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Intuit releases a new product today: Quicken Online, a web-based version of its popular personal finance software. I’m a long-time Quicken user, so when Jodi and Jim from Intuit offered to give me a preview of this product’s features, I jumped at the chance. Please note: I haven’t actually used Quicken Online myself yet, and I am not being compensated for this preview. (15 Feb 2008: I have joined a Quicken Online affiliate program — if you sign up by following one of my links, I earn a small commission.)
Geared toward new users
Jim began our interview by emphasizing that Quicken Online is different from the desktop version. “Quicken Online is targeted toward non-consumers of personal finance products,” he said. “There’s a large segment of people who do nothing around personal finance. About 41% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Quicken desktop products are for people who know they want to be better, and are willing to seek out help. Young consumers aren’t willing to do that, but they still have personal finance needs.”
Quicken Online’s basic philosophy is to take as much work as possible out of tracking your money. The software “learns on the fly” — when you categorize or rename a transaction, it remembers this for the future. It also learns from other Quicken Online users.
Like other online personal finance software, to use Quicken Online you must supply the username and password for each financial institution you want to track. Quicken Online connects to the accounts, and then aggregates all your financial information into one place. (Intuit does this all “in-house” — it doesn’t sub-contract aggregation to Yodlee or CashEdge.)
Quicken Online in action
Once Quicken Online is set up, it auto-updates with information from your savings accounts and banks every day. The software will assign categories based on past experience, though you’re free to change these at any time. As you’d expect, Quicken Online lets you run a number of reports. For example, you can get a quick snapshot of how you’re spending your money:
The program tries to encourage good personal finance by showing whether you’re living within your means:
Quicken Online offers a sort of social network for support. “From within any screen in the product, you can bring up Live Community,” Jim told me. “You can see questions and answers from other users and from support staff.”
The software automatically maintains two account balances for the user: the balance according to the bank, and the “real balance”. Most of us have learned that there are inevitable lags between when we write checks or submit electronic transactions, and when these events are reflected at the bank. The bank doesn’t always really know how much money we have. Quicken Online displays the bank balance, but it also tracks the “real balance”, the actual amount of money you have available. This is a Good Thing — I’ve heard too many horror stories from people who use their bank balance to plan their spending and end up overdrawn because of it.
Possible drawbacks
Quicken Online is not a complete personal finance solution. Not yet. It doesn’t offer any sort of investment tracking, and its reporting functions are more limited than what existing Quicken users may be accustomed to. Also, certain features we know and love (such as the ability to split transactions) have not yet been implemented. Some of these features are coming in future upgrades, but right now the goal of Quicken Online is to introduce new users to the concept of tracking their money.
Security concerns prevent many people from trying online personal finance software. I asked Jim how Intuit plans to deal with privacy matters. He assured me that user information is safe. Your account information is not retained once you’ve set up Quicken Online. “If somebody were to break in to the servers, they couldn’t get account numbers,” Jim said. “They’d just be able to see how you spent your money.”
Quicken Online is currently offering a 30-day free trial, after which there is a $2.99/month subscription fee.
Assessing the competition
“How is this different than Mint or Wesabe?” I asked. “Why would anyone pay for this when there are free solutions?”
“Good question,” Jim said. “For one, we’re advertising-free. We make money off the monthly fee. Mint makes money by selling you things.” Jim also stressed that Quicken Online has better connectivity. “And it has the best user interface over Mint and Wesabe,” he told me. “There’s better categorization. Once Quicken learns, it’s pretty easy. It’s just a better experience.”
You can use Quicken Online with your iPhone (or other PDA). Intuit also hopes to integrate Quicken Online with TurboTax Online for tax year 2008.
The bottom line
With so many web-based personal finance tools out there, which should you use? Nobody can answer that but yourself. Quicken Online looks like a fine choice, but if you already use Wesabe or Mint (or another program), there’s no need to change. If you don’t yet track your finances on a regular basis, give each of these a try to see which best fits your style.
As for myself, I’m perfectly happy with the desktop version of Quicken.
This article is about Budgeting, Money Hacks, Tools Tuesday, 8th January 2008 (by J.D. Roth)
January 8th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Quicken has realized the wide market within the web and they’re joining the competition with Mint, Wesabe, Yodlee, and etc.
The desktop software is already a puzzle to me.
