I recently tested converting my long-established Quicken Classic Premier for Windows data file to the current version of Quicken Classic for Mac.
I had attempted this conversion many years ago but could not migrate because investment transactions such as BoughtX, SoldX and DivX were not converted correctly. Since the Mac converter has changed considerably since then, I decided to test it again.
My Windows QDF contains approximately 48,745 transactions and has investment history going back many years. Immediately before this test, I ran Super Validate on the Windows file and it completed cleanly.
I installed the current Quicken Mac version on a separate Mac and used its “Start from a Quicken for Windows file” conversion process. I supplied a duplicate of my current Windows QDF file. The conversion used Quicken Cloud and completed successfully in approximately six minutes.
The results initially looked very promising:
- All banking account balances converted correctly except for one easily identified transfer whose destination account was incorrectly assigned during conversion. Correcting that one transaction made the banking balances agree exactly.
- All credit-card balances converted to the penny.
- Investment holdings/security values generally appear to have converted correctly.
- I spot-checked several BoughtX, SoldX and DivX transactions, and those appeared to convert correctly. Quicken Mac appropriately represented an X transaction as two transactions—for example, a Buy plus the corresponding cash transfer as a "Payment/Deposit" transaction type.
However, I then discovered that the cash balances of many investment accounts were incorrect, even though these accounts have $0 cash balances in the Windows file.
For example, one T. Rowe Price investment account was $12,021.20 lower in Quicken Mac than in Quicken Windows. The securities themselves appeared correct, but Quicken Mac showed a cash balance of -$12,021.20. The Windows account correctly has a $0 cash balance.
I traced the discrepancy through the Mac transaction history and found the cause.
Some BoughtX/SoldX/DivX transactions convert correctly into the necessary pair of Mac transactions, while others convert only the investment transaction and silently omit the companion Payment/Deposit transfer transaction.
For example, a Windows BoughtX may correctly become:
Buy security
Payment/Deposit transferring the necessary cash from the other account
But for some historical BoughtX transactions, only the Buy exists after conversion. The Payment/Deposit transaction that should supply the cash is missing. The reverse can occur with SoldX transactions: the Sell exists, but the transaction transferring the proceeds to the other account is absent.
This causes the investment account’s running cash balance to become incorrect, and accounts like Money Markets, who have many transactions receiving or sending money to investment accounts, are wrong.
Unfortunately, this does not appear to be an isolated occurrence. In just one investment account, I found approximately 12 missing companion transactions during the 2005–2007 period alone. I have numerous investment accounts and decades of transaction history, making manual identification and correction impractical.
The particularly concerning aspect is that some transactions of these same types convert perfectly while others do not. Therefore, simply spot-checking BoughtX/SoldX/DivX transactions can make the conversion appear successful. I initially thought the problem had finally been resolved because my first random samples were correct.
This also makes manually repairing the converted file risky: there is no practical way with a file of this size to establish that every missing companion transfer has been identified.
The test environment was:
Source: Current Quicken Classic Premier for Windows
Source file: Approximately 48,745 transactions; Super Validate completed cleanly immediately before testing
Destination: Current Quicken Classic Premier for Mac
Conversion method: Mac “Start from a Quicken for Windows file” using Quicken Cloud
Result: Banking and credit-card conversion essentially exact; investment securities/holdings appear correct, but numerous historical X transactions are missing their companion cash-transfer transactions
For anyone considering moving a long-established investment file from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac, I would strongly recommend comparing the cash balance of every investment account after conversion—not merely current security holdings and total values. A non-zero Mac cash balance where the Windows account has zero cash can expose these missing transfer transactions.
I have attached sanitized copies of both the original Quicken Windows data file and the converted Quicken Mac data file to the Quicken Feedback report I sent. This should allow the development team to compare the source BoughtX/SoldX/DivX transactions directly with the transactions produced by the Windows-to-Mac converter and identify why some companion transfer transactions are created while others are omitted.
I would very much like to move from Quicken Windows to Quicken Mac, but unfortunately this conversion issue makes it impractical for my data file at this time.
