken Mac I've used prior to this generation.

I am pleading with you to support the import and export of CSV file. I think you will make a wonderful product and help users instead of forcing us to go out of our way just to be able to get to the core benefits of your product.

NotACPA

Your request ain't never going to happen. It would cut into Q's income too greatly.

Ps56k2

Quicken Windows offers Import/Export in the QIF format

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20398256#Comment_20398256

Actually, I don't think this has anything to do with Quicken Inc's income. First off, it is Quicken Inc that pays Intuit for connection services, they don't get any income from the various downloading connection methods. So, if anyone was going to be losing money it would be Intuit. And there could be some kind of requirements in the contract between Quicken Inc and Intuit, but I doubt that too.

But what I do think is happening is that they just don't want to support it because CSV only states that columns of data will be separated by commas. It doesn't state the exact format of those columns/data. And they probably don't want to take on another data format that would have the users bugging them about how they couldn't map the CSV data correctly. QFX on the other hand is standardized and has none this complication. On top of this, they have tons of requests for features, and this would probably be much lower on the priority list.

Note there are CSV to QFX converts. You can search the Internet for them.

As for exporting a CSV file, Quicken Mac already supports that. You export from a report that has the transactions.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20398289#Comment_20398289

They have made it very clear that they don't want to support this old format in Quicken Mac, the most they are willing to do (and have already done) is import a QIF file to start a new data file. Basically, this allows for transferring from other personal finance software and that is as far as they want to go with that.

ShanV

Claiming Quicken "Supports" CSV is a stretch. They support importing to a newly created account via legacy Mint CSV format which then requires that you move transactions to the account you actually wanted them in. It's a terrible workflow and an extremely limited file format.

Chris_QPW

@ShanV no one in this thread claimed that Quicken supports CSV.

This "idea" is one to vote on to ask Quicken Inc to put it in.

I don't think there is anyone that has claimed that being able to import a Mint CSV file is "supporting importing CSV files".

All the statements about other that the original idea are statements of why we don't think Quicken Inc will ever put that feature in.

I'm not sure why the idea includes "Export CSV" since as far as I know Quicken Mac already does that.

There was a statement that Quicken Windows supports export/importing of QIF files, but that is completely different, and also not going to be put into Quicken Mac. And Quicken Mac can import QIF files, but only in a very limited way.

It is quite clear to me that they don't want to support import transactions in either of these formats. The only reason they have "partial" importing of them is to get new customers, as in import data from other personal finance software.

proshko

It's BS …. I've read lots of comments about the support hassle for Quicken if they did provided a converter. Well, don't give any support. I'd rather have a converter that I had to wrestle with than no converter at all. Propersoft used to be a great solution, but is no longer economical for users that only have to do a conversion a few times per year ….

Chris_QPW

 Well, don't give any support.

Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?

I can just see the comments for that one.

"Here is the new feature, we hope you like it, but if you have any problems with it don't call us."

Yeah, every customer will just love that.

jacobs

It's BS …. I've read lots of comments about the support hassle for Quicken if they did provided a converter. Well, don't give any support. I'd rather have a converter that I had to wrestle with than no converter at all.

@proshko I will disagree that it's BS. As Chris said, it's just not practical to have a feature within the product and then tell customers who have mismatched fields in an import and messed up their data file: "Well, we don't provide support for that type of import, so if you messed up your data import and your Quicken data file is a mess now, all we can suggest is that you revert to an older backup and try to move forward from there." You might rather have an "at your own risk" import feature, and you might be technically savvy enough to create a CSV import map to align the fields in a CSV file with the fields in Quicken Mac, including flipping positive and negative values where needed. But it's a 100% certainty that they would field support calls — and draw scathing criticism — from users whose years or decades of data got messed up due to user error with a misconfigured CSV import. Or who downloaded transactions from a financial institution and imported some CSV transactions, resulting in duplicates which QFX prevents. Or who imported a CSV file with dates that partly overlapped a date range they had already imported, creating duplicate transactions which QFX prevents.

Of course I understand why some users would really like to be able to import CSV files if their financial institutions provide no other connectivity or QFX download files; I just think its would be a land mine for Quicken, as well as for users who would mess something up and want/expect Quicken to help them fix it.

And s you noted, there are third-party data converters available for users who really need this import functionality which Quicken chooses not to support for the aforementioned reasons.

Perhaps if many more financial institutions stopped supporting QFX exports and Quicken connectivity, Quicken will have to adapt and tackle this issue, but I don't see it changing in the near future because of the issues involved.