Quicken 2015 for Mac

I started using Quicken 6 to manage our home budget on the Macintosh back in 1995 and was fairly happy with it through version 2007 when they quit supporting it on the Intel Macs.  The first version of Quicken actually was released in 1986 on MS-DOS.  I used Managing Your Money on the Mac starting around 1990.

I used Quicken 2007 for several more years until Quicken Essentials for Mac was released in 2010.  See this MacWorld article for some history of that release plus a promise for a Mac Quicken Deluxe in 2011.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1146714/quicken_essentials.html

I agreed with a lot of the comments in this article and was disappointed with this new Mac version.  Since I was also using Parallels Desktop, I switched to the Windows version which I have been using since 2010.

A few days ago, I read this new MacWorld article announcing a new Mac version, Quicken 2015 which is the full version promised four years ago.  http://www.macworld.com/article/2597380/intuits-quicken-2015-for-mac-revamps-interface-expands-investment-features.html

I was a little leery about putting down $80 just to try this new version, but figured I could always get a refund.  So I downloaded it and imported my data from the Windows Quicken 2014. All seemed to transfer ok, even split transactions, account transfers, all accounts and all categories.  

Since it had been a couple of weeks since I had downloaded transactions from US Bank, the Endura Credit Union and PayPal, I gave that a try as well with the new version.  These transfers required reconnecting to the services as if for the first time but worked out ok in the end. At first, my US Bank Visa account did not show up when I connected.  It displayed all my US Bank accounts and all the Quicken accounts except for Visa. I downloaded a couple accounts that matched and then retried again from the Quicken Visa account.  That then worked fine. The PayPal transactions downloaded without a hitch as well. 

The credit union required two steps, an export online and then an import from within Quicken.  The downloaded transaction also show “Debit purchase” in the Payee field and the payees in the Memo field. This didn’t match any memorized payees from Windows.

One big improvement over the Windows version is that transactions are automatically reconciled.  Windows Quicken required accepting each transaction even if a matching manually entered transaction existed.  It seemed to also match Payees with the memorized categories carried over from the Windows version. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow editing of the categories matched with the payees like the Windows version did,

This new Mac version allows multiple transactions to be edited at the same time, at least the Payee, Category, Tags and Memo fields.  Just check which field to enter and all transaction will be changed without affecting other fields.  That way, you can select a number of restaurant transactions and change the Category to “Eating Out” in one pass.  The edit function also displays all splits and transfers in line with other transactions without the extra steps to open the transaction in another window.

One thing that threw me for a loop was the transfer display.  The Windows version used brackets [ …] in the Category field to indicate a transfer to another account.  The account name was put between the brackets. The new Mac version uses the word Transfer in the Category field and the account name in a Transfer field that is initially hidden.  Luckily, when I tried using the brackets, it popped up a message that I had to show the Transfer field (column) first and then enter the account.

There is also a free iOS app that syncs with the Mac or Windows versions.  It appeared to sync all of the accounts for the past year.  I added a transaction on my iPhone and it appeared on the Mac.  It also supports photos of receipts, but locked up the iOS app when I tried it.  I killed the app, restarted and it worked the second time.  But now I am still waiting for the photo transaction to sync with the Mac. 

I’m sure I will find somethings missing but think this new Mac version has convinced me to switch back from Wiindows.  It certainly will save me time.  With Windows, I had to launch Parallels, then Windows 7 and then Quicken, all of which took 3-5 minutes.  The Mac version opens in about 6 seconds allowing me to use it more frequently.

I will post again after I have more experience.