Quicken 2003 for Mac

by Intuit

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000069IFI
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 25, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,429 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #70 in Software > Personal Finance > Money Management
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Quicken 2003 for Mac makes it easier than ever to keep your records up to date. Schedule a date and time for Quicken to go online and download your bank, credit card, or brokerage data for you. Track stock splits, mergers, and spinouts more easily. Plus, a redesigned, customizable toolbar with enhanced icons makes Quicken 2003 for Mac look and work better than ever.

Quicken's step-by-step setup assistants guide you through a complete setup of your accounts so you can put Quicken to work quickly and easily. Balance your checkbook or reconcile your bank statement in minutes. See where your money is going with reports and graphs about your spending, budget, and more. Write checks, print checks, or send payments online. Download your banking data, pay bills, and transfer funds with online banking. Track and analyze stocks and mutual funds, or see how your portfolio is performing at a glance. Download investment prices, or even your own transactions from participating brokerages, right into Quicken.

Quicken 2003 also offers tax tracking and planning tools designed to help you keep more money and make tax time easier. Explore ways to minimize capital gains. Use online tools to help find tax deductions you may have overlooked. And transfer your Quicken data into TurboTax software to speed tax preparation (TurboTax sold separately).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Switch with care, November 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Quicken 2003 for Mac (CD-ROM)

I'm a switcher, moving from PC to Mac. I love Mac OS X, it's what made me switch. I'm disappointed in Quicken 2003 for the Mac. There's no direct import of PC data, you have to export things as .QIF files following a strict recipe. When I did that, I got whopping big numbers in my portfolios. I never knew I was a billionaire. It turns out there's some glitch that can be found by graphing the value of a stock and finding where the price skyrockets, then entering a real price for that day. There is also no Quicken 2003 for the Mac support page at Intuit yet. Lastly, there's a problem with the date entry fields where you only can see the year/month but no date. I have not tracked that down yet. Call it beta software, switch with care. Maybe wait for the next version.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid Quicken 2003 for Mac at all costs!, August 16, 2003

By 

S. Lemke (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicken 2003 for Mac (CD-ROM)

This is my first Amazon review, but I just had to chime in with others who have used Quicken for 10+years now because I am so frustrated with this version. My entire financial life is in Quicken Mac, and I am SO unhappy that I upgraded to 2003. My 12MB file with the last 10+ years of my life (loans, investments, credit cards, rental properties, etc. -- probably one of the larger Quicken files around) is at risk. You can't go back once you upgrade. Save yourself the aggravation, and wait for something better than 2003, unless you really don't mind starting over from scratch if things get hosed.

I have a G4 and a PC. The two primary things I still do (only) on the Mac are Quicken and iPhoto, and I feel locked-in to both programs. However, I'm *very* seriously considering dumping Quicken 2003 for Mac and moving to the Quicken for Windows. I *never* thought I'd ever do that, but this version of Quicken continues to annoy me every time I use it. Worse, it is starting to make me question the validity of my data.

It crashes doing simple QuickReports (inexcusable), there are countless UI bugs like when hopping from one transaction to another or scrolling, there's no way to see the list of downloaded transactions once you've reconciled (as there was in previous versions), and loading my United Mileage Plus credit card transactions is more painful than ever as of Q2003: The browser link that Quicken launches is obsolete, meaning I have to manually log in. Then I have to manually enter the download dates, save to a .QFX file, and manually import that into Quicken (since downloading that file no longer auto-imports it into Quicken). In addition, it is darn near impossible to get some banking transactions to "match up" with entries I already have in my register. I've never been able to figure out why, but I end up accepting the downloaded transaction and deleting the one I entered (or one that was auto-entered as a scheduled transaction) because Quicken refuses to acknowledge that they're the same transaction. This is especially annoying for loan-related transactions. Investment tracking is also messed up. Capital gains reports are inaccurate (forcing me to re-enter everything manually in Excel at tax time) -- just moving shares from one brokerage to another resets the purchase date and throws off short/long term calculations. In addition, some of my mutual fund transactions seem to be missing (despite my reconciling each and every statement), leaving my Schwab register hopelessly unreconcileable. Finally, Quicken has NEVER handled employee stock option or employee stock purchase plan transactions (with the funky withholding that goes along with them) very well. I have to wonder if anyone at Intuit has ever tried to enter their own stock transactions.

