Customer Reviews

Quicken 2004 for Mac

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

I have been using Quicken for the Mac since 1992. I have probably upgraded at least 6 times without any significant issues. I have been using Quicken 2002 for the past couple of years and was excited for 2004, hoping it would fix some of the bugs and crashes I seem to be having. Because of my positive experiences in the past, I did not do significant research before purchasing. Big mistake.
I just downloaded and installed Quicken 2004 and converted my 2002 data file. To my suprise my overall networth balance was off by nearly 50%. I started reviewing individual accounts and realized that all of my investment and retirement account balances were incorrect, several stating zero balances.
I tried and retried to convert from previous versions of my data file, with no luck. I poured over the Intuit site and realized they have not acknowledged this problem and have very little trouble shooting support for this version. The Intuit offices are closed so I am unable to reach Technical or Customer Support. I read on their site that they charge $1.95/ minute for phone support. So now I have to pay them to fix their bugs. After reading the reviews here I see that even if I resolve my data problems, the program itself is not stable. Needless to say I am returning this product tomorrow. I will just put up with the crashes and bugs of my 2002 version. Ridiculous.

Quicken users get substantial benefits -- but if your finances get complicated, you should NOT trust Quicken. My particular problem -- with Q98, 2002, and now 2004, has to do with user-entered lots while selling securities. The function simply does not work, and trying to correct its errors gets things worse and worse. In the end, one can only simply ignore the program's claimed ability and calculate capital gains on ones own.

This is important: many users might rely on the Capital Gains reports that Quicken generates while doing taxes. DO NOT DO THIS if you have user-entered lot designations, because the results are likely to be nonsense.

The fact that Intuit has no mention of this bug in its FAQs and offers no fee-free customer support even for what is clearly their bug is not encouraging. I'm returning this (I upgraded mostly because I hoped they had finally fixed this bug).

Worst of all: if your software makes weird and egregious errors in one function, can you trust it in ANY function? It's a shame, because Quicken offers a lot. But the fact is I don't really trust it any more.

Having been a loyal user of Quicken 98 and 2000 since 1996, it was logical to upgrade when I switched to OSX. This product could not be more screwed up. Entries are mysteriously lost and duplicated. Reconciling does not work at all as numerous entries are not recognized, making accounts appear out of balance. And so on. After hours of trying to figure out what "I" was doing wrong, I went onto Intuit website only to find out that this (and more issues) are common problems. My solution for now is to go back to Quicken 2000 and launch with OS9 (major pain, but better than having consistently unreliable software/financial data). As soon as a comparable product is available for Mac I will switch. Unless you want to spend countless hours rebuilding your data, DO NOT BUY. Any review supporting this product could only be written by an Intuit executive or major shareholder. I've never been compelled to write a product review before, but this product is SO BAD, and Intuit is so unresponsive, it was my only option.

I must say that overall I like Quicken since I started using it in 2002. It's great for managing my finances, and keeping a close eye on them helps me save a lot of money. However, the bugs have annoyed me greatly. I don't remember the bugs in 2002 that annoyed me, but they prompted me to get the next version, which fixed some of them, but added others including one considerably worse bug involving net worth calculation with investment accounts. (2003 double-counts unrealized gain at the time of purchase of a stock. A -horrible- bug.)
I bought Quicken 2004 based on the rumor that it fixed this bug and some UI bugs. It fixed all of the bugs that I previously had trouble with, and I haven't found any other calculation bugs yet. I've been running it almost daily for a week with great success.
I have seen no crashes (much improved), no calculation errors (which are HORRIBLE to have in a product like this), and no horrible UI bugs (as I've seen so far, the scrolling/display updating problem in the register view has been eliminated, but since it was random, I may not have been using it long enough to tell). That's not to say that any of those problems don't exist, but in my use I haven't seen them yet.
Intuit *should* have fixed the bugs in 2003, but for practical purposes for me 2004 was a good buy. I haven't found the new features very compelling, but the bug fixes were definitely worth it for me.
I am running MacOS X 10.2.6 on a G4 currently.

Oh. My. God. This has to be the most trying software experience in my entire computing life. I had an easier time setting up linux on a 386 in 1995. I've been trying to use Quicken 2004 for Mac for about 3 weeks now, and it has been nothing but a constant nightmare of bugs, crashes, data corruption, bad documentation, and the worst excuse for tech support imaginable. Once one problem is "solved" (I use that term loosely), another is revealed, more inexplicable and opaque than the last.

The problems I had include, but are not limited to: crashes resulting in data corruption, requiring that I start over from scratch; an inability to modify my online banking settings once they are set; stark differences between the actual software and the documentation and online help documents; various problems getting quicken to communicate with my financial institution; the complete disappearance of random transactions from my registers during the export/import process; countless little bugs in the user interface.

