Quicken Mac needs to show Cash Management Account as a checking account

SRC1954

I know that in Quicken Windows, you can have associated cash accounts. Why is this not available to Quicken Mac users?

Quicken Simplifi now does allow us to do it.

jacobs

It's not available because Quicken Mac wasn't built with that feature, and the developers haven't added it yet. Here's the good news/bad news…

The good news: this is an often-requested feature, and the developers have stated that this is "Planned" on their development roadmap:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7310443/add-ability-to-link-accounts-to-brokerage-accounts-to-quicken-for-mac-104-legacy-votes

The bad news: we never know when any particular feature will appear. In this case, it's been close to two years since it was marked as "Planned", which could mean this has moved up the project list and is close to being implemented… or it could mean that something changed on the development roadmap and this is on a siding in limbo at the moment.

Bottom line: it's a feature which hasn't been built for Quicken Mac yet, but the developers say it is planned… at some unknown future date.

SRC1954

Thanks. I upvoted it. But Quicken ought to not have different features based on operating system.

jacobs

But Quicken ought to not have different features based on operating system.

@SRC1954 If I had a nickel for every Quicken user who expressed that statement, I'd be wealthy enough to not be using Quicken! 🤣

The reality is that the current Quicken Mac product was re-written from scratch over the past two decades after the original Quicken for Mac product reached and end-of-life dead-end dues to Apple's changes in the Mac operating system in the early 2000s. For the first part of that time, when Quicken was owned by Intuit, the project to re-write the program was plagued by management missteps and lack of resources. Even though more programers were eventually added before and after Quicken became independent of Intuit, the development team was (and still is) small, the program code is complex, and the number of features users want them to implement exceeds what they can build and release.

Quicken Windows has 20+ years of additional development behind it, which means it has more features — but also has more bugs and more antiquated code which isn't easy or possible to update); Quicken Mac is built on a more modern, robust database and has a more modern user interface — but it doesn't have all the features of Quicken Windows. Over time, the quicken Mac development team has been adding valuable features and closing the gap, but that progress can seem painfully slow if there are specific features you're waiting to see delivered.

SRC1954

I understand but Quicken has had time to equalize the products. Mac product should be the same as Windows.

jacobs

I understand but Quicken has had time to equalize the products. Mac product should be the same as Windows.

I get it. I wish more features were implemented in Quicken Mac, too. But these features take time to build — without breaking what already exists — and the Mac development team just isn't large enough to deliver more features faster. It's easy to say "they've had enough time to equalize the products", but the reality is that they haven't. The Windows development team has always been larger , and they had a 2-decade head start. 😂 There's just no way to achieve parity with the Windows version except over (a lot of) time.