Switching to Windows won't be easy or fun. Intuit's suggestion is to simply "export everything to QIF and re-import on the other side". However, there are so many things that don't export that you're guaranteed a mess after you import the QIF files (like account to account transactions, as I recall). I fear I'm going to have to write off my 10 years of data, maybe export my banking and credit card transactions (just to maintain the history), fudge the balances to get a good starting point, and then gradually start over. With over 50 active accounts, this will not be easy or fun and I resent having to waste the time to do it. The only plus is that I've tried to simplify my life and I won't have to bother entering old data from old (hidden) accounts that are no longer in use.

Intuit NEEDS to create a migration tool (Mac to Win or Win to Mac, as I've seen reviews from people who have tried to go either way) that seamlessly translates one format to the other without losing any data. In addition, a repair utility would be very welcome. With all of the crashes I've encountered, I'm sure there are problems in my data file. However, there is no way to validate or repair a Quicken file short of exporting and re-importing, and as already mentioned you're probably better off starting over from scratch.

I, too, have beta tested Quicken Mac in the past (and presented bugs to Intuit some of which were even fixed, as well as done user experience testing for Intuit), but this is a tough program to test with real-life data. The 2003 beta program (like other recent ones) required a one-way upgrade to the new format, and suggested that you keep both the old and new versions up to date with the same transactions. I couldn't understand HOW to do this when downloading online transactions (and especially with regard to making online payments), and they offered no help on the matter. So, I guess I partially blame myself for not being more active in this beta and providing more feedback. Somehow, I doubt it would've made a difference.

Adopting a program like this, for some of us, is a serious proposition. Not having a way out (e.g. migration to the presumably more stable and better maintained Windows version) is a real shame.

As a software engineer, I understand that deadlines are often more important (to a company with an annual release schedule) than quality and sometimes it means bugs are often deferred (or maybe not even found). It's unfortunate that that really seems to have been the case with Quicken Mac 2003.

I wish there was a more direct line of communication (for reporting and resolving bugs) with the company for those of us who are serious heavy-duty users of this software. If you're one of those people, you should avoid Quicken 2003 for Mac.

UPDATE 9/24/03: The early reports seem to indicate that Quicken Mac 2004 is no better than 2003. I've since purchased Quicken Windows 2004 and am trying to figure out just how much of my data I'm going to attempt to migrate (vs. leaving behind forever on the Mac). It all comes down to how much time I want to spend massaging, re-typing, and reconciling my transactions, one miserable account at a time...

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars They have us trapped and now they even hosed us., April 16, 2003

By 

Pappacorkoff "Pappacorkoff" (Marietta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicken 2003 for Mac (CD-ROM)

I have 10,000 hours of pluging in Quicken transactions into various versions Quicken for the Mac. My computer is totally dedicated to TurboTax for mac and Quicken for mac because my Quicken file is more important than anything else in my life. I've run it on 5 different Macs over the many years and my investments go back to 1985. I got 2003 and immeadiatly updated the software to version R4. Don't know about bugs before R4 but 2003 R4 won't do net worth graphs or reports over a range. For example: Ask for a report of your net worth on 12/31 for the last 10 years and the amounts go into the stratosphere. It will calculate your net correctly if you only ask for one specific date. Just forget about graphing things over time. The program is screwed up. It must be adding everything together.

Otherwise, I have been able to continue as usual with all my pounding of data and so far it all seems correct. I havn't experienced any of the problems noted in these other messages but I haven't had to do some of those things.

My advise. WAIT. This version is screwed up. Don't buy it unless you have to in order to get to your bank or credit card or broker. My experience on that is that its too much trouble and not worth the gamble of screwing up your file. My file is too valuble to risk downloads of stupid transactions that I can enter myself exactly correct.

If I had read these reviews before I bought and loaded up 2003 I would NEVER EVER have even thought of doing it.

Go ahead though. Spin the revolver and put the gun to your head. I would wait until these reviews turn positive. Wait until R5 comes out. You know? 5th time is a charm...or was that "Third time is a charm" Anyway...wait for R5 on the websit at least.

If you don't understand what I mean by R4 and R5. You buy 2003 for the Mac and then they put patches and updates on the Intuit site for you to get. Everybody that buys 2003 has to first get the updates to off the internet to get going.