Several questions - migrate QWin 2017 to new QMac (edit)
I am the accountant for a 501c3 pre-school who is currently using Quicken 2017 on a Windows machine. They would like to upgrade. I have several questions before we decide on which product to go to. Quicken Classic is apparently available for Mac machines now? They would prefer using Mac because their Windows machine is in need of replacement. Is it possible to transfer their chart of accounts from a Windows machine to a Mac on the newest version? The conversion will happen at FYE so all balance sheet balances could just be manually entered at that time. Is the new Quicken Classic a local resident program or can it be run exclusively on the cloud? How would we purchase the new version? I see there is now a monthly fee of around $6 or so? I would appreciate any advise about moving to the newest version as of June 30th FYE and hopefully jumping from Windows to Mac if possible. Thank you.
Best Answer
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They would like to upgrade.
It would be helpful to know why "they" want to upgrade to the current subscription version? What benefits do they think there would be?
Quicken Classic is apparently available for Mac machines now?
Quicken has been available on the Mac for 30+ years, actually! 😂 The modern, re-written version of Quicken Mac will celebrate its 10th birthday later this year.
"Classic" in the name of Quicken products is just a recent marketing change, to allow them to more equally position the legacy desktop based Quicken programs for Mac and Windows along with the online-only Quicken Simplifi product they introduced a few years ago. Quicken Classic isn't new; only the "Classic" in the name is new.
Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows are siblings, but definitely not twins. They do not share the same database. They do many of the same things, and do many things similarly. But the devil is in the details, and there are also many things they do just a little differently — and some things that Quicken Windows can do which the younger Quicken Mac cannot yet do. I suspect that some of those missing features in Quicken Mac would not be an issue for managing the books of a non-profit.
Is it possible to transfer their chart of accounts from a Windows machine to a Mac on the newest version?
Quicken doesn't use a "chart of accounts" like full-fledged business accounting systems do. Quicken has Accounts for assets and liabilities and Categories for income and expenses. (In accounting, those would all be in a single chart of accounts.) But yes, there is a conversion utility in Quicken Mac to import a Quicken Windows data file, which will bring across all the accounts, categories, and transaction history. (If you don't want the transactions, and just want to start fresh, you could save a copy in Quicken Windows without the transactions past the desired date, and import the resulting file with just accounts, account balances, and categories.
Is the new Quicken Classic a local resident program or can it be run exclusively on the cloud?
The program and the data file reside on a local computer's hard drive. It cannot be used exclusively in the Cloud; there must be a local file which serves as the master data repository. (This is exactly the same whether using Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac.) There is an available web interface and mobile app as companions to a desktop data file; they don't have the full functionality of the desktop program, but do allow viewing and entering some data from other machines than the one hosting the data file. I will note that one of the largest areas of data glitches seems to be data syncing between the desktop and cloud data, which is a reason many of the longtime Quicken veterans here keep syncing turned off. If it worked flawlessly, it would be a nice convenience — but it doesn't always work flawlessly.
How would we purchase the new version? I see there is now a monthly fee of around $6 or so?
The year after Quicken 2017 was released, Quicken switched to a subscription pricing model. This allowed them to stop needing to support and update multiple years of annual releases, and to release software updates throughout the year whenever features were ready. It also allowed them to smooth out their revenue stream, and to boost revenue by raising prices. Quicken marketing likes to quote prices per month now, because that's what other software services do — but it only sells annual subscriptions. It's still the same desktop-based Quicken as in the past; it's just paid for a little differently.
You can purchase directly from Quicken at quicken.com. Or you can purchase from retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, NewEgg, etc. For a new subscriber, you can often find discounts of 40% for the first year, in both places. It doesn't matter whether you buy from a retailer or not; in all cases, you'll be downloading the software from Quicken's servers, and getting all the updates directly from Quicken. Some retail sales are download-only, meaning you'll get a link to download the software and an activation code. Some retail sales in a store are a box, which contains nothing but the activation code. Some retail sales may still include a CD-ROM, but (a) no Macs have built in CD drives anymore, and (b) all the CD does is load a start-up program which downloads the current version from Quicken anyway.
