MoneyDance versus Quicken
I have been struggling with MD for months now and because there is no progress on new releases I decided to investigate Quicken for Mac. I didn't really want to do that because I've already paid my money for MoneyDance on the basis of promises that a new version was just around the corner - but that hasn't happened and still seems unlikely to happen any time soon.
It turns out that you can pre-order Quicken 2010 on special right now for $39.99 (almost half the cost of MD), and in the meantime you get a free licence for Quicken 2007 - so that's what I did. Quicken 2010 is supposed to ship in Feb 2010 but we all know those dates can't be relied upon so the comparison with MD really has to be with the current version, Quicken 2007.
Quicken is quite similar in its layout to MD - in fact it's as though MD copied the Quicken register layout etc. In functionality, Quicken is WAY more advanced than MD. Among the things I've noticed already about Quicken compared to MD:
- Quicken's reporting is far more complete and sophisticated. MD's is very poor.
- Downloads from banks are easy and Quicken does work with Canadian institutions. MD's doesn't work.
- Quicken's Mutual Funds online price updates work fine with Canadian mutual funds. MD's doesn't.
- Manual entry of things like securities prices takes one-third the number of clicks with Quicken
- All of Quicken's functionality is built-in. MD relies on third party extensions, which are often broken.
- Quicken is way more stable and has far less bugs (so far!)
After a couple of days of playing with imported data in Quicken I made far more progress than I've made in months of frustration with MD. So I have decided to switch to Quicken right away because it's too frustrating waiting for MD to get its act together. I feel kind of ripped off that I voted with my wallet for MoneyDance and they didn't deliver on their promises but I guess that's life. I will give MD another chance when MD 2010 comes out, provided I get a free upgrade.
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2 Posted by davidnlisa90 on 21 Nov, 2009 05:11 PM
polarbreeze -
I have been struggling with MD as well. Were you using a different program before MD? I used Microsoft Money and loved it. My frustration with MD is with getting assistance. At least with Money I had a book I could refer to. It seems the only way to get help with MD is to post a question here and hope for an answer within maybe a few hours. I need help when I ask the question - not hours or days later.
At this point I am considering scrapping MD and starting over - probably with Quicken because that seems the most common.
3 Posted by polarbreeze on 21 Nov, 2009 05:20 PM
I was using MS Money 2002, on a Windows platform of course. When I switched to Mac, I realized that MS Money was the only reason for me to keep my old Windows machine around. So, looking for Mac programs, and at the time thinking that Quicken had abandoned Mac, I decided to open up my wallet and try MD. With hindsight, I should have gone directly to Quicken but I gave these MD guys the benefit of the doubt. They haven't come though though. I'm setting up Quicken 2007 as we speak. It's great, no issues. Even if Intuit don't come through with Quicken 2010 I'm still way ahead of where I would have been with MD.
I'm peeved that I spent the $70 on MD with nothing to show for it - but I'm even more peeved that these MD guys seem to have no concept of how to look after customers. They're using our money to play around in whatever way takes their fancy, like that useless iPhone app. Personally I resent spending my hard earned cash to fund somebody else's hobby like that.
Go ahead and get Quicken. It's a serious product and it works fine.
4 Posted by John Selden on 22 Nov, 2009 01:27 AM
You're obviously entitled to post whatever you want to the forum, but I'm entitled to post my opinion too, and you and I are not going to agree. But I find this thread to be really tasteless. If you want to shower Quicken with praise, why don't you go to the Quicken forum? If you dislike Moneydance so much, why are you still here? Moneydance created this forum to help its customers, not as a billboard for competitor advertisements. That's just plain rude.
You bought Moneydance KNOWING it did not meet your current needs (we established that in another thread). Further, Moneydance NEVER promised the features that you claim are missing, because there was never a posted roadmap of upcoming features. Enough, we get it, you're not happy, you're moving on. So move on.
5 Posted by Bill Harrell on 22 Nov, 2009 02:53 AM
Wait til he experiences Quicken's sunset policy. The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill. I have used Quicken since 1989, but, I have bought Moneydance and have been slowly converting my data and running parallel data. The reason is that MD is my insurance policy should Intuit decide to focus on their online version and stop supporting their standalone program. Microsoft's abandonment of Money should be a warning not to depend on one product.