My attempts to work with support were enormously frustrating. Their online chat system would disconnect me after 40 minutes of painstakingly describing my symptoms. Amazingly, the support staff would frequently ask the same question more than once (this is *chat* for the love of pete, just *re-read* what I already typed!). And the rate of information would slow down to a trickle, sometimes taking 10 min to exchange the simplest yes-no questions... I assume that a single agent must have dozens of sessions going on at once, based on the level of engagement he she or it demonstrated in working on my problem.

For what it is worth, I was able to badger them into providing *some* phone support sans the $1.95/minute (!!!) charge, but ultimately they were unable to directly address the problems. I was finally advised to do a full export and import, which of course introduced a whole new set of problems.

Intuit has released a product that is simply not ready for public use, and they seem incapable or unwilling to take responsibility for it. Perhaps as (practically) the only game in town, they feel they can get away with shoveling this crap out the door.

**** FOLLOW-UP ****
After the miserable experience described above, I naturally requested a refund. That was in February. It is now June, and no refund. I've been calling every month or so, and each time, they tell me that the request is being processed, and it should take 2 billing cycles (months). I called again today and alas, they tell me that the request had never been put through, but that they'll put it through and I should get the refund in two billing cycles. Gaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I must echo the other disappointed reviews herein--down to the specific problems seen. I have used Quicken on the Mac since the first version; I was upgrading from 2002 to 2004.
1. Data conversion was a disaster, and had to be repeated 3 times before a working set of data was produced. Initial output was not a file, but a directory containing aliases and subdirs. And though the installation instructions said I would be able to select the source and destination, I was not. Program grabbed what it could find, and saved where it wanted.
2. In the ROI Investment report...stocks with actual negative ROIs are reported as having high positive returns (e.g. 200,000%). Such a basic error, in such a mature product! And such an obvious arithmatic error in a _finance_ package?
3. In the IRR investment report, all Avg. Annual Total Return entries are "N/A"
4. I've been unable to contact Intuit support via 'chat'. I've tried Safari, IE, OmniWeb, and Firebird--different problem with each.
5. Help document supplied with 2004 appears to refer to a different product--Windows, version, maybe? Capabilities are listed which do not exist.
I agree with those who say it looks like Intuit is getting sloppy...and since this is tracking my _finances_ I cannot afford to use software I cannot trust.

*A bit of follow-up: I contacted Intuit Support about the listed problems, and the rep recognized the problem immediately--they'd seen it before. I was told I would need to use Quicken 2002 to correct the problem--2004 would not do it. I followed the instructions, and most problems were corrected, but then balances were wrong. Comparing to backups, I found that 2 significant transactions from data reconciled long ago (one in 2002, one in 2000) had been lost entirely. Happily the transactions were present in my backed-up 2002 files. But why did the upgrade trash the data? And why can't 2004 fix problems that 2002 can? This upgrade destroyed data and cost me about 8 hours of manual rework. I reiterate my rating of 1 star--unless I can drop to 0.

I upgraded from Quicken 2003 to 2004...There are some nice additions that bolster this version. However, if you are using 2002 or 2003 there is nothing stunning with 2004 that you absolutely have to have.

Kudos to Intuit for supporting the Mac platform with Quicken - it is much appreciated that they are thinking about the Mac community.
That said though, I wish Quicken for Mac was as intuitive and slick as Quicken for Windows. It just seems to me that the PC version is more full featured and easier to use.

I, too, am a dedicated user of Quicken. I was using Quicken 2000 for the longest time to manage all my personal accounts, credit cards, etc. When I saw that Quicken had a new version, 2004, I downloaded it immediately. Even with more than enough memory allocated, the program crashes randomly when entering data. It's slower than any previous version and has very poor help on Intuit's website.

Unless Quicken can put out some fixes, they've lost one more customer because of this poor quality.

This software hardly rates even one star.

I first started using Quicken for DOS in 1993. Since then, I have diligently recorded every single financial transaction I have made, all the while upgrading seamlessly each year to the newest version of Quicken. Quicken was a part of my life, and moving my data regularly to the latest software update was always a breeze.

But then I decided to switch to Mac. While my overall experience moving to Mac was excellent (Macs rule!), the move of my Quicken data to Quicken 2004 for Mac was a nightmare. I spent literally dozens of hours tweaking my data and in many cases simply reentering it manually, and even now it still doesn't quite work right. The program itself is clunky and bears no resemblance to the popular Windows product.

To Intuit: Shame on you for putting this product in a box and selling it. You shouldn't even give this worthless thing away. It is so awful. I will never buy another Intuit product again. I don't know how your programmers can even look at themselves in the mirror. My kindergartener can write better software than this.

To Apple: You really ought to put your own personal financial software in the next round of iLife, and be sure to make it compatible with Quicken for Windows data. And for god sake, don't let Intuit pre-bundle any of their software on Macs in the future. It reflects poorly on Apple.

Although it looks nice, it still doesn't have the same features as the windows version. A common problem for those of us with Panther, is that Quicken keeps unexpectly quitting when you try launching it. The only solution is to reinstall the software package. There's nothing on Quicken's web site about this, although its quite a well known problem reported on quite a few web sites. I've been very disappointed with Quicken because of this, and pray for a competitor.