I wonder if Bank of America charges a monthly fee for online version??
January 8th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Unfortunately it’s limited to USA/Canada only…
January 8th, 2008 at 4:24 am
I’ve been beta testing this for a while and it’s a great product! Unfortunately, I can’t use it for one reason: no one using a high-yield checking account at any investment institution — I use Fidelity mySmart Cash Account, others use Schwab Investor Checking — can track their everyday spending using Quicken Online. I contacted them about this and they basically said “too bad.”
Guess I’ll be sticking with Mvelopes for now.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:39 am
I have a hard time getting behind anything Intuit puts out anymore. I still use TurboTax, but that’s about it.
As a banker, I have watched as Intuit cuts off support of it’s products after only a few years, forcing their users (specifically QuickBooks users) into expensive upgrades.
They also charge banks a substantial monthly fee to provide access to their QFX (Quicken Web Connect) and QBO (Quickbooks Web Connect) file download formats.
Microsoft doesn’t charge banks a fee for their formats.
I’m a capitalist, and think that companies should be paid for services they provide. I just get the feeling from Intuit that I am getting nickeled and dimed to death.
Until something changes, I’ll stick with Microsoft Money.
By the way, does anyone know if Microsoft is working on an online product?
January 8th, 2008 at 4:54 am
The one true advantage I can see to Quicken Online vs. Mint or Wesabe is the ability to enter in future transactions (upcoming bill payments for example) or checks you’ve written. While I certainly do like Mint (and have tried Wesabe) quite a bit for the fact it is automatic and does a decent job of categorizing purchases, the fact that it is only historical is a little disappointing. Maybe they are both changing this in the future - who knows?
Also, as much as I like Mint, the fact they still have a glitch for ING Direct that shows some purchases as credits to my account makes me absolutely nutty.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:09 am
I don’t even use any personal financial software, I only draw from the ATM the amount of money I’m going to use to pay the bills, but my big waster of money are those unexpected small things you don’t count on in your spending plan
January 8th, 2008 at 5:18 am
We just bought the Quicken starter edition. Before that, I was a spreadsheet budget/balanced checkbook register girl. Hubby wanted to try this. (Truthfully, HE wanted to get it, but it’s going to be ME dealing with it since I manage our budget.)
I’m having a hard time seeing why it’s so different from just checking the online banking and reconciling that with what we’ve spent. I know I probably haven’t “played” with it enough. Still, though, I’ve spent several hours getting it set up and still don’t really feel all in love with it.
We only have the checking and savings through one bank, and a savings account in another bank. Maybe our life isn’t complicated enough yet to make me all googly-eyed at having it “all in one place”.
Suggestions????
January 8th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Quicken infuriates me, but I still use it because … well, I’m not really sure why I still use it. My Excel skills are certainly up to snuff if I wanted to do everything myself. At any rate, I won’t be trying Quicken Online.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:39 am
I have used quicken religiously for 11 years now, all of my adult life.
I open quicken and my bank website and and sync up everything before I do anything in the morning, even go to the bathroom.
I have tried mint and other online tools but just don’t like them.
I will give this a try now. I do everything else on the web and it would be nice to have access from anywhere, even if I don’t have my laptop with me.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Rachel,
I just started using Quicken, and I’m about halfway through the Missing Manual book. I’m finding it extremely helpful for getting things set up painlessly, and I know I’ll find it helpful once I get to the day-to-day maintenance. You might look into this book. The author does a good job of explaining why you would want to do something, as well as the steps to do it.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I started using Quicken in 2007 as part of our debt pay down project. The things I like about Quicken are the charts, graphs, etc. that show, down to the nitty gritty details, how and where we are spending money. If I want to know how much we spend on dining out I can easily pull up that figure for the month or year, I can also see how much I spend on dining out while at work as I can pull up how much I spend at my local lunch spots (by name).
Things that I continue to struggle with, the budget tool. Quicken still won’t give me a budget that makes any sense b/c having multiple mortgage payments (we have real estate investments) some how throws it off. I also can’t figure out how to just create my own budget using Quicken b/c it won’t give me enough category options (i.e. mortgage #2, mortgage #3, etc.). Bottom line, I’m very bummed out about the budget tool and the help options and on line help options for this issue suck.
Also, we track all off our mortgages in Quicken and while I spent a lot of time and effort setting up the terms (length of mortgage, interest rate, number of payments left, etc.) if I put in a mortgage payment it deducts the whole payment as principal (which makes no sense to me).