6 Posted by polarbreeze on 22 Nov, 2009 06:03 AM
If you don't like it you don't have to read it.
7 Posted by Randy on 22 Nov, 2009 03:09 PM
The message I got from this is that he ain't happy with Moneydance or Quicken. if he was happy with Quicken, he would be over on their forum extoling the virtues of that product. I hope he is happy having all his private information online, that is where it will be in a couple of years, when Quicken abandons its desktop products.
No product is perfect (or else everyone would be using it), forums are about helping people and making the product better.
Maybe he is a Quicken salesman, or just a Troll.....:)
8 Posted by polarbreeze on 22 Nov, 2009 03:22 PM
If they abandon their desktop version, it will be because of the success of the on-line product so I expect that's what I'll be using. In fact I'm already using it on my iPhone so I'm backing both horses.
I'm neither a Quicken salesman nor a Troll - but the MD guys need to wake up to the reality of the competition out there: they won't succeed with their heads in the sand. I do want them to succeed and as I said I will give them another shot when MD 2010 comes out. It's just that in the meantime I need to manage my personal finances and I can't do it the way I want with MD 2008.
9 Posted by Randy on 22 Nov, 2009 04:12 PM
I used the product Quicken bought (Mint) for a few months. It gave some great graphs of where your money went after it was spent, but didn't give you any forecasting or planning tools to allow you to spend more "wisely" in the future. But the biggest thing that drove me away was the ad's, they were constantly telling me they could get me a better credit card rate, or a different homeowner rate. But when I would go check, they really didn't. I finally got tired of it and canceled. It is already a risk to have all your financial passwords online, and in the case of Mint, the rewards for that risk weren't there for me.
All software companies employ people that want to get paid, and they have to generate revenue somehow. It will be interesting to see if Quicken online adopts the Mint approach to bringing in revenue. I have already seen posts in the Quicken forums that appear to support an ad-based future.
You went to great lengths to paint Quicken as superior to Moneydance, if you really want Moneydance to succeed, why don't you take a few minutes and list the things you don't like about Quicken, just to make sure the Moneydance developers don't accidentally create the same issues in Moneydance? There must be something, or else you would be long gone from this forum.
10 Posted by polarbreeze on 22 Nov, 2009 05:07 PM
I suppose that their grand vision is that the desktop and web-based approaches will more and more complement each other as they develop both products further. I agree that OnLine is quite limited right now although I don't have any problems with ads. No ads on the iPhone app. I also agree that it's very uncomfortable giving away your bank login info to a third party. If there's one flaw in the concept I'd say that's it.
Re advantages of MD over Quicken, the main thing I've found so far is that MD is better at handling multiple currencies. I have accounts in US, Canada and the UK and I noticed that MD did a nice job of integrating them with real-time exchange rate conversion. Quicken for Mac is really a single-currency product. I can't think of any other MD advantages right now - for the most part, MD seems to have just a subset of Quicken features. I'm only just learning it now though and I'll be sure to post Quicken shortcomings as I come across them.
11 Posted by Janusz on 23 Dec, 2009 01:51 AM
I do not have moneydance right now (using trial version) but I have been using Quicken since 90s. I am PC user and what push me to MD is the latest Quicken polices. Their mobile online version missing completely my needs. I will not trust them to have all my passwords and control over my accounts. I hear that MD will have soon iPhone application that will work same way as Pocket Quicken. Simple will have ability to sync to desktop version. This is big plus for me and reason why I am here evaluating MD. So far MD meets my needs and probably buy it after evaluation. Good work MD.
12 Posted by Janusz on 23 Dec, 2009 02:19 AM
Thank you polarbreeze you helped make my mind. I just bought MD.
13 Posted by polarbreeze on 23 Dec, 2009 02:38 AM
Glad to have been of help. I hope you enjoy it - it's actually not too bad provided you don't want to do reports - and you'll be able to work around most of the bugs with a bit of patience.
14 Posted by alanbmoore on 07 Jan, 2010 03:18 AM
Hahahaha! If this isn't the most obvious "viral" marketing for Intuit, I don't know what is! Polarbreeze cracks me up. What marketing firm do you work for? Oh, right, you're so concerned that all the MD users are on the wrong path that you're here to enlighten. Don't forget that most of us are here BECAUSE of Quicken and how it has treated customers. Enjoy your Quicken, but you'll need to find a different sales approach than spamming MD on the MD forum. Cheers.
