Mac version's Investments features are lacking compared to Windows [Edited]

Alena

I've used Quicken Canada for Windows for 20 years to track my investments. Now I bought an Apple Mac laptop as the box is much better quality. I converted the Quicken file from Windows to Quicken Mac. What a rude awakening when I (just) converted the Quicken file from Windows to Mac!

There is little to no categorization for stocks. In Windows, there are multiple categories attached to a stock entry, and I could edit them myself, and then run reports by category on the whole portfolio, i.e. with multiple accounts according to my own customization per portfolio. There were multiple predefined portfolios in Windows I could use - and I could customize those. And that's not all, I could see the history of my portfolio(s) some 20 years back when I first started using Quicken, as well as the total change in Market Value across all my accounts. Come on, Quicken, how many investors have a single investment account?!

With the improvements over time in my brokerage account at BMO Investorline, I now get better tools than what Quicken is offering through the Mac version. I would have to go back to Windows but I will not do that. So I have just reset my Automatic subscription renewal in my Quicken account to no. [Removed - Rant]

My subscription expires in August 2024. Should Quicken Mac catch up to Quicken Windows, fully, I will not walk. But I doubt it.

jacobs

@Alena The investment tracking tools in Quicken Mac are clearly not at a level comparable to Quicken Windows. There's a long list of feature requests in the Product Ideas section of this forum. The good news is that the developers do chip away at the list bit by bit; the bad news is that the progress is not nearly as fast as everyone would wish.

But there are several investment features which the developers have marked as "Planned" — meaning they have committed to implementing them, and have allocated time for the work on their calendar. And among the 10 or so currently "Planned" investment features is allowing user customization of asset classes — so there's reason to expect you might see that materialize sometime later this year. (They never announce what is scheduled to arrive when, because development sometimes runs into delays/complexities causing the schedule to shift.) There are about another dozen investment feature requests marked as "Under Consideration", which typically means the developers haven't rejected the request but haven't yet assigned implementation a firm slot on their schedule.

I could see the history of my portfolio(s) some 20 years back when I first started using Quicken, as well as the total change in Market Value across all my accounts. Come on, Quicken, how many investors have a single investment account?!

This is currently do-able in Quicken Mac, but perhaps you haven't discovered it yet. Currently, all investment reporting is done via the Portfolio screen rather than as saved reports in the Reports area of the program, as you may be used to in Quicken Windows. (Being able to create and save investment reports is the investment feature request with the second-highest number of votes, so I suspect they will tackle this at some point, but probably not in the short-term future.)

Take some time to explore the Portfolio screen if you haven't already, as some of the features are a little hidden or unintuitive. For instance, you can click on one account in the left sidebar and click on Portfolio to see the history of that one account, but you can also see the combined investments in any or all of your accounts. In the left sidebar, clicking the Brokerage or Retirement subheadings, or the Investing main heading, and cthen clicking Portfolio will show you those groups of accounts or all your investment accounts.

Next, experiment with the filters above the graph, because they allow a lot of customized reporting. Switch the first filter between Performance and Portfolio Value and note that different columns show up in the table. Click the Columns icon in the upper right to see all the columns you can show or hide for Performance and for Portfolio Value.

Next, try changing the second filter between By Account (if you've selected more than one account in the left sidebar), By Security, By Type and By Asset Class.

Next, the feature I think is probably the most unintuitive is the ability to select multiple accounts to view in the Portfolio screen. For instance, if you have 4 accounts at Fidelity and 5 accounts at Vanguard, and you want to just look at your 5 Vanguard accounts, you can do this by using the third filter. Start by clicking Investing in the left sidebar, and then in the Portfolio screen's third filter, pull down from "All Investing Accounts" to select your first Vanguard account. Then pull down this same filter again and notice there's a check mark next to the account you just selected. Select the next account you want to include. Repeat this to select all 5 Vanguard accounts, and you'll have a Portfolio view of just these 5 accounts — which you can then view however you want by changing the first and second filters.

Next note that however you configure the Portfolio screen, you can print it and you can export it. In another poor (in my opinion) design decision, these options are available from the unintuitive ••• icon on the far right above the graph: click the Icon and select Print or Export from the dropdown menu. While you can't save all the variations of reports you might want to re-use, you can at least generate a printed report of whatever configuration you create, or export it if you want to do more sifting of the data in a spreadsheet.

