Premier Converts to Mac My Experience

This got really long so the executive summary is that personally I am able to switch from Premier running in a VM to Quicken Mac. My investments are mutual funds and so not terribly complicated. Everything important came over from Premier and after a couple of weeks I've mostly adapted to the interface differences.

The main criticism of Quicken Mac vs Premier is that Mac has limited investment functionality. I also saw something like Mac wouldn't import old transactions or prices or something. Since this was an experiment and my investments are relatively simple I decided to try anyway. My experience is that my prices, transactions and net worth statements all match Premier. If you're doing complicated stuff your mileage may vary, for me there is no difference.

The other almost sticking point is that file attachments do not come over from Premier. I decided to live with it because: (1) the really important stuff is already in folders on my hard drive and (2) I have cloned my 32 bit Mojave machine and can run the VM in the event I really, truly need that five year old credit card statement.

I have a huge data file (started in 1995) so the file the conversion and import took about 45 minutes. Conversion requires the data file go to Quicken's servers for crunching but, according tech support, it's secure and doesn't stay there. The confirmation dialog could certainly do a better job explaining this.

Of course after conversion you have to re-enter all your account log in information so have all that handy. The process wasn't silky smooth but the only account that gave me real problems was my PNC checking account. I went through all kinds of gyrations, the bank even snail mailed a PIN, which didn't work. As a last resort I changed the connection type from Direct Connect to Quicken Connect and suddenly PNC started working. I'm still not clear what the difference is between Direct Connect and Quicken Connect and since everything works I don't really care. But if anyone from Quicken reads this you need to do a better job explaining beforehand and give troubleshooting options.

Using the software itself reminds me of watching a BBC program. Mac is speaking the same language as Premier but at first I have to concentrate to really understand what's being said.

For instance, the register columns have subtly different layouts. Also, in Premier new transaction start in a blank register line. In Mac you have to press CMD-N to create a new transaction.

I liked Premier's home page where I had a dashboard of net worth over time, income expense statements and few other things. With Mac, you have to run individual reports. Also the Mac graphs don't display exactly the same information in the same was as Premier. I preferred how Premier does it but not enough to go back.

Account reconciliation was the biggest hang up for me. Premier clearly separates matched from unmatched transactions. Mac dumps them into the register with an icon indicating matched or unmatched. Again, I prefer the way Premier handled reconciliation but I can adapt.

In summary, while it's not perfect I find that Mac is close enough to Premier to allow a switch.

Finally, as a tangent, I've come around on the subscription model for Quicken. I've been using Quicken for 25 years and Mac for 15. I was forced to use VMs for all this time because Intuit was never interested in making a good version of Quicken for Mac. Now I've got it. Second, Intuit tech support was literally non-existent. This time around I twice contacted tech support and was chatting with someone inside of five minutes. For something as important to me as my finance software, I think I'm getting value for my subscription.