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Alternatives to Microsoft Money/Quicken?

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  • Deneb
    Deneb Posts: 420
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    SevenIron wrote: »
    Sorry Deneb :o I meant to ask you about the Linked Bills issue, I cant say I have noticed this feature on any version of Quicken I have owned, perhaps I have just never noticed it or used it, out of interest what is the feature and what trouble was it giving you.

    Hi Mark, It is a new feature that was introduced in Q2016. If you are a US user you can link bills or scheduled transactions to institutions in a similar way to linking your register accounts for online download. It allows Quicken to retrieve the amount and next payment date of linked bills and in certain circumstance even pay them.

    It's of no use in the UK, but what I found annoying was that every time I edited, entered or set up a new scheduled transaction a dialogue box would pop up asking me if I wanted to try and link it. There was no way to disable that behaviour. Also, if you went to the Bills tab there would be three pages, Upcoming, Projected Balances (as previously) and Linked Bills. It would always open at Linked Bills no matter which page you had open previously.

    It seemed to annoy quite a few US users as well, as requests to be allowed to disable the feature were made in a number of posts. It appears that a change was made in the last patch for Q2016, in that the pop-ups have been suppressed although you still can't completely disable or hide the feature. I would prefer to be able to hide it so that, for instance, the Linked Bills column wasn't present in the Bills and Reminders window unless the feature was enabled.
  • Deneb
    Deneb Posts: 420
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    superM wrote: »
    SevenIron, Looking at Quicken website they have 3 versions. Which one did you purchased and where from?

    I can't answer for SevenIron, but Amazon.com is about the cheapest seller. If you only want to track bank and savings accounts, Deluxe will do it, if you also want to track and record investments, then you need Premier.

    You need to buy the download version as neither Amazon or anyone else will ship physical media outside of the US (Quicken policy). You can pay with a UK credit card, but you will need an Amazon.com account with a US address. There are websites that will let you "rent" an address for a fee, or you can be a bit creative - all Amazon seem to need is a valid zip code and there are plenty to choose from ;-)
  • SevenIron
    SevenIron Posts: 11
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    superM wrote: »
    SevenIron, Looking at Quicken website they have 3 versions. Which one did you purchased and where from?

    Hi Quicken Fans, I have been PM'D by a few asking how I have managed to use the New Version in the UK, a few have also asked what version I am now using. Happy to help.

    A potted history as follows:

    I started off many years ago with an early version of Quicken not sure how old but certainly pre the new Quicken data format, it was around 1998 .

    I then upgraded to a downloaded version of Quicken XG, again this still used the old Quicken file format. I used XG for many years. I then wanted to upgrade by which which time Quicken had bailed out of the UK market. I spoke to Quicken USA they told me my days of Quicken had come to an end :( Not satisfied with that answer I started to research.

    To upgrade I had to find a way of converting my Quicken data so the newer versions of Quicken could import my accounts. I discovered that it was possible to download a free version of MS Money which was able to convert my data into an MS Money format which apparently I was told the US version of Quicken 2014 Deluxe could absorb.

    I bought new a retail boxed Quicken Deluxe 2014 from Ebay and followed a blog to get my data into the new version, it worked a charm, when I registered the software I had use my American summer apartment address ;) from there I started to receive upgrade and patch information from Intuit.

    This year I got an email link offering an upgrade to Quicken 2017 Deluxe. I downloaded the upgrade directly from the Quicken web site. The upgrade was easy to install, I paid for the upgrade in Dollars on my credit card using my Quicken user account I created when I registered my 2014 version.

    All good now, no problems with data, no problems with Win 10 Pro, no crashes, no problem using UK currency format. I don't use Quicken to download my Bank statements I don't think it would work, I wouldn't use this feature anyway. Because I don't use the software in the US the Smart phone app wont work either it won;t allow you to register a UK phone number.

    I would say don't be put off by the guys that say you cant use Quicken in the UK that's rubbish you can BUT don't expect support from the Quicken Tech guys so back your Data up before you do anything drastic that could turn your accounts to mush. Saying all that I am sure they would support 2017 if I was to use my American apartment address ;)

    I hope this has helped some.

    Regards

    Mark
  • SevenIron
    SevenIron Posts: 11
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    Deneb wrote: »
    Hi Mark, It is a new feature that was introduced in Q2016. If you are a US user you can link bills or scheduled transactions to institutions in a similar way to linking your register accounts for online download. It allows Quicken to retrieve the amount and next payment date of linked bills and in certain circumstance even pay them.