And I'll offer one more non-intuitive trick. You may notice that when you select a group of accounts, such as Retirement or Investing, the table shows only your current holdings on the "As of" date on the screen — which defaults to today, but can be set to any past date, like last month-end, or year-end, or five years ago. And the chart above the table may look wrong because it excludes accounts which you have marked "Closed". If you've moved money between accounts or brokerages over time, this makes the investment graph seem pretty worthless because those past holdings aren't included in the graph. So here's the trick: go to Accounts > Hide and Show Accounts, and uncheck "Hide in Lists" for your closed investment accounts. When the accounts are not hidden, their historical values will be used in the chart and table on the Portfolio screen. "But wait," I hear you saying, "now I have all these old closed accounts cluttering my left sidebar. Click the ••• icon at the top of the sidebar and select Sidebar Settings (or go to Quicken > Settings > Sidebar), and at the bottom of that window in the Accounts to Display section, uncheck Closed. This will result in all your closed investment accounts being removed from the left sidebar, but because you marked them to not "Hide in Lists", they will be used in the historical charts and table on the Portfolio screen. Hopefully someday they will make this easier to configure, but for now, this set-up provides for seeing the data we want to see.

Hopefully some of these tweaks you can do on the Portfolio screen will let you see the financial data and history you're looking for. As I said at the start, it's not as robust as Quicken Windows in this area, but there is a fair amount of hidden power in the Portfolio settings and filters that will partly/mostly satisfy many Quicken Mac users for the time being.

My subscription expires in August 2024. Should Quicken Mac catch up to Quicken Windows, fully, I will not walk. But I doubt it.

There is a zero percent chance that Quicken Mac will "fully" catch up to Quicken Windows in the next six months. There's years of development work required for that state to be reached, and the small Quicken Mac development team can't snap their fingers and get there faster. But as someone who's a longtime Quicken Mac user and who has watched the development of Quicken Mac since the re-created version was fir launched in 2014, I have observed that the developers have been making significant progress year after year. It may be "too little, too late" for you, but for me, I see a track record of ongoing improvement which gives me hope for the future.

P.S. I slightly edited the title of your post to, hopefully, better reflect what you were trying to say.

JoelC

@Alena I use both QWin and QMac. I have posted on this board the things I would like to see changed in QMac to bring it on par with QWin. I think it will get there but to will need more time, be patient!

I am running both QWIn and QMac concurrently to see how close QMac is getting where I can fully transition. This is very helpful as you can see the progress being made in QMac.

Alena

@JoelC and @jacobs please note my response in the Ideas section where you already kindly responded to me as well. I am planning to do more work this week to understand what is doable in this Mac version, but I already know that the stock grouping is is only by Asset Class which I can get from my brokerage so what do I need Quicken for. Windows version lets me tweak the system to set up my own criteria by which I want to group my stocks on my Portfolio screen, But to be fair, that's the only thing I have established for sure so far. Please stay with me as I will work on familiarizing myself with the Mac version more. Thanks you!

jacobs

I already know that the stock grouping is is only by Asset Class which I can get from my brokerage so what do I need Quicken for.

Well, do you own any mutual funds? If so, does your brokerage list your assets grouped by the holdings within each mutual fund? Mine doesn't; it shows stocks as large cap or small cap, and mutual funds as "mutual fund". But Quicken knows that if a particular mutual fund currently holds 60% large cap and 40% small cap stocks, it will split the dollar amount of my holding of the mutual fund into those asset classes when I look at asset allocation.

I also often want to look at my asset allocation or security holdings across multiple retirement and non-retirement investment accounts. Sometimes those accounts are at different brokerages. Quicken lets me see them grouped and broken apart across all those accounts, something I can't see when I get statements for 5 different accounts at a brokerage.

Quicken allows me to jump from one date to another looking at my holdings, and to see the change over time individually and in any grouping I might want. I can't do that logged onto my brokerage account, and certainly can't do it with investments at multiple brokerages now and in the past. Quicken shows me my complete history in one place.

So those are just a few things I like using Quicken to give me insight into my investment holdings beyond what I can get from my brokerage.

Would Quicken benefit from allowing users to have custom asset classes? Yes… and the developers say they plan on implementing that. Would Quicken benefit from allowing users to save custom account groupings, or from a second dimension of allocations such as sector classifications? Yes. Is Quicken worthless without these things? To me: no. To you: maybe? We all invest differently and want different ways of looking at our data, so what's acceptable to me may not be to you. Quicken Mac will continue to gain more features and get better over time, but if you don't find it useful enough until such new features and enhancements arrive, then you perhaps have your answer about whether to keep using Quicken.

P.S. One other option which you might consider, if you find you really want the functionality of Quicken Windows a.s.a.p., would be to run Virtual Machine software (such as Parallels or Fusion) on your Mac, with Windows installed and running Quicken Windows in the Virtual Machine.

JoelC

@jacobs well said, I agree with everything you wrote.

P.S. One other option which you might consider, if you find you really want the functionality of Quicken Windows a.s.a.p., would be to run Virtual Machine software (such as Parallels or Fusion) on your Mac, with Windows installed and running Quicken Windows in the Virtual Machine.

