Quicken Essentials for Mac Personal Finance Software
- Quicken Essentials for Mac makes understanding your money a snap
- Updated interface designed by–and for–Mac users
- View your accounts all in one place
- Shows your current balance, including upcoming bills and paychecks
- Automatically categorizes transactions so you can see where your money’s going
Product Description
Easy guided set up gets you up and running in minutes.Amazon.com Product Description
Quicken Essentials for Mac lets you view your accounts all in one place. It shows your current balance, including upcoming bills and paychecks, automatically categorizes transactions so you can see where your money’s going, and helps you avoid those pesky late fees. Redesigned with you in mind. Click to enlarge. View a snapshot of your most important info…. More >>
I do not understand it. All these reviews and the product is not to be releases till the end of February. Are you people working with a beta version or what?
Rating: 3 / 5
I have been using Quicken Essentials for Mac for a couple of weeks after having used MS Money for years. I never used a Quicken product before this one. I pre-ordered the software back in December and actually requested a refund because of all the bad press and reviews. Not knowing what to do, I demoed iBank and also noticed that Quicken Essentials had a 60-day money back guarantee, so I decided to give it a shot. Believe me, I was skeptical.
For anyone that is using this to track operating accounts (not investments), ignore the 1-stars. These are from people that have never even bought the product but are angry at Intuit for limiting the functionality of this software release for Mac. Yes, we understand…it doesn’t track investments…I use Vanguard and Ameritrade for tracking my investments and couldn’t care less. OK…sure…it doesn’t print checks…who prints checks anymore?? And yes…no online banking…but not many other products, including iBank, have online banking anyway.
Sure, Intuit gets an F for communication over the last 3 years on this, but let’s get to my experience thus far. Moving from MS Money on my PC to this product has been a major step up. I just converted to a Mac this past summer (and will never go back!), and the user interface for QEM is clean and intuitive, versus MS Money that was a little bit clunky…also much better than iBank. I have about 15 accounts (bank and credit card) that I use regularly and about 30 legacy accounts. I used the conversion utility, which converted 15,405 transactions from 1999 in about 15 minutes or so, and every balance matched to the penny! I thought I was going to have to start from scratch, so I was elated.
I set up all of my accounts for automatic download in about 25 minutes. The automatic download and matching is working great (unlike MS Money which could never quite figure out that a trip to Petco was not actually a purchase at Lowe’s, for example). To match transactions that are not automated, you just drag the entered transaction over the downloaded one and you’re all set.
I have used the reconciliation function just a bit. It has been extremely intuitive so far, and I have had no problems whatsoever.
The reports are phenomenal. I did not use reports much with MS Money because it was a bit tedious to modify them for new accounts, categories, etc. – but these reports are useful out of the box. You can scroll over the pie charts and get to the underlying transactions very easily.
Overall, this product is a tremendous improvement over MS Money and a great first step. Keep in mind that this was a total rewrite, so Quicken sacrificed functionality for user experience – understanding that they can always add functionality later…good choice. I highly recommend this product.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m a Windows to Mac convert, but kept my PC solely to run Quicken Windows while awaiting this program. Tried other Mac money managers (iBank, Mint), hated them. Now that I finally have my Quicken Essentials for Mac 2010, I LOVE THIS SOFTWARE. It’s (almost) everything I wanted, and it’s even BETTER for my needs and wants than Quicken for Windows. Setting up was fast and easy (one hour). The downloading of accounts is seamless (including four of my 23 online accounts that Quicken Windows wouldn’t locate for some reason, so my financial picture is finally complete). The interface is Mac-user friendly: attractive and easy to understand and there are multiple ways to view your financial picture at the click of a button without having to structure customized reporting every time. To be fair to other users, I do not track my detailed investment activity in Quicken (but I like to see the balances, which are available here) and I track but do not pay bills through Quicken (I do that through my bank’s website), and I can understand why users who want to do so would be beating their heads against the wall because they cannot do so at this time. That said, I use Quicken to keep track of my overall financial picture and activity detail on a daily basis, and this software does all of that in beautiful, seamless Mac functionality. Well worth a test run since setting up is so easy and you can return it if it doesn’t work for you. Love, love, love this program!
Rating: 5 / 5
Received 2 days ago, have entered all 2010 data. Simple to use, like the tags instead of categories. I have bank accounts at local Community banks and to my surprise Quicken supported direct download. That’s a big plus. No more typing. Only 4 stars as the report generator needs more options. Maybe in future updates.
Rating: 4 / 5
I am a windows user that has used Quicken since 1999. I recently made the switch to a Macbook Pro. One of the major things that held me back from converting was the fact that Quicken did not offer a good Mac product. Once it was announced that they were issuing Essentials, I pulled the trigger and bought the Mac with the hope that Quicken would be bearable. I had very low expectations, thinking that I could always do a windows partition on the Mac and run my Quicken 2009 on that. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised with this product. Yes there are some features not available, but for your average user, it is a great product. I think it is a a little pricey, but I am very happy with it. I think people should not let some of the extremely negative reviews prevent them from giving this a try.
Rating: 4 / 5