Home&Biz Win -> Mac failed to import Business data!

mark.granoff

I am eager to move to Quicken for Mac, but I cannot until Windows' Quicken Home & Business features are fully supported in the Mac version. They are not yet, apparently.

I downloaded Quicken Mac Classic Business & Personal v8.2.1 and imported a copy of my Windows Quicken Classic Business & Personal QDF file. The good news is that all the balances of individual accounts appear correct. (Total networth is high by 3 cents, but that is hardly significant.)

Unfortunately, NONE of the business info was imported. The log file reads:

0 of 0 Businesses were imported

And in fact, there is one active business in my data (and 2 or 3 inactive).

What happened? This feels like a bug in your data importer where it failed to detect any businesses in my data.

I am running the Windows version in a Windows 11 virtual machine on my Intel Mac. This works, but soon Apple will stop supporting my Intel Mac and I would very much like to use your native Mac version of Quicken. I cannot do so, however, if it cannot reliably import everything from my Windows data file.

Please advise as to when this can be investigated and resolved. I am happy to help test out any possible solutions or beta builds with updated importers.

MontanaKarl

I'm glad that you posted, as this omission of any import functionality has not received any attention from Quicken since someone else raised the issue a few months ago. The organization of business, clients, etc is different in QMac than QWin, but the data should still be able to be imported and it is interesting that that has not yet been addressed. In their defense, the business features in QMac are new this year, so we should expect continued development.

As to your Intel Mac eventually not being supported by Apple… I'm running Windows 11 ARM (had to buy a new license for the ARM version) on Apple Sillicon (M2 and M4) using Parallels Desktop without any issues. Quicken Windows and QuickBooks run fine, so that does give you an option to continue in QWin on a new Mac when that day comes.

jacobs

@mark.granoff First, just so you're aware, this is a Quicken users community forum and not a direct channel to talk to the Quicken developers. (You were writing "you" and "your" as if you were speaking to Quicken developers or management.) Fellow users and/or the handful of Quicken moderators here may be able to make suggestions, but this is not Quicken Support, and your post won't be seen by the development team or product management.

Unless any users here who have converted from Windows to Mac recently can offer suggestions, my recommendation would be that you call Quicken Support. They can screen share with you to observe what you're reporting and, if they can't find the problem or a way to work around it, they can document a bug ticket to go to the developers to investigate.

I do know other users have imported from Windows to Mac and had at least some of their business information come across, although I'm not sure how much business data is transferred due to differences in invoices, clients and payments between the two products. I'd also note that invoicing functionality in Quicken mac is new within the past 6 months the tea the developers have been continuing to build out functionality in each of the past few bimonthly updates.

mark.granoff

Thanks @jacobs . I do appreciate that most/all users here are users and not Quicken employees. But I have seen action taken by Quicken support folks to get issues reported here resolved. Whatever I can do to at least perhaps push Quicken development to work on this is what I was hoping for. Would YOU like to escalate this, in so far as to tell the internal team that user's want this capability? :-)

@MontanaKarl I have been considering the ARM version of Windows, but other than hearing about it, I have been unable to figure out how or where to get it. I would love to connect with you somehow (email, or something) to learn more about your setup. I am a VMWare user for the moment. I am not sure if that is supported on Apple Silicon; should be, just not sure tho.'

Thank you both for your thoughtful comments.

MontanaKarl

@mark.granoff I started to DM you, but others may be interested as well. I bought my Windows 11 ARM license/download on the Microsoft store. Parallels Desktop gave a link and handled the installation. I imagine equally straightforward with VMWare if they support it, but Microsoft only mentions Parallels…

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/options-for-using-windows-11-with-mac-computers-with-apple-m1-m2-and-m3-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

mark.granoff

So simple! So I guess once installed, it just requires a "standard" Windows 11 license key, acquired by purchasing a regular (Intel) Windows license?

MontanaKarl

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20494153#Comment_20494153

I purchased an ARM license, but, that article does say that the license is platform agnostic.

jacobs

Would YOU like to escalate this, in so far as to tell the internal team that user's want this capability?

@mark.granoff Sorry, I don't have such magical powers. 😂 But I do believe you've hit some stumbling block, because the conversion should work, at least to some extent. I've always been a Mac user, so I have no first-hand experience with Windows and converting Quicken Windows to Mac, so I can't offer much troubleshooting help here. But I do think you should call Quicken Support, because they should either help solve the problem or document and escalate it.