January 8th, 2008 at 6:03 am
“For one, we’re advertising-free. We make money off the monthly fee. Mint makes money by selling you things.”
Yes but you don’t have to buy anything Mint wants to sell you (so mint.com can be free), you DO have to pay the monthly fee each month with Quicken. I’d take the free route any day
January 8th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Oliver,
I have Schwab Investor Checking and I added it to Quicken Online when I signed up for the trial this morning.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I imagine that Quicken’s initial support, at least, will be better than what I’ve experienced from Wesabe. I wanted to be an enthusiastic Wesabe user but encountered two problems from the start that prevented me from linking my (small, local) bank and another international site to my Wesabe account. I sent off e-mails about each issue more than a week ago and have heard nothing.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Another product that I really like (and work for) is Geezeo.com. I started out as a user and then switched to employee but I really like their set of budgeting tools, online transaction management, and auto taggings transactions. The reason why I love Geezeo is its ability to help me track my monthly spending and set goals each month. Plus its free
http://www.geezeo.com
January 8th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Before you purchase Quicken Online, I just have to throw this one out there. I have never really liked the Quicken products, and I use Linux (Quicken products do not work on a linux platform) instead of windows or MAC so I was a little stumped on what to use for a Finance program.
Then I Found Moneydance. Moneydance can be used on Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. I like Moneydance because it can be as simple as you want it to be, but can also handle complex setup’s as well. Moneydance has a built in budgeting feature (a feature that I have yet to use, but plan on doing this year), interfaces with online banking, can do online bill pay, and handles most tasks that you would expect a program like this to handle. Moneydance is only a 29.99 dollar program, and I think that it is worth it. You should check it out before you sign up for Quicken Online.
P.S. I do not work for Moneydance, and I was not paid to make this comment.
Ian
January 8th, 2008 at 8:05 am
This is interesting. I’m using Quicken 2002 on my Mac and don’t really have much of an issue except keeping all those freakin’ receipts with me every time I go out of town and having to sit down at home and type them it.
This might be a good little place to start not having to save them for so long and have a bulging back pocket.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:00 am
At 42, I’m probably a little outside the prime demographic for the online account aggregation, but I really don’t think any of these services have done a good job convincing that their service is completely safe. Dialogue like, “So just how safe is your product?” “Oh, we’re really safe. We double dog dare anyone to hack into our site. And we have guard dogs and taser guns and quadruple level encryption and retina scans….” Yawn.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Haven’t used wesabe, but quicken online sounds just like mint. I find that mint is still quite buggy right now, but i wouldn’t pay $3.00 for something i can get for free.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I’m a Quickbooks user and have been for years.
As I understand it, Quicken was reluctant to get into the online financial product market because most small business owners don’t want their information “out there”. As Quicken’s Jim points out, “If somebody were to break in to the servers, they couldn’t get account numbers. They’d just be able to see how you spent your money.”
This is something that terrifies most small business owners when the “somebody” getting the information is the IRS. To the small business owner, the business is a very personal thing. Whether or not they’re doing something wrong, they don’t want their information easily accessible. Subpoena, anyone?
Individuals may not share the same concerns. And perhaps most business owners can be classified as “paranoid”, but the observation is one that Quicken has made and made public in the past.
I’ll stick to my local hard drive…
JAY
MotivatedPerformance.com
January 8th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Thanks, daedala. I’ll check into that book!
January 8th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Quicken’s checkbook functionality, when you manually enter transactions, is excellent but their budgetary functionality is terrible. There are much better programs out there. I find it funny that Quicken develops an online product with a new trademark for “Real Balance” when they have had this in all their products all along. The only thing was it was called just called “balance”. It sounds like they are trying to catch up to MS Money which has a similar functionality. Most users knew that the Quicken balance and not the bank’s reported balance was the balance go by due to uncleared transactions or checks. Monitoring personal finance through checkbook balancing and budget tracking takes work. On average, it takes my wife and I 30-45 minutes a week to actively monitor our finances with usually a 90 minute end of month budgetary meeting where we analzye on budgetary expenses for the previous month and then prepare for the upcoming month using the lessons we learned from the previous month. Being able to download transactions automatically is not always better. My wife and I find that by having to manually enter transactions each week into our checkbook and budget programs that we tend to more carefully monitor our spending. It is similar to Dave Ramsey’s philosophy about cash versus credit card spending. It “hurts” more if you have to enter this data by hand and say to yourself was this really a need or just a want? Only through an active approach to personal finance can you begin saving and stop spending more than you earn. You need to pay yourself first and dictate where your spending will be going through a budget plan rather than downloading historical data from your bank through Quicken or MS Money to find out where it went. My wife and I are planning on starting a blog on our experiences with the various personal finance software programs out there and giving our first-hand learned tips and tricks for making the beginning part easier.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:44 am
“Jim also stressed that Quicken Online has better connectivity.”
