Software Annoyance: Financial Apps
on 06.05.06, 06:22am in software • comments (5)
I spent a good part of the weekend unsuccessfully trying to migrate the last 7 years of my financial data from Money into Quicken. The painful process involved exporting each account to a QIF (Quicken Interchange Format) file, then importing each one into Quicken.
The problem is that it creates duplicate entries when making transactions between accounts. For example, say you made a credit card payment from "Checking". After importing both the credit card and the checking QIF data files, you get entries from both in one of the account registers. Needless to say, I was quite shocked when my checking balance was incorrectly reporting -$99,224 (yes, that’s negative).
I can’t believe that it’s so difficult to move this data around and the last thing I want to do is lose all that financial history. I wish both Money and Quicken subscribed to Joel’s "Let me Go Back" philosophy, but it’s looking like seamless compatibility between the two apps is just not going to happen.
MikeyP (June 5, 2006 @ 1:27 pm)
This is exactly why I still use Quicken, even though it has been getting buggier and buggier year after year. (Been using Q since version 1 on Windows 3.0, and have dutifully upgraded every single year)
Two years ago, Money could import Quicken files directly, but it appears that Intuit changed the file format. I wonder if it is a DMCA issue now?
gdkzen (June 6, 2006 @ 9:08 am)
I never really cared for personal financial apps.
I prefer to use a spreadsheet to manage this kind of stuff. You have to hand enter the data and program the cells yourself, but on the other hand you have alot of portability in the file.
ken partridge (June 7, 2006 @ 11:58 pm)
I know this doesnt fit here, but another anoyying thing. It XP this time. It takes the old trick from AOL which everyone hated. When i shuts down when it has done an update it makes you wait until the update it finished installing before you shutdown the machine. Hello, doesnt any one rmember that AOL took alot of heat for that years ago ?
UncleMiltie (June 8, 2006 @ 5:43 am)
Interesting thing to note about Quicken - they do seem to listen to suggestions on how to improve their program when you submit them.
About 6 months ago, I made a suggestion related to tracking my financial portfolios where I have multiple accounts set up with Dividend reinvestment. Perviously to input a reinvestment transaction, it took two separate lines - one to show the income, one to show the purchase. I made a suggestion to include a new transaction type for reinvest, and about 6 weeks later it showed up in a software update. They have a list of other suggestions made by users that they have incorporated into the software at http://quicken.intuit.com/commerce/catalog/fragments/quicken/products/faq_q_121.jhtml
Make a suggestion about importing transfers better, and see what they do with it. Based on my personal experience, I think they probably will get to work on it.
MikeyP (June 11, 2006 @ 7:00 pm)
Thanks for the link Miltie. Heh, I see at the bottom of Quicken 2006’s list of customer suggested improvements, #123: “Added the ability to import Money 2006 files.”
I wonder where the list of Microsoft’s customer suggested improvements for Money is located?