Quicken gripes and rants

[unixronin]

• Quicken 2005 appears to use only Web access for downloading transactions, which means you have to navigate to downloading the transactions yourself -- and do so individually for each account.  I remember when Quicken used to be able to download transactions for all your accounts, automatically, in a batch ... just one more way in which the "newer, improved" version is inferior to older versions.  Hey, Intuit, "prettier visual bling" and "better" are not equivalent.
• It's next to bloody impossible to find the link on statefarm.com for downloading State Farm Bank transactions (see above).  It seems like sometimes it's there, and sometimes it isn't, with no apparent rhyme or reason.

I mean, c'mon, people, there's an established electronic protocol for doing this.  Quicken used to use it.  But I guess making the user do all the repetitive gruntwork saves you some coding time, huh?  And after all, Quicken 2005 is better.  It must be better.  It has a newer date on it, and you told everyone it was an upgrade.

Christ, it's almost enough to make you jump ship and try MS Money.  I so can't wait to be able to run gnucash.

---

And, oh yeah ....   I want to know where Intuit fished up this delusional idea that it was a good idea to [apparently] go out of their way to prevent you from EVER being able to simultaneously have data from more than one account visible at a time except in a report.  Since I started using Quicken almost 15 years ago, it seems as though each successive new version has had more "features", but actually been less useful, because the things that you spend 95% of your time doing aren't "sexy" and therefore get no attention spent on them to ensure that they continue to work well.  "Ooh!  Shiny!" takes precedence over "functional" and over allowing you to set Quicken up to view your data the way you want to view it.

For example, I used to have my default Quicken desktop show me about the last ten transactions in each account, all at once.  You can't do that any more. It won't LET you.  Neither can you bring up two accounts side-by-side to, for example, cross-check transfers.

Or another example -- there's this shiny new "automatic renaming" feature that lets you correct the payee data for downloaded transactions automatically.  Only problem is, when you download transactions, most of them come in with the payee field blank, and payee identifying data in the description.  You cannot make Quicken rename based on the transaction description, only on the payee, which is blank.  So this feature is, as far as I can tell, as utterly and totally useless as a bicycle is to a fish.  What's more, the stupid damned thing creates a new renaming rule every time I correct a typo.

But it's a FEATURE!!!

(I'm reminded of one of the comments exchanged among the engineers at my Cadence interview about GUI administration tools -- "They make the commonplace trivial, and the difficult impossible.")

Comments

Been there, got the tee-shirt...

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

I've always thought Intuit had a deathwish. I was a translator/localizer for several versions of Quicken, with decreasing enthusiasm for localization on their part. Most of Quickbooks was localized at great expense (it let me buy my first new car free and clear) before they decided to dump the French version (I don't know about other languages). Then they outsourced the localization of Quicken to someone who brought in ... Let's just say it was lucky that the last version worked at all. And then they gave up "furrin" versions definitely.

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

Like we said in IRC, the difference appears to be Direct Connect versus Web Connect. A lot of banks seem to be encouraging Web Connect these days, possibly because it's cheaper and/or less work for THEM. But if you can get Direct Connect, you'll be able to do what I'm doing, supply a PIN, and grab all the accounts from a single bank with a single click.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

You might think I've gone loopy when I say this, but

Microsoft Money.

been using it for 3 years now, there isnt a single thing about it I don't like more than quicken's equivalents.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Hmmm....

I've always had a certain reluctance to entrust my financial data to Microsoft. But Intuit sure isn't batting very well these days.

Could you compare-and-contrast a few examples of how Money does things vs. how Quicken does them?

[databeast.livejournal.com]

ok, off hand.

nicer interface, personal opinion.
better netbanking support IMNSHO
great planning tools
No stupid DRM
great PocketPC client
better visual/conceptual display of metadata from your financials.

quicken is great if you just want an OFP storage application for your bank records. Money seems way better at visualing where you stand financially (especially if you've got a lot of different shit in there). hell iot even supports sharebuilder.com now.

Also, it works with TaxCut, which is about 1000% less annoying and more straightforward than the piece of junk called TurboTax.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Right with you there on TaxCut. Maybe I'll have to check it out.

I wish it was easier to try-before-you-buy software ...

[skellington.livejournal.com]

If you buy TaxCut, you get Money (and a bunch of other Windows Virus crap) for free..

Just a thought, if you were thinking about buying TaxCut anyway.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Not for this year. Though if I'm using tax software, TaxCut is the tax software I prefer.

[urox.livejournal.com]

When I was considering using Money, it used IE as an interface.. which is horribly open to abuse. No way was I letting that browser near my accounts.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

MS Money uses MSIE as its UI?!?


EWWWWW.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of a certain little yellow VW Beetle with California plates that say FEATURE

(it's not a bug...)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Indeed. :)

There's also the version with lengthwise brown and yellow stripes, which must be registered in Colorado ...


(What the US calls a potato beetle, the UK calls a Colorado beetle.)

Yendi?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

As in "must study... ooooh look! new alt.callahans posts?"

Re: Yendi?

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Sorry, afraid you've lost me there...
Unless you're refering to Steve's book?

yndy, in this case, comes from yndygo, derived from indigo & gypsy

Re: Yendi?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

http://www.blert.net/qffh/quotes3.txt and search for Yendi. Otherwise you'll waste hours being entertained and amused. :-)

Hrm. I was wrong too. It's actually...

- Must write thesis, must write thesis, ooh, there's new
messages on alt.callahans... -The Yendi-

Re: Yendi?

[yndy.livejournal.com]

ahhh.
:)

I escaped the same addiction many years back... it's good to know The Place is still there - but it's too obsessive/compulsive triggering for me to visit it much any more.