Does he mean the network hardware that supports Quicken Online is better than the hardware used by the competition? Or that actual connection times are lower?
If he means the hardware, it would be better for him to mention and compare the hardware explicitly. If he means connection times, then that claim is true but vacuous, as the product has had no users other than beta testers, and connection time depends on the amount of traffic.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Money is simple to hold if you keep it simple. Softwares are ideal if you use them frequently and reap its max benefit, otherwise it is just another fancy tool.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I was just looking at upgrade prices to Quicken 2008 when I discovered Quicken’s new online product yesterday. Quicken is the last product I use that runs only from my hard drive. It would be great to have this information on the web as long as the security is good. But I’m also going to stick with Mint for now until Quicken Online is out a bit longer. I’m also considering a move to the Mac eventually, and would prefer to not have to worry about what ‘version’ of the product I am using.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I’m surprised that Yodlee’s MoneyCenter web-service hasn’t been mentioned. It’s free, there is no advertising, and it supports a wide variety of banks. I mostly use it to track my current account balances and transactions, to sync with Microsoft Money (I don’t like the idea of Microsoft storing my bank information on their servers), and to send me alerts for unusual transactions. Yodlee also supports manual transactions and automatic categorization and some reports, but I typically don’t use those features. I’ve thought about dumping Microsoft Money and using just Yodlee, but I like some of the additional features in the desktop software.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
@Sam,
I’ve been a lurker here or months, tho I read every day.
We also have rentals and other business interests. Quickbooks works great for us because you can set up a differnt “company” for each entity.
Hope this helps.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
“Like other online personal finance software, to use Quicken Online you must supply the username and password for each financial institution you want to track. Quicken Online connects to the accounts…[o]nce Quicken Online is set up, it auto-updates with information from your banks every day.”
“Your account information is not retained once you’ve set up Quicken Online. ‘If somebody were to break in to the servers, they couldn’t get account numbers,’ Jim said.”
I have trouble seeing how those two statements can both be true.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I use Yodlee Money Center. It’s great, it’s free, it’s easy, no ads. I track all my bank and investment accounts on there…even my reward accounts and online billers. I get spending reports sorted by dates, budget vs. actual reports, credit card utilization, net worth calculation and even my house’s value (Zillow’s Zenstimate).
I tried Mint, I tried Wesabe. I found them to be confusing and annoying. Quicken and Money were too confusing for me.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I have been using Quicken on my macbook for 5 months now and have not had any problems. It is hard to understand sometimes and the documentation stinks, but I do pay more attention to where my money goes, and I have more money in savings than I ever have had in my life. Is this because of Quicken? Probably not, but it did help me realize exactly how much money I was spending on absolutely nothing lol. I tried to use Mint, but after a month of Mint working, it stopped connecting to my main everyday bank. Without access to this bank, Mint is useless to me. While Mint was working, I found it just another fancy looking Web 2.0 product that told me (or guessed) where my money was going. Half the time I had to fix Mint’s interpretation of an entry…. If I have to fix every entry I might as well just type it in once to Quicken. I’ll stick with my trusty locally installed version of Quicken.
http://www.lowstring.com
January 8th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I have a hard time respecting Quicken as a company. They push “Quicken” credit cards and “Quicken” loans are some of the shadiest sub-prime garbage in the industry. For a personal finance company they sure are trying to shaft you.
They’ve sold their reputation and good name, so why should I trust them with my private data or any product that they put out.