I am currently doing this (i.e., this is how I run both QMac and QWin concurrently). I think this is the way to go but will add it can be somewhat time consuming to maintain records in two versions. One thing I do to assist with this is that I periodically make sure that the Ending Balance in both versions match.

bmarin

@jacobs It's been a week since I've running Quicken Premier on both Windows and new Imac, 2 seperate computers. I'd like to run both versions on my Imac using a VM and Parallels seems the only option. Can you recommend which version of Parallels to purchase along with any other advice? I assume I need to purchase a Windows 11 Pro license? TIA

jacobs

Can you recommend which version of Parallels to purchase along with any other advice? I assume I need to purchase a Windows 11 Pro license?

I know many people use Parallels to run Windows on their Mac, but I currently don't, so I'm not a Parallels expert. Hopefully someone else (paging @JoelC!) will jump in with advice here. If you're running Windows just for Quicken, you might find the basic Standard Edition is all you need. You'd have to decide between a one-time purchase for $130, which likely won't run on future versions of macOS, or the subscription version for $100 which gives you all updates as long as you remain a subscriber. If you're doing this hoping it will be temporary until more Quicken Mac features are added, that may guide which one you purchase.

Another option you might consider is VMare Fusion, which is available free for personal use. Most reviews I've seen give a small edge to Parallels in ease of installation, use and features, and it's fully endorsed and supported by Microsoft, but you may not care too much if you're just running Windows to run Quicken.

In either case you'll need a Windows 11 for ARM license.

bmarin

I think I read VMware Fusion is longer an option for either silicon chip? Also wondering if my 16gb ram is sufficient with M3 base chip? To minimize my initial cost I'll swing for the Win 11 pro ARM license and trial it in the 2 weeks allowed in Parallels. If I like it I'll start with the one time purchase.

Based on the 3:1 ratio of Windows vs Mac users on this forum I'm not holding my breath on Mac updates for Quicken.

JoelC

@jacobs

I know many people use Parallels to run Windows on their Mac, but I currently don't, so I'm not a Parallels expert. Hopefully someone else (paging @JoelC!) will jump in with advice here. If you're running Windows just for Quicken, you might find the basic Standard Edition is all you need. You'd have to decide between a one-time purchase for $130, which likely won't run on future versions of macOS, or the subscription version for $100 which gives you all updates as long as you remain a subscriber. If you're doing this hoping it will be temporary until more Quicken Mac features are added, that may guide which one you purchase.

As to which version of Parallels to purchase it is a matter of preference with the key differences being i) a few features which are likely not needed and ii) how frequently you like (i.e., not need) to update. Generally speaking a given version will work for two or more versions of macOS but will not be optimized for subsequent versions not that the average user will ever notice the difference. If you are only using it for Quicken then I would buy the one time subscription.

Another point that needs to be noted is that you need an ARM version of Windows 11. On an Apple silicon mac, Windows + Parallels will not work unless an ARM version is used.

If you have any other questions please let me know, happy to help out.

JoelC

@bmarin

I think I read VMware Fusion is longer an option for either silicon chip? Also wondering if my 16gb ram is sufficient with M3 base chip? To minimize my initial cost I'll swing for the Win 11 pro ARM license and trial it in the 2 weeks allowed in Parallels. If I like it I'll start with the one time purchase.

I do not know about VMWare on Apple silicon. I will say that I did compare Parallels vs VMWare in detail a few years ago and opted to stick with Parallels. While VMWare had a lot of nice features (and was more strip down that Parallels which I liked), I opted to stick with Parallels as it is the standard and teh one most likely to support Windows in the long run (i.e., it is all the company does).

In terms of the 16 GB of RAM you will be fine. Parallels allows teh user to allocate RAM between macOS and Windows and if all you are doing is running Quicken for Windows and other light tasks you will be fine.

Would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Based on the 3:1 ratio of Windows vs Mac users on this forum I'm not holding my breath on Mac updates for Quicken.

I do not know what you mean by this as Quicken is actively developing its Mac version.

Hope this helps.

bmarin

@jacobs Thanks for the response, all good info. As for the "not holding my breath" comment I was referring to @jacobs "If you're doing this hoping it will be temporary until more Quicken Mac features are added". I read other posts of previous Mac users losing features in 2007 and now finding out the last week myself the lack of Mac features compared to Windows. I think I'm going to stick it out though with the Mac and adapt! The Windows interface does appear dated compared to Mac but I did just receive an update for the Windows version yesterday(pending transactions). Not sure if Mac version already has this feature?

