I'm not a fan of the new Canada & presumably future US policy to lock our files upon subscription expiration.
But Q is on its last legs. Intuit wouldn't have sold it off if it had any (a) profit potential and (b) hope of software salvation. We long term users are stuck.
I'm in my 60s. I hope to outlive Quicken. But I will pay what they ask because alternatives are worse.
I'm a beta tester, super user, and focus group member (who meets with India via phone occasionally). So I know a few things.
I'm all for creating a financially viable Quicken but NOT at the expense of locking data. I would rather run an old working version in a virtual machi ne in manual mode than subject myself to the risk of losing the ability to manage my data simply because I choose to not pay a subscription.
As the server problems that occurred both with Amazon AWS 2 weeks ago and M int servers last week, access to ones Quicken data is vulnerable to more th an just Quicken preventing it. There are the problems of Quicken disappeari ng but also other services that Quicken relies on.
I would never subject my financial data to an environment that cannot guara ntee that I have access whenever and however I want. I spent far too many y ears accumulating and massaging them to get where I dependent on that data. Like I have shared in the Quicken Get Sat forums, all the same financial v iability can still be achieved WITHOUT locking users out of their data. Tha t is the #1 issue for me, though there are a few others too, as I summarize in my post here:
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399178#reply_18399178 Is price the # 1 issue? No. And I am willing to pay more...just leave my da ta alone.
Sharx35 wrote in news:oaaduk$u27$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
I am sure you would, but why would they release that information? Quicken is now owned by a private equity firm. They have no responsibility to reveal their CEO's compensation to anyone, except their stockholders and the IRS.
Each Q customer will have to weigh the benefits of using the product vs the costs and potential liabilities, and make a decision.
What Quicken does is their choice. Who is qualified to determine of the CEO's pay is reasonable considering the responsibilities and his potential to earn that somewhere else.
The stockholders, the owners, are the only ones who can question his pay. And Quicken has the right to charge whatever it wants with its product in terms of pricing, locking data, whatever. If enough people stop buying they will change or perish. That's our system.
And if you don't need bells and whistles, Moneydance looks like a usable alternative. You can import Quicken files
Untrue, Moneydance will NOT import Quicken files successfully! Maybe if you have nothing but the simplest check register it might but for multiple accounts over long periods of time? NO, IT WILL NOT!
replying to Bob W., Skeleton wrote: I am also a Quicken user starting in 1986 and have all my financial records COMMITTED to Quicken, and for many I have destroyed paper records - probably not a good idea in retrospect. I now scan and digitize all my records. Pay for Quicken or have my files locked? That could get a call to my attorney. I bought and paid for everything up to Q2015. If they try to do some strange thing with dates, I may just install on an old computer and keep the date set and keep it off the internet. I'm also currently fighting a huge battle with lots of placeholder transactions they created to 'help' me instead of just letting me handle it. I also failed to keep those paper records from 12 years ago because I trusted them. What a fiasco. I have hoped the new owners of Q will provide better support and do better development but that remains to be seen.
I'm attempting to export my data to .QIF, then convert to .CSV with a VERY nice utility called QIF2CSV by Propersoft. However, it appears the placeholder records are causing my SQL Server database import to fail with data that it thinks overflows the nvarchar(MAX) datatype that accepts huge data lengths. I would like to develop a real relational database model for financial data, and will do that, but I'm no longer up to date in y front-end development skills. Downloading data into Quicken was the worst thing I've ever done with it.
Untrue, Moneydance will NOT import Quicken files successfully! Maybe if you have nothing but the simplest check register it might but for multiple accounts over long periods of time? NO, IT WILL NOT!
It sounds to me like the only thing you can say with certainty is that Moneydance would not import "your" Quicken QIF files.
Since it appears that Moneydance offers a 60 day money back guarantee, I find it hard to understand why you would post such a negative evaluation with such apparent certainty that others should not give the product a try.
I'm attempting to export my data to .QIF, then convert to .CSV with a VERY nice utility called QIF2CSV by Propersoft.
However, it appears the placeholder records are causing my SQL Server database import to fail with data that it thinks overflows the nvarchar(MAX) datatype that accepts huge data lengths.
I think your placeholder problem deserved a separate discussion (and you should have included your Quicken version, year, and release). But since you're already here:
I know of no placeholder behavior such as you describe.
In fact, when you export an account with a placeholder transaction to a QIF file ... the placeholder transaction (the one with an "Action" value of "Entry" in Quicken) is not exported. What is exported is the adjustment transaction (if any) created by the placeholder: the adjustment transaction will be a ShrsIn or ShrsOut, depending on whether your Quicken share balance was too low or too high. ShrsIn and ShrsOut transactions are regular Quicken transactions, they are useful in several contexts, and I have never heard of them causing the problem you describe. Perhaps you have some data corruption.