I guess the competition is just a little too slim in that industry.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I made a mistake. I signed up for the free trial. It won’t let me login. Tried in IE and firefox. Keeps getting an error. It wants you to click “show more info” so you can get the error code and send it to them — yeah, there’s no error code. Way to go Intuit, you suck.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I have a mac, and I was waiting for a better version of Quicken to come out (the mac version has gotten horrible, horrible reviews). The online version seems like it might be a great alternative. As a bonus, I can access it from my pc at work and my mac at home. Unfortunately…I signed up for an account this evening, and the service is “temporarily” unavailable. Hope this is not a sign of things to come!
January 8th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
JD, after I commented on this post, I clicked the “notify me of followup comments…” because I wanted to see if anyone had suggestions. However, I’m getting an email for every comment left on your site. Is there a way to “unclick” that button? Thanks!!
January 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I have some problems with Quicken, online or PC hosted.
Given the problems with identity theft, given Intuit’s history with (MHO) less than robust software, I just do not think I’d trust ‘em with my data. Period. Full stop.
Until there are laws criminalizing data loss by a vendor, there’s not much chance of me subscribing.
Having a look at the online version, I note the same cutesy graphics that clutters the PC version. It just gets in the way. But, I don’t think I’m really the audience for the pretty colors and pie charts. That’s for the double-digit set that does not know how to interpret a balance sheet or income statement.
Over time the PC version has become so bloated and fragmented with “Premium$” features, that I’ll probably not update to the next release. GnuCash anyone?
January 8th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Wow…. $3 dollars to do what is free in linux and costs little in windows. For linux gnucash or kmoney I think the programs are called… and windows it’s moneydance, its all I use I don’t enter any automated information just in case someone gets ahold of the file I do everything manual and their budget is great so far. I would recommend moneydance to anyone for under 30 dollars.
I do not work or get sponsorship/money from moneydance I am just a long time user.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I found Yodlee a little while back (it’s the backend behind Mint.com and many other sites). They offer more options than mint and allow for investment accounts. They also have bills and reward programs (airline miles, hotel points, etc).
The website for their money center is https://moneycenter.yodlee.com and I recommend it. The interface isn’t as pretty as mint, but the functionality is much better.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I am not sure I would ever feel comfortable putting all financial information online and trusting someone else to keep up with it, keep it private and not go bankrupt.
Best Wishes,
D4L
January 9th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
@ Jay “I’ll stick to my local hard drive…”
I’m with you there, all the way. Just because I “don’t have anything to hide” doesn’t mean that others have any right to see it. I don’t try to hide the fact that I have intimate relations with my wife, but they are also not a matter for public disclosure.
Encryption on that hard drive is also a reasonable precaution. There are some excellent, and free, disk and file encryption programs out there.
I also encrypt deletions, just to keep everybody honest and guessing what is data and what is not.
I don’t see why I would want to let my data get completely beyond my ability to control, including destroying, it. Quicken HAS to make server backups and those backups ARE available for others to peruse WITHOUT my knowledge. Since I can’t control which ‘others’, Quicken doesn’t get the numbers to start with.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
All the FUD about online servers is funny because I’m just wondering what everone thinks their online networked banks store all their information on.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
to rachel:
quicken does a lot of for me (reminding me about future payments and adjusting my balance accordingly, telling me when things are due, etc). i also don’t have to login to each bank account and manually transcribe digits.
computers are good at sorting information, people are good at interpreting it’s context. quicken helps me do that more quickly than i can with excel and a fist full of statements.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:16 am
[...] Intro to Quicken Online — Great for organizing your small [...]
January 11th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
[...] Ramsey burn a fire under your bum? Trying to get your finances together? Love the internet? Quicken Online might just be what you’re looking [...]
January 13th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’ve been a long time fan of Mvelopes. I like the ‘envelopes’ budgeting system, and Mvelopes supports a lot more banks then most free services such as Mint. I still use Quickbooks for my wife’s business, but I am not a fan of Intuit.
http://www.mvelopes.com/
January 13th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
[...] what to make of the differences between Quicken Online and Quick Desktop? From the Get Rich Slowly blog, J.D. interviewed Intuit’s Jim Del Favero, who further explains that: Quicken Online is [...]
January 14th, 2008 at 3:16 am
[...] Online from my iMac looked pretty sharp. Both Gina at Lifehacker and JD at Get Rich Slowly have put together very nice visual reviews of Quicken Online. You can check these reviews out. The [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I have had it with Quicken.
It is probably not accidental that problems with download of quotes began about the same time Quicken began to offer Quicken online.