I'd be interested to know how you converted your Windows data file. Did you open the .QDF file directly on the Quicken Mac Let's Get Started screen? Or did you use File > Import? Did you export your Windows data file? I think there have been reports of people getting somewhat different results depending on how they did their data conversion.

mark.granoff

@MontanaKarl Thanks! Somehow, I missed noticing the link you had posted before. Now I've read it. :-) I might have to switch to Parallels, since that seems to be the supported configuration. But I will certainly try VMware that I already have (and which is free now).

@jacobs lol. Sorry, for some reason I thought you were here in some official capacity. But no, you're just one of us. :-) Yes, I should contact Quicken Support, for sure. This feels like a bug.

This time around I used a copy of my by .QDF file from my Windows install. That worked nearly perfectly with respect to imported transactions and balances. The whole shootin' match was off by 3 cents. I didn't spend time trying to find that. :)

Another time I tried a migration (maybe a year or more ago) I used a backup, and IIRC the imported data resulted in balances that were incorrect for many accounts. Could be that the import process has improved a lot in that time, or there is some discrepancy between using a backup vs using a QDF file directly.

I have time before I will be forced to get off my current Intel Mac. I definitely have options. And I will continue to periodically try migrating.

jacobs

And I will continue to periodically try migrating… This feels like a bug.

Not to beat a dead horse, but… 😂 …if this is indeed a bug, if it doesn't get reported and documented, it's unlikely it will get fixed. Bear in mind that the number of Business & Personal users is a small percentage of the Quicken Mac user base, and the number of Business & Personal users migrating from Quicken Windows since the business and invoicing features have been added to Quicken Mac are a small subset of that group. So if you've indeed encountered a bug in the conversion piece of the software, there aren't a huge number of people who would have encountered what you did. Thus my encouragement to find time to call Quicken Support and try to get them to look into this. (They should want to share your screen and watch as it processes a conversion from Windows to Mac, and see that it failed to convert any of your businesses.)

I would disregard your prior experience trying the conversion, because that was before the business features were added, and a lot of work has been done in that area of the program over the past 6 months. And as I wrote previously, I'm not entirely sure how much business data is supposed to transfer at this point; it certainly should pick up the business itself, but I don't know what of clients invoices and payments should come across and what they either haven't tackled yet or don't intend to tackle. (For a different example, saved reports don't convert from Windows to Mac, because the printing architecture of the programs is different enough that a perfect conversion isn't feasible.)

Hopefully you'll someday get to a point where you don't need to pay for the new Windows license and the ongoing cost of Parallels because native Quicken Mac meets your needs. Best wishes!

MontanaKarl

@jacobs This issue came up in the past, and I have tested it during QMac beta and found that no business data at all was imported.

jacobs

@MontanaKarl Ah, okay. I knew I remembered someone had tested the conversion, but I was thinking some business data did get converted and other data did not. Thanks for correcting my memory and sharing your first hand experience.

So I’m not sure if this is a “bug“ or more basically something the developers have not (yet) built — nor or whether they intend to.

mark.granoff

Thanks all. Yes, I will report the issue to Quicken. I don't think they'll want to watch a conversion of my data; it took quite a while to process my 300MB+ QDF file. But I have the log from the conversion, which clearly shows what happened.

As I think about it, this issue, and the "issue" I posted elsewhere about the projected balances graph may be all that stands between me and moving to the Mac version. The business stuff is very important though. I cannot just "not" have that. And moving to a different solution (e.g. QuickBooks doesn't make sense for me.). I'll follow up with Q support.

chip.gilbert

I love being on the Mac version and find it much more robust and I don't have all the data corruption issues I used to deal with on Windows. I had moved to the ARM Windows 11 version using Parallels. Officially I started on the Mac on Jan 1, 2025. I did run parallel to Windows for a month or so.

However, I decided not to convert after running a test conversion, so what I did was to start a fresh file, I connected all my accounts and synched them. This brought in close to 2 years of transactions from all my accounts, along with beginning balances.

So then I printed some detail P&L from my Rental and my consulting business, had to go through for 2024 and get the tax reports matched up so I could at least have last year accurate on the Mac version and now into 2025.

Sounds like a lot but for me it wasn't too bad. For now I will keep my Parallels subscription running with Quicken, which is all I used it for anyways, just to have for history if I need it. I'm thinking about just converting the data file into Mac and call that good enough, then I can do away with Parallels.

Maybe something to think about, try setting up a new file on the Mac and sync up your accounts, see what that looks like for you.

Good luck, you will make the change and never look back. Fortunately since January they have made some significant improvements, one of which was invoicing and I hope they keep the development coming. It is a bit annoying that Rental doesn't work like Windows, and you can only have one Default company, but I did create my rental categories and separated them for Schedule E, cleaning out the categories for Schedule C.