Warning if considering Mac Business - Definitely Not Ready For Prime Time

jimbean2
jimbean2 Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭✭

Given how well Quicken has performed with its Mac Classic and Premier versions, it’s baffling that they would position the Business version as a serious tool for business users. I attempted to set it up for my small business, only to discover it severely lacking even the most basic features needed for meaningful financial reporting. It cannot produce a balance sheet, and the net worth report is no adequate substitute. The sidebar is another frustration, as it lacks any grouping functionality to sort accounts by type. Additionally, accounts receivable is displayed under the vague label, "Client Invoices."

What’s also odd is that the program's tax reports only accommodates businesses that file a Schedule C. Many small businesses, including partnerships, file a Form 1065. It’s disappointing that Quicken has such a narrow vision of what constitutes a small business.

The most shocking issue, however, was that when I downloaded accounts from my financial institutions, the software literally deleted all history older than 12 months for each account. WTF?! How could Quicken allow this to happen without warning its users?

In the end, I was forced to abandon the Business version, reinstall Premier, and restore my accounts from backups. The entire experience was incredibly frustrating and disappointing, not to mention a waste of time. Quicken should be ashamed of releasing such an inadequate product.

Comments

  • MontanaKarl
    MontanaKarl Quicken Mac Subscription Member, SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    edited January 7

    What’s also odd is that the program's tax reports only accommodates businesses that file a Schedule C. Many small businesses, including partnerships, file a Form 1065. It’s disappointing that Quicken has such a narrow vision of what constitutes a small business.

    No, not just schedule C… all business schedules for a Federal 1040… C, E and F. No, it makes absolutely no sense to handle a 1065 or any of the businesses you mention. Won’t happen. Quicken is not a general accounting package, but a personal finance package for individuals who file 1040s - and might have businesses that also file on a 1040 schedule (C, E or F). If you need to manage the finances for a S-corp, multimember LLC, partnership, etc, you need general accounting software. Or, if your usage is simplistic enough, need to track each such business in its own Quicken file as each business has its own EIN and two tax entities should never be mixed in one file in any financial/accounting package.

    The most shocking issue, however, was that when I downloaded accounts from my financial institutions, the software literally deleted all history older than 12 months for each account. WTF?! How could Quicken allow this to happen without warning its users?

    This has not happened to anyone that I know, myself included. Something is seriously wrong and you should report this via the report a bug feature with your log files etc if you have not uninstalled the product yet.

    As to your other issues and frustrations…I agree, but I believe all of those things are on the product roadmap.

    Quicken user since 1990, MacBook Pro M2 Max on Sequoia 15.3.1 (and Win 11 under Parallels Desktop)

  • MontanaKarl
    MontanaKarl Quicken Mac Subscription Member, SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    @jimbean2 About not seeing anything older than 12 months in your registers… which again, did not happen to me or anybody else as far as I know… Are you sure that you did not have a register filter on, such as this:

    which would restrict the visible transactions to the previous 12 months (or whatever the date drop down was set to)?

    Did you run any reports listing 'all dates' to discover that no transactions were reported prior to 12 months ago?

    I just have a hard time believing that old transactions could have been deleted.

    Quicken user since 1990, MacBook Pro M2 Max on Sequoia 15.3.1 (and Win 11 under Parallels Desktop)

  • chip.gilbert
    chip.gilbert Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    I've had data issues on the Windows Premier version, running it on Parallels with Windows 11 ARM and was never sure if it was programmatic or if just the environment. I have used it for many years and have spent time with support, who has been great to deal with. The final straw was last year all my invoices lost the line item detail, the total of the invoice fortunately was still there, but that along with losing categories from reconciled transactions and even transactions disappearing that were in past periods I took a shot and converted my data to the Mac, but that was garbage in garbage out. So I started from scratch, just hoooked up to all my online accounts and brought in roughly a year and half of data.

    I took the time to go through and match up data to last year on my Windows version, tied out Schedule C and Schedule E and I'm moving forward with it. Currently still running both just until I get all my bank accounts, credit cards, loans etc. reconciled to statements probably into February and then I'll stay with it on the Mac.

    My use is with one rental property, personal expenses and investments and I also have an LLC that I do independent business consulting. I was happy to see Invoicing come right behind that for the beginning of January as that was lacking however I do use an external time and billing software to track billable time and expenses and generate the actual invoices. I would just recreate those in Quickbooks with line item detail.

    Yes the Mac version is still lacking some things but I'm glad to be on the Mac platform, can make it work and to me just overall stablity. I would hope and expect that they will continue to refine it, add some functionality but I can make it work without cobbling my business. Being an Apple user I appreciate some of how things work just because it is on the Apple OS.

    My primary business is my consulting business, I setup categories for the rental business (1 property) to mirror how the categories were on Windows and associated with Schedule E. I didn't really understand how one category could be on 2 different schedules so I isolated those.

    I don't want to spend a lot of time here in the forums, but because I'm new to the Mac version I wanted to browse and see what others were saying. I will find where some suggestions could go, hopefully some or most are actually in the works, but a couple that come to mind are

    1-when scheduling bills the category can be assigned but not the Business. by default anything assigned to a business category gets the Default or Preferred business. Requires some follow up.

    2-in the sidebar the accounts for the different business' are lumped together, they don't separate between the business, which even if like the Windows version just have the ability to have a Business and Rental break out. At least model initially toward filling the gaps to mirror better again what the Windows version is and does.

    So I suppose that is more than enough for now, I will continue forging ahead, hope the developers keep up the good work on the Mac version.

    Chip