Using Quicken 2005 (on two different computers). the download of quotes ceased completely on 17 January.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:07 am
[...] QuickenOnline - Quicken is a major player offline and have taken their product on to the web to make sure they don’t leave people like me behind. Their product has the benefit of a familiar face to it as well as a brand you probably already trust. You can read a good review at GetRichSlowly [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:15 am
I am a bookkeeper for a retired person who travels and owns 3 homes(some renters). ………already researched and his bank is on the Quicken list(Mellon Bank in Fl). He wants me to pay the bills on the properties, pay all of his other bills (through QuickPay) and categorize for tax preparation but he wants to be able to access the Quicken from time to time from his laptop from wherever he is (mostly for viewing). Even though he is not of the demographic …….. it seems that this product would be ideal. Am I correct to assume
1) Two or more people can access/view Quicken?
I would pay the bills through QuickPay?
2) My client would still access his bank account directly for other banking business? And that activity downloads into Quicken?
January 31st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] at Get Rich Slowly thinks Quicken Online looks promising, likes Mint with some caveats, and thinks Wesabe is a stellar Quicken [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I have been using Quicken online for about 3 weeks now on a free trial basis, and though I really would like the product to work out, I’m afraid I’m going to have look elsewhere. It’s fairly buggy — log-in can be problematic, sometimes it won’t save manual updates to an entry, accounts initially did not refresh easily. And it can’t seem to obtain the check numbers from my bank — I have to enter them manually, which can be very confusing. Also, you can’t export your data to a spreadsheet or print it out. That makes me nervous — your data is forever hostage to Quicken.
I really wish it worked better, because when it does work, it’s really just about good enough for what I want to do. You can track your ongoing credit card purchases in one place to keep your upcoming balance in line, you can enter future transactions to get a look down the road at your cash flow, and the charts present a pretty clear picture of your spending. I could probably live with the bugs until they are fixed, but I’ve received no assurance from Quicken that the check number issue will be fixed, though they say they have referred it up the chain of command. The inability to export my data is probably the dealbreaker though.
February 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am
So, to follow up from the last post, I asked Quicken again if they could resolve my problem with check numbers. Here is their response:
Dear Mark .,
Thank you for contacting Quicken Customer Care.
try to download transactions again in a brand new file because there could be possibility of the damage in the file
The problem I see with this answer is that any manual changes I made to entries after they were downloaded — categories, names, etc — would be lost if I downloaded them into a brand new file. Not a big problem now, but what if this happened after a lot of data & changes had been entered?
February 12th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Your customer support is terrible. Your online support doesn’t help resolve my credit card payment issue and directs me to the phone support, but the phone support doesn’t support “Quicken Online” because they aren’t trained. You obviously created a product without building out the customer support aspect.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Quickbooks supports printing dunning letters from the database … but only for MS-Word users.
Any company small enough to rely on Quickbooks is small enough to use Open Office.
It’s not that OO can’t read the *.doc file that Quickbooks makes … QB looks for MS-Word and, not finding it, refuses to create the file at all.
That’s a BIG minus in my book. I’m using QB now, but when I out grow it I won’t be looking to upgrade it.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Quickenonline does not support their customers at all. My bank account was updated and kept current, within Quickenonline, up to a point. Then there was some hiccup with the update process, which they have refused to address. My bank account now is not updated at all, making their service totally un-usable. I have requested help four times and left numerous feedback, and they have ignored them all.
I was running Mvelopes at the same time, for comparison. Mvelopes had the same hiccup with updating, and at the same time; but they cleared it up right away, and my accounts are all current with them.
Quickenonline’s lack of service is very disappointing.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Thanks for the review. I was researching this program to possibly use with the iPhone but appears they still have alot of features to work on.
They have been adding tracking investments now which really is not a priority for me on a mobile platform. Still waiting on useful features like tracking my cash withdrawls to catergorize the money spent more effectively.
September 19th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Mvelopes= GARBAGE and will not refund your advance payments, you can still use the useles service until expiration.Why though?
Mint=kinda nice and free,
Quicken online=Fair, no reports or exports, uggh
Yodlee=very nice, kinda plain, greatest connectivity.
Buxfer=could be great someday, not yet there, free.