On another note the Mac version appears handle some online connections differently than Windows. I compare my total new worth daily and my Vanguard workplace account does not show same share price on Mac as Windows and Vanguard web page. All other account match perfect?

Thanks again, looking forward to more posting on this forum.

JoelC

@bmarin I have been running QMac and QWin in parallel for some time. The two are not comparable and any attempt to compare the two will — at this point — frustrate. While the QWin interface does look older (because it us), it does include dashboards and a lot of other features that the user needs to dig into / discover and, for the reason is my go to version for managing funds (i.e., the business capabilities, reporting capabilities, etc. which do not exist in QMac at this time are too essential for me). YMMV.

jacobs

I did just receive an update for the Windows version yesterday(pending transactions). Not sure if Mac version already has this feature?

This feature has been released and quickly withdrawn from Quicken Windows twice before, so hopefully this third try is the charm!

The Quicken Mac team has not yet released any functionality for pending transactions. As far as I'm concerned, it's fine for them to let Quicken Windows users and the Windows team work out the bugs and get it perfect, and then deliver an equal or better experience (as sometime happens!) for Quicken Mac.

@JoelC said: While the QWin interface does look older (because it us), it does include dashboards and a lot of other features that the user needs to dig into / discover 

I think Dashboards are a good specific example of how Quicken Mac is being developed. It's a longtime feature in Quicken Windows, but didn't exist in Quicken Mac until about 18 months ago. The first release was pretty limited and inflexible. Over these ensuing 18 months, they added more cards — first Income & Expense, then Net Worth, then Bills & Income), they improved the graphs, they refined features (e.g. excluding transfers from Income & Expense), added UI features like being able to hide and show cards as you wish, resizing cards and including more rows of data when there is room available, and most recently, allowing users to configure which accounts they want to include in which cards. So over a year-and-a-half, this feature went from having limited value to being a very powerful piece of the program. And there's undoubtedly more enhancements still to come. This iterative development process allows them to get features out to people as soon as they have something useful and functional enough for some people, while they spend additional months and years adding more of the bells and whistles other people want. In the process, they get to knock out early bugs, and they have shown they listen to user feedback to direct their future development.

All that said, there are still hundreds of features users want to see in Quicken Mac, and the development team is only capable of delivering a little at a time, so it will be a long time to achieve relative parity with Quicken Windows.

JoelC

@jacobs

All that said, there are still hundreds of features users want to see in Quicken Mac, and the development team is only capable of delivering a little at a time, so it will be a long time to achieve relative parity with Quicken Windows.

Agreed noting I am including in the group aching to permanently move from Windows → Mac but I fear it may take another 5+ years!

One other point: Just because a version has a feature does not mean it works or is useful. I have documented a number of math errors over the last few months in QWin which makes the feature / functionality useless!

bmarin

@JoelC Agreed noting I am including in the group aching to permanently move from Windows → Mac but I fear it may take another 5+ years!

That's the issue; I'm at the stage in life where time is a major factor. We want it all NOW! Anyway I'll be taking a week off from the Mac version as I just returned my Imac within the 14 day trial period. I ordered another system that just came availble on the refurb site with all the exact specs and color I wanted.

JoelC

@bmarin

Thats the issue, I'm at the stage in life where time is a major factor. We want it all NOW! Anyway I'll be taking a week off from the Mac version as I just returned my Imac within the 14 day trial period. I ordered another system that just came availble on the refurb site with all the exact specs and color I wanted.

Hmmm, it may be an age thing but I think that wanting everything NOW is societal and not for the better. Juts my $0.02.

One other consideration is that I too felt like you did (i.e., QWin looks old / dated, needs a graphics overhaul and improved ergonomics). I subsequently spent many hours fine tuning and tweaking QWin and now have an opposing view. While I continue to believe that QWin could look better, it has been updated in a number ways (is not as old as it initially looks) and, because it is financial software, functionality trumps form. The problem is that it takes a fair amount of digging and time to both discover these features and, more importantly, configure and optimize them. That said, I am confident that were you to take the time your view would likely change as well.

The biggest pet peeve I have with QWin is that the math / reporting is simply inconsistent and/or wrong in a number of keys areas. This, to me, is not acceptable for financial software!

smayer97

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20427862#Comment_20427862

VMWare Fusion is fully supported on Apple Silicon and fully runs Windows. No issues. It is backed by a company that has DEEP experience in virtualisation. Ease of installation, including Windows has recently been significantly improved. In a worst case, you can even install Parallels free trial, then migrate to Fusion if you are concerned. But from what I have read lately, it is no longer. And best of all it is free for personal use.

JoelC

@smayer97 , I appreciate the added infromation. Thank you.

bmarin

smayer97 & JoelC Thanks to both you for for the info.

JoelC

@bmarin any time, very happy to help out!