15 Posted by polarbreeze on 07 Jan, 2010 05:34 AM
alanbmoore,
Relax, this is not good for your blood pressure!
16 Posted by davidnlisa90 on 07 Jan, 2010 10:28 PM
-----Original Message-----
From: polarbreeze <***@tenderapp.com>
To: ***@email.com
Sent: Wed, Jan 6, 2010 9:35 pm
Subject: Re: MoneyDance versus Quicken [Switching from Quicken]
17 Posted by EKKA on 07 Feb, 2010 10:53 AM
I found this discussion interesting. Thanks polarbreeze. Being a long term Quicken user who decided to try something new, I have to agree with many of polarbreeze's observations. The one I disagree with is Moneydance's ability to handle mutliple currencies. Setting an exchange rate for a single transaction does not seem to be possible, and converting accounts from Quicken to MD and retaining the exchange rate information does not work. Unfortunately, until they fix the handling of multiple currencies and transactions between accounts, I won't be switching vendors. Its a real shame as well because I like many things about the MD interface and it seems more user friendly.
And to those people who may be a bit paranoid, I work for a telecom compnay in Europe. I have no affiliation with either Intuit or MD.
18 Posted by Sam on 07 Feb, 2010 12:20 PM
Does MD not effectively support entering currencies other than $US dollars? I'm researching finance apps for Mac OS X and I really need to be able to enter £ UK pound sterling. Is this possible in MD?
Thanks,
Sam
19 Posted by jimmplsmn on 08 Feb, 2010 01:59 AM
Sam,
Please see the user-guide at this link, and scroll to chapter 12 and click on "Moneydance's Multi-Currency Capabilities"
http://moneydance.com/userguide
Hope that helps, and please let the forum know if you need any other assistance. There are many happy MD users here who will be happy to help you.
(Satisfied MD (former MS Money) user since 2006)
20 Posted by Eric Krickhan on 13 Feb, 2010 01:16 PM
Thanks for trying to assist. Unfortunately, this does not help and I posted a discussion a few weeks ago in respect to the issue I am encountering with no responses to date. See the link below with the problem I raised.
http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/switching-from-quicken/76-importing-currency-tables-when-converting-from-quicken
Regards,
--- On Mon, 8/2/10, jimmplsmn <***@tenderapp.com> wrote:
Support Staff 21 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 15 Feb, 2010 07:01 PM
Eric,
I have responded to your case on the other thread.
Re: Transactions in a difference currency than the base currency of the account.
Example: The base currency of my checking account is US dollars, but I bought a box of tea online for 10 British pounds.
Here's how to do it:
-Make sure you have the Yahoo Exchange Rate retriever extension installed. -Start a new transaction in the appropriate account -Enter the appropriate dates, memo, etc. - In the Payment area, enter 10.00 GBP (this is the currency ID for British Pounds) - Hit enter - The transaction amount will automatically be converted to the base rate of the account, using the current exchange rate (based on the extension).
For a list of currency IDs (also called ISO codes), check out this Wikipedia page.
If you want to manually enter the exchange rate, you can do so by going to Tools-> Currencies/ Exchange Rates, selecting the currency and clicking "Edit", and changing the rate.
Please let me know if there is anything I missed, and thanks for using Moneydance.
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
22 Posted by ki7yx on 16 Feb, 2010 02:47 AM
I have been using Quicken since 1990, and changed to Quicken for Mac in 2006. I later changed to Quicken for Mac 2007. I essentially had to start my files over in 2006 when I changed to the Mac as the Quicken file would not transfer all my data correctly.
I order Quicken Essential for Mac when it was announced; however, on January 18th I received a letter from Quicken that stated that I should be aware of the fact that the new program would NOT: Pay bills with Quicken, Store investment transaction history, or export data directly into TurboTax.
Since I need (want) to know my investment transaction history, I tried and then bought MoneyDance. There are a few things that are different than Quicken; however so far I have learned to adapt to most of problems.
I will keep both programs going for awhile to see what happens, but I doubt that I will be happy with the new Quicken without the transaction history.
Harold
Raimund Buchholz closed this discussion on 15 May, 2010 01:42 PM.