Seems someone could fix up a website hit eliminating the shortcomings of these finance sites. Quicken did in quicken DOS and is still riding the idea.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
[...] An Introduction to Quicken Online at Get Rich Slowly [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
[...] An Introduction to Quicken Online Print Article Email Article Stumble It! [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I wish I could combine the portions that I like of each. I was happily using Quicken online until a couple of weeks ago when they completely redesigned the site - for the worse. Many of the features I used have been handicapped and the new stuff that was added isn’t useful in its current state (a “what’s left” view that only supports one account is pretty useless, at least for me).
I tried Mint, but it doesn’t support one of my primary accounts (or one of my investment accounts, or one of my loans). I like the layout and feel of Mint better, and I really like the ability to split transactions. However, another problem I had was that when I classified a negative transaction (say a rebate) to a category, it isn’t subtracted out when viewing charts of your expenses, so it looks like you spent more than you actually did.
Anyway, I’m still looking for the right product. Or maybe I’ll just develop it myself. (If only I had the time…)
January 26th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Try “You Need a Budget” software for budgeting (a $50 one-time subscription fee, I believe): http://www.ynab.com. It is wonderful. I’ve been using it for 2 years to help my elderly mother’s finances, and it has been absolutely fantastic. It’s simple enough for her to use, and is very strong on the budgeting functionality, unlike others that are out there!
February 5th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Sigh. … Quicken. — I’ve been a Quicken user (desktop version) since the early 1990s. My current version in Quicken 2006 Home and Business. I run Quicken virtualized on Linux in Windows 2000.
I get a pop-up in Quicken saying that online download of transactions and price updates will cease in April 2009.
So, I look at Quicken 2009. It suggests that it *might* run on Windows 2000. I send a support question to Quicken as a direct question: will it or won’t it run correctly with all functions on Windows 2000. The answer came back an unequivocal NO.
Since I’ve converted to Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 at this writing) and the only Windows hosted application I’m still using is Quicken, that means I need to find something to replace Quicken.
I’m investigating GnuCash right now. The initial account set up took a while but now that it’s up, it’s working well enough.
I’d like to solicit suggestions from this thread on what else is available. My requirements are simple: either Windows 2000 or Linux hosted; QFX either direct or via download capability; investment tracking; stock and mutual fund price updates via QFX. — Thanks in advance for your help
February 24th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Here is the bottom line…Quicken is at this point, geared to win people over from Mint.com, Wesabe.com, Vodlee, Mvelopes, ect. It’s not there to sync with your desktop version of Quicken or bring the greatest finance software to the “cloud”, not yet at least. I’ve tried Quicken, Money, Quiken Online, Mint, and YNAB.com. All of which serve a purpose. Quicken understands the concern of not being able to do everything its desktop version does but as I write this I bet they’re working on the paid “cloud” version of Quicken personal finances. The logic is simple, why would Quicken build a “cloud” version of its product when people are just getting used to ONLINE banking. There must first be trust of putting your finances online. I know many of you already use bill pay services through your bank or transfer funds via online banking but most are not there yet. Thats the purpose of Quicken Online, to lure those without purchasing and installing software.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I’m not asking for the full featured desktop version. I just want some basic functionality. Quicken Online was serving its purpose just fine until they screwed it up with their “improved” version.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Amanda,
Its not in the best interest of Quicken to make a free product that do what your asking. Yes, soon you’ll be able to split transactions but Quicken won’t give the ability to track investments for free. Your their primary customer who purchases the desktop software. How will they make money if the main features of the desktop version are online? Again, they are trying to get people used to logging in transactions, looking at spending reports and when that person finally purchases a home they look to a more comprehensive product like desktop quicken. After reading your posts it sounds like your looking for quicken deluxe 09. Trust me when I say this it will be the best 50 bucks spent in a long time. Quicken will eventually come out with a cloud version but not until people are confident enough to bank online. There are still millions of desktop users who would never put their finances in the cloud. It just a matter of time though and quicken knows it. Quicken online is to gear people in to it.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Actually, I just want the old online version back!
I don’t care if they track investments. (I only mentioned those because Mint does, but doesn’t work with mine.) I just want them to go back to the online version they had before they messed it up. They changed the interface and it was all for the worse.