I would appreciate any advise about moving to the newest version as of June 30th FYE and hopefully jumping from Windows to Mac if possible
There are many thousands of words on this site from people about migrating from Windows to Mac, and from those who have done so. As I noted above, Quicken Mac was rewritten about a decade ago to replace old software technology in the original Quicken Mac which couldn't be modernized to work on the modern Mac operating system. That carries some advantages. Quicken Mac uses a modern SQL database built into the Mac operating system, which is more robust and problem free than the old database in Quicken Windows. Quicken Mac's user interface was redesigned from scratch as it's been re-written, so it's a little more uniform and modern than the Quicken Windows UI, which has some parts which date back more than two decades. On the flip side, re-coding Quicken from the ground up is a massive undertaking, as it has thousands of features large and small, and so even a decade into the process, there are still features which don't exist in Quicken Mac. The good thing is that the Mac development team has been listening to users, and steadily adding more features; the bad thing is that the list of feature requests is quite large and progress is slower than anyone would wish.
It would probably help if you have specific questions to see if they've been asked and answered on this forum already, and to ask ones you can't find answers to.
I think the best thing to do is to purchase a subscription to Quicken, install it, and try it out. You can get your money back from Quicken within 30 days of purchase if you determine it isn't going to work well for you. (This assumes someone has a Mac you can try it out on, if buying a new Mac would be part of the switch.) If you move forward, this would let you get things set up prior to June 30 so the actual transition can go smoothly.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931
Answers
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All desktop version of Q are now called "Classic", so that distinction is meaningless.
Q (Mac & Win) is still a desktop program, although there are optional features that are cloud-based, such as Q Mobile and QWeb.
I'm going to let a QMac user respond to the rest of your query.
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP0 -
They would like to upgrade.
It would be helpful to know why "they" want to upgrade to the current subscription version? What benefits do they think there would be?
Quicken Classic is apparently available for Mac machines now?
Quicken has been available on the Mac for 30+ years, actually! 😂 The modern, re-written version of Quicken Mac will celebrate its 10th birthday later this year.
"Classic" in the name of Quicken products is just a recent marketing change, to allow them to more equally position the legacy desktop based Quicken programs for Mac and Windows along with the online-only Quicken Simplifi product they introduced a few years ago. Quicken Classic isn't new; only the "Classic" in the name is new.
Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows are siblings, but definitely not twins. They do not share the same database. They do many of the same things, and do many things similarly. But the devil is in the details, and there are also many things they do just a little differently — and some things that Quicken Windows can do which the younger Quicken Mac cannot yet do. I suspect that some of those missing features in Quicken Mac would not be an issue for managing the books of a non-profit.
Is it possible to transfer their chart of accounts from a Windows machine to a Mac on the newest version?
Quicken doesn't use a "chart of accounts" like full-fledged business accounting systems do. Quicken has Accounts for assets and liabilities and Categories for income and expenses. (In accounting, those would all be in a single chart of accounts.) But yes, there is a conversion utility in Quicken Mac to import a Quicken Windows data file, which will bring across all the accounts, categories, and transaction history. (If you don't want the transactions, and just want to start fresh, you could save a copy in Quicken Windows without the transactions past the desired date, and import the resulting file with just accounts, account balances, and categories.
Is the new Quicken Classic a local resident program or can it be run exclusively on the cloud?
The program and the data file reside on a local computer's hard drive. It cannot be used exclusively in the Cloud; there must be a local file which serves as the master data repository. (This is exactly the same whether using Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac.) There is an available web interface and mobile app as companions to a desktop data file; they don't have the full functionality of the desktop program, but do allow viewing and entering some data from other machines than the one hosting the data file. I will note that one of the largest areas of data glitches seems to be data syncing between the desktop and cloud data, which is a reason many of the longtime Quicken veterans here keep syncing turned off. If it worked flawlessly, it would be a nice convenience — but it doesn't always work flawlessly.