[Not sure why you are converting your QIF file to a CSV file: you can import QIF files directly into Quicken, but you can't import CSV (transaction) files into Quicken.]
In any event, if you are certain that your share balances are correct without any adjustments that may have been made by the placeholders, why don't you just delete the placeholders? Have you tried that?
To save people time and trouble with software that won't do what it claims it will do. Moneydance et al claim to import Quicken files, OpenOffice et al claim compatibility with MS Office, those claims are untrue. I'd have no objection if these programs claimed partial compatibility and made it clear that it may or may not work for your files....
BTW, have you ever tried to import your Quicken files into Moneydance? Didn't work, did it?
Quicken also "claims" to import QIF files. And Quicken users often make counter claims that Quicken will not import "their" Quicken files.
But Quicken does import QIF files ... but not those files that are improperly formatted. I have, on quite a few occasions, proven that a QIF file that a Quicken user said could not be imported into Quicken COULD be imported into Quicken.
You have tried to confuse the issue, but you have not succeeded. You have not proven your claim: I have no responsibility to prove you are wrong ... it is your responsibility to prove that your claim is correct.
So: can you prove that Moneydance (much less "et al") will not import any QIF files from Quicken. If not, your claim is bogus and no one should pay any attention to it. Especially so, since - as I previously noted - there is a 60 day money back guarantee for those buying Moneydance - so no Quicken user will lose any money by trying Moneydance.
I made no claims about what Moneydance can do, or can not do, therefore I have nothing to prove. It is your responsibility to provide the evidence to support your claim: apparently that bothers you though it should not.
The norm is: the person who makes the claim must supply the evidence to support the claim. [And it would not matter if many other users had problems importing QIF files into Moneydance: if even one user can successfully import QIF files into Moneydance, then a claim that Moneydance can not import QIF files is just not true. Moneydance may have some problems with some QIF files (though you supplied no information to enlighten anyone about your particular QIF file import problems) ... but so does Quicken.]
When you make an unsubstantiated claim, you can't help your case by trying to keep others from pointing out your mistake - I certainly will not refrain from pointing it out ... OK?
You did not even bother to provide any information about your problem; just a general statement that is of no use in determining what steps you took and how Moneydance responded. Saying that " ... Moneydance will NOT import Quicken files successfully" is overly general and of no help to others.
There are faq's at the Moneydance web site (including at least one about problems after importing QIF files). Did you read any of them?
There is a public discussion group at the Moneydance web site. Did you look there for information about your problem? Did you add any questions to an existing discussion, or create a discussion of your own there?
You can also submit a "private" question to Moneydance?
Hmmm... who said you wouldn't have access to your data. My understanding from Quicken is that your data will be in read-only mode and you can't modify it *in Quicken* if you wish not to renew the subscription. Big difference. Frankly, I'm surprised at those who think that after a product subscription expires, they can continue to use the product as if it didn't. This is not realistic - if true, nobody would ever subscribe until the program stopped working just to upgrade. In a subscription model, one has to have an active subscription to use the product. Can you point to any other subscription product that works differently? Can you continue editing Word documents with Office without an active subscription? The only caveat is that if the product authors decide to retire the product and not offer any more subscriptions, they should allow use of the product without a subscription.
-- John
I'm all for creating a financially viable Quicken but NOT at the expense of locking data. I would rather run an old working version in a virtual machine in manual mode than subject myself to the risk of losing the ability to manage my data simply because I choose to not pay a subscription.
As the server problems that occurred both with Amazon AWS 2 weeks ago and Mint servers last week, access to ones Quicken data is vulnerable to more than just Quicken preventing it. There are the problems of Quicken disappearing but also other services that Quicken relies on.
I would never subject my financial data to an environment that cannot guarantee that I have access whenever and however I want. I spent far too many years accumulating and massaging them to get where I dependent on that data. Like I have shared in the Quicken Get Sat forums, all the same financial viability can still be achieved WITHOUT locking users out of their data. That is the #1 issue for me, though there are a few others too, as I summarize in my post here:
formatting link
399178#reply_18399178 Is price the # 1 issue? No. And I am willing to pay more...just leave my data alone.
As proposed, the Quicken subscription would not be optional as it is with O ffice and the format of the Quicken data file is not likely to be able to b e saved in a compatible format supported by the earlier non-subscription ve rsions of product which we already have purchased as it is with Office. In addition, Quicken Inc.'s subscription proposal significantly increases the risk that the data will become inaccessible by always requiring installati on of the latest version and release of Quicken. Also note: It is signific antly more likely that Quicken Inc. will fail than Microsoft.
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