Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
Quicken Essentialsis Intuit ’s newfangled personal finance trailing program program and inheritor apparent to the Quicken throne . But , as is the suit with many heritor , it ’s unclear yet whether Quicken Essentials will grow to become as essential ( punning intended ) to your fiscal wellbeing as was the original .
Quicken Essentials is lose a number of key features that will justifiably mark off current Quicken users off — there ’s no in - deepness investing tracking , integrate government note paying , password protection , or a TurboTax exportation . ( Intuit states that a next update will add countersign protection . ) But Quicken Essentials is a brand unexampled syllabus , not just Intuit dialing in yet another version of Quicken for Mac and Quicken Essentials could be the beginning of something good .
Quicken Essentials builds on the nearly right August 15 that most banking institution put up everything you need to handle your banking basics online , such as dealings tracking and online bill - pay . Quicken Essentials is for when you need a room to combine that info and turn it into something utilitarian . The programme can link up to and mechanically download information from more than 12,000 banks . Of the three banks that I expend , only one worked using my normal Web login . My second bank required a monthly fee to use Quicken Essentials ’ connection method acting . My third camber ( actually , my local credit union ) exports data as CSV or QIF only , file formats that are not back up by Quicken Essentials . To track my citation union ’s data , I ’ll have to use the old - schooling method acting of enter each dealings manually .
Quicken Essentials for Mac is a new and completely redesigned application for monitoring your personal financial information.
If you have Quicken 2007/06/05 data , Quicken Essentials will import it without a job and several exploiter I ’ve heard from that have many year ’s worth of data had great succeeder importing data . I ab initio had trouble importing my Quicken 2006 file , but this appears to have been because I was make unnecessary that file in my DropBox accounting , which , for some understanding , made it impossible for Quicken Essentials ’ changeover tool to use .
Once your data is in Quicken Essentials , the program ’s Overview window shows a pie chart display your top five outgo categories , a list of all your current assets and indebtedness , a list of upcoming beak , and selected budgets that you ’ve created . To change what you see in the main windowpane you pick out any of the detail that appear in the broadcast ’s source tilt .
Quicken Essentials for Mac is a new and wholly redesigned app for supervise your personal fiscal selective information .
Quicken Essentials’ Spending Cloud, which displays your spending categories in a cloud, is where you start creating customized reports.
The Tools section of the source list comprise six items : Overview , Transactions , Scheduled Transactions , Last Download , Accounts Summary , and Category Explorer . All of these tool ( except for Account ’s Summary ) expose a leger - corresponding tilt of dealing . These can be trickle somewhat by using a drink down - up menu to select specific story , but the scope of the filtering is limited . For example , you ca n’t use the menu to select a specific family or tag to filter your list on , alternatively you have to utilise the search subject to dribble your list and using that search only admit you to filter on a unmarried rag at a time .
create reports in Quicken Essentials is counterintuitive . There is no reports menu or other obvious prick for creating a report . rather you have to first select the Spending Cloud composition from the Reports mathematical group in the seed list . You then cluck one of the class that appear in the swarm , which will exhibit a story for that category . When your write up open you select the preferences menu that appears on the paper . When the preferences sheet opens you may mulct - tune the items that appear on your report , and then iron the Save Custom Report push . Quicken Essentials will then save a new report under the Reports Group . queerly , you ’re not ask to give the composition a name , Quicken Essentials render its own name based on the category you select from the Spending Cloud . you could rename the study in the informant listing by come home the news report name and move your mouse out , just like you would in the Finder .
With the exception of Reports and Budgets , everything else in the source list is some subset of the ledger you see when you select the Transactions item from the Tools reference listing . And this , in a nutshell , fix what Quicken Essentials is : A yoke of graphical record and a bunch of transaction lists . Which , in the end , is not much to spell home about .
Quicken Essentials ’ Spending Cloud , which displays your expenditure categories in a cloud , is where you originate make customized reports .
Macworld’s buying advice
Quicken Essentials is a good scratch but it ’s not yet ready to manage your personal financial data . In fact , there are at least a half dozen other program that offer you more than Quicken Essentials at half the price . You