How would we purchase the new version? I see there is now a monthly fee of around $6 or so?
The year after Quicken 2017 was released, Quicken switched to a subscription pricing model. This allowed them to stop needing to support and update multiple years of annual releases, and to release software updates throughout the year whenever features were ready. It also allowed them to smooth out their revenue stream, and to boost revenue by raising prices. Quicken marketing likes to quote prices per month now, because that's what other software services do — but it only sells annual subscriptions. It's still the same desktop-based Quicken as in the past; it's just paid for a little differently.
You can purchase directly from Quicken at quicken.com. Or you can purchase from retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, NewEgg, etc. For a new subscriber, you can often find discounts of 40% for the first year, in both places. It doesn't matter whether you buy from a retailer or not; in all cases, you'll be downloading the software from Quicken's servers, and getting all the updates directly from Quicken. Some retail sales are download-only, meaning you'll get a link to download the software and an activation code. Some retail sales in a store are a box, which contains nothing but the activation code. Some retail sales may still include a CD-ROM, but (a) no Macs have built in CD drives anymore, and (b) all the CD does is load a start-up program which downloads the current version from Quicken anyway.
I would appreciate any advise about moving to the newest version as of June 30th FYE and hopefully jumping from Windows to Mac if possible
There are many thousands of words on this site from people about migrating from Windows to Mac, and from those who have done so. As I noted above, Quicken Mac was rewritten about a decade ago to replace old software technology in the original Quicken Mac which couldn't be modernized to work on the modern Mac operating system. That carries some advantages. Quicken Mac uses a modern SQL database built into the Mac operating system, which is more robust and problem free than the old database in Quicken Windows. Quicken Mac's user interface was redesigned from scratch as it's been re-written, so it's a little more uniform and modern than the Quicken Windows UI, which has some parts which date back more than two decades. On the flip side, re-coding Quicken from the ground up is a massive undertaking, as it has thousands of features large and small, and so even a decade into the process, there are still features which don't exist in Quicken Mac. The good thing is that the Mac development team has been listening to users, and steadily adding more features; the bad thing is that the list of feature requests is quite large and progress is slower than anyone would wish.
It would probably help if you have specific questions to see if they've been asked and answered on this forum already, and to ask ones you can't find answers to.
I think the best thing to do is to purchase a subscription to Quicken, install it, and try it out. You can get your money back from Quicken within 30 days of purchase if you determine it isn't going to work well for you. (This assumes someone has a Mac you can try it out on, if buying a new Mac would be part of the switch.) If you move forward, this would let you get things set up prior to June 30 so the actual transition can go smoothly.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
They would like to upgrade because they feel the 2017 version is a little glitchy and maybe the new version might be better operating. Plus they would love to have it on Mac instead of having to use two computers in the office. I have looked at much more expensive fund accounting specific systems that have all the bells and whistles but they don't really need all that with a smaller operation. We enter transactions and are able to produce trial balances for the P&L and the balance sheet. We don't use the system to produce the 990 tax filings. I manually pull the info from the trial balances, categorize and plug into the 990. Its not that difficult with a small operation. Thank you. You have provided me with all the info I was looking for and we will proceed from here.
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There is NO "Trial Balance" in Q (Mac or Win), because there is no General Ledger.
Q uses a checkbook analogy. And the P&L is called "Income & Expenses"
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP0 -
We enter transactions and are able to produce trial balances for the P&L and the balance sheet.
If you are already using Quicken - you problably know that these terms are not part of the Quicken PERSONAL software -
Also - what VERSION of Quicken Windows are you currently using - Deluxe - Premiere - Business - ??
They look different on the MAC -0