    It's of no use in the UK, but what I found annoying was that every time I edited, entered or set up a new scheduled transaction a dialogue box would pop up asking me if I wanted to try and link it. There was no way to disable that behaviour. Also, if you went to the Bills tab there would be three pages, Upcoming, Projected Balances (as previously) and Linked Bills. It would always open at Linked Bills no matter which page you had open previously.

    It seemed to annoy quite a few US users as well, as requests to be allowed to disable the feature were made in a number of posts. It appears that a change was made in the last patch for Q2016, in that the pop-ups have been suppressed although you still can't completely disable or hide the feature. I would prefer to be able to hide it so that, for instance, the Linked Bills column wasn't present in the Bills and Reminders window unless the feature was enabled.

    Hi Deneb, Thanks for the explanation, nope I haven't seen this feature in my 2017 Deluxe version, perhaps I haven't poked around enough yet, I will update if I stumble across it.
  • SevenIron
    SevenIron Posts: 11
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    Jassy wrote: »
    Finally I had to bite the bullet and move away from Quicken having used it since the 90's. There are so many issues now running it under Windows 10 that I had to give up.

    Looking around I wanted a fairly simple piece of software that would handle a few current, savings and ISA accounts. Finally I decided on Jiosoft Money Manager. I first asked if they had a demo version to get a feel for the product, their website is OK but the screen shots are small. The sales said that they could address all the items I put forward that I needed so I bought it.

    Exporting the QIF files and importing went a dream. You can not export the scheduled payments list so this had to be entered manually.

    There are a few issues with the software that I have reported and to be fair the response from Michael was very quick and he has prmoised to look at them and hopefully address in the next release, what I dont know is when that will be.

    When setting up a scheduled payment e.g. Council rates there is no facility to have a different first value to the rest, this is very common practice and should be included already. I also like the facility in Quicken that allows a scheduled payment to hit the register a specified number of days in advance so you can them coming up easily and know what your commitment is so you know just how much you have keft to spend. This is not an option.

    When I get my bank statement I reconcile all payments and expect a report to give me a bottom line of what is left in the account not including non reconciled and no scheduled payments that have not been paid yet. The report does not do this calculation and seems to ignore the reconciled flag on the transaction. Right now I have to export all transactions as a CSV file, import in to Excel and add up all the reconciled transactions to see if the account matches the bank statement, very basic stuff that should work and not require all this messing around. I would also have expected a summary option within the reporting option (once it works), I dont want to see all the transactions that create the bottom line, just the bottom line itself.

    So experience so far, its an OK product that could easily be improved to replace Quicken for me but right now it is not there.

    Hi Jassy, get back to Quicken as fast as you can, see below potted history Quicken lives and breathes.
  • No_6
    No_6 Posts: 835
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    Well, looks like Diamonds paper and pencil or pen has been out dated.
    Will stick with MS for all my accounts.
  • Deneb
    Deneb Posts: 420
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    SevenIron wrote: »
    Hi Jassy, get back to Quicken as fast as you can, see below potted history Quicken lives and breathes.

    Just to add: you need to enable multicurrency support in the Quicken preferences and set the default currency to UK pounds before creating or importing any accounts, otherwise the currency may be USD, and you can't change the currency of an account once its been created.

    Also, if Quicken complains about language settings on your PC, go to Clock, Language and Region settings in Windows and set the language for non-Unicode programs to English (United States). That fixes the error message and you keep your main language settings as English (United Kingdom) or whatever you had them set to.
  • Deneb wrote: »
    Just to add: you need to enable multicurrency support in the Quicken preferences and set the default currency to UK pounds before creating or importing any accounts, otherwise the currency may be USD, and you can't change the currency of an account once its been created.

    Also, if Quicken complains about language settings on your PC, go to Clock, Language and Region settings in Windows and set the language for non-Unicode programs to English (United States). That fixes the error message and you keep your main language settings as English (United Kingdom) or whatever you had them set to.

    Thanks Deneb, Your additions were really important, I forgot about that and its really important to getting the data into the new versions.
  • Sage perhaps
  • Archi_Bald
    Archi_Bald Posts: 9,681
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    Sage is Accounting software. Would be sledgehammer to crack a nut for someone looking for a personal finance package.
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