I actually have the desktop version, but I liked the online one (before the change) better. What I really want is a quick check of my overall financial picture, not an in depth analysis tool.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Amanda,
I’m looking for the same in webware. Mint came very close but you can’t enter transactions in the future! I’ve read many reviews about Mint regarding the lack of that simple feature. I dont mind Quicken Online but I dont like how cleared transactions are dumped into the cleared transactions section without review. Sometimes they dont match an upcoming transaction and you’ll end up deleting the upcoming transaction because it has already cleared. It’s a simple workaround but that a huge feature I value in the desktop version of Quicken. Everything gets dumped into downloaded transactions of each account and its up to you to accept or manually match the transaction. It’s a control mechanism that the online version lacks. I have all loans, credit cards, savings, and investment accounts tied into desktop quicken online. Most are updated automatically when I open the software. I can see in a split second where I stand. I recently began testing Quicken Online so I dont know what the old version was like but so far I don’t think its ready for the current Quicken user. As I mentioned before its purpose is to lure people into Intuit’s products. This is just my personal opinion. Intuit’s management really stinks they need to stop producing versions every year and slow down to forecast. It seems like the more and more version they produce the more disatisfied people get with their products. They recently removed the starter edition of Quicken and pushed the Online version. This just tells you they just dont understand their audience. They dont want to lose market share to some tiny start up like Mint.com. What they need is to create a sync between the desktop application and online. This could act as a backup of QDATA and give users basic functionality while on the go. If you could quickly add transactions, see your total in each account, cash flow forecast throughout the month, and budget report wouldn’t this solve the issue. I’d say so. If you go onto the quicken community so many people ask the question “why doesn’t quicken online sync with my quicken”. Those poor fools sing up thinking its going to sync. Why not it’s what people expect in this fast pace information era. Heck, look at successful Google. They’re working backwards trying to make desktop products out of webware. It’s the future of computing. I understand the complexity of programming that must go on in-order to create a “cloud” version of quicken but to bring some basic features that we’re looking for online from the desktop would really help those like you and me. Amanda I’d stick to the desktop for now. Keep and eye out for future product offerings from Quicken.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I have been trying the free quicken online, and I am sorry but I dont see any value in this product! What do people like about it??
Maybe I dont understand how to use it but I went through and categorized all my transactions and it gives me “GOALS” but this is not budget! Infact, I WANT to spend MORE on my credit cards (to pay them off) rather than spend LESS on them. I like Mvelopes better but it was too slow and expensive. ….so..for now I still have my trusty spreadsheet!
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 am
Three weeks into Quicken Online - and I’m dumping it. It is a nice thought, but riddled with issues. The worst of which is the inability to consistently get data synced with your financial institution. You may successfully get Quicken Online to link with your accounts, but then either never get transaction data or a generic “unknown” error. Their outsourced Tech Support for the product is essentially non-existent as you will get nothing more than generalized form letters back and never any resolution. Quicken recently isolated their community forum for the online product from their paid products, and based on the number of complaints and issues in the Online forum, one can take a stabbing guess as to why. Sometimes, things are free for a reason.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Fair warning - ChuckO is a spammer. Google for that exact text, he has pasted into the top 10 Quicken Online reviews that Google returns. Take his comments with a grain of salt.
December 31st, 2009 at 5:54 am
I just bought Quicken Home & Office 2010 at Best Buy on Haun Raod in Menifee, CA. It will not take my primary Bank Checking/Savings account info. The data and response entry windows are jumpy and inconsistent, the program looks like something a ten year old kid wrote and the box had been opened before I even bought it.
My Windows “Money”, which cost me nothing, does most of what Quicken does and the “Money” cost me nothing.
My primary reason for buying this product ($99.95) was to get all of my accounts on one page. I can’t do that because Quicken will not accept half of my financial institutions. I am returning this software to Quicken for my money back…I hope.
I took this item back to Best Buy but they wouldn’t return my money because the item had been opened!!! (They also treated me like a piece of doggy doodle) How would I know it didn’t work unless I opened it? I smell a rat there. I am going to go thru the long drawn out complaint process against Best Buy which will probably avail me nothing except the satisfaction that I wasn’t an easy mark one more time.
I got had by Best buy several years ago when I bought a two thousand computer from them, paid them to set the computer up properly, which they didn’t do resulting in over $800.00 in phone charges which the smarmy manager refused to consider helping me get some relief for even though it was their fault and I had loads of evidence to prove it. The problem with being “had” by a big company is that they have all the power and I have none…and they know it.
That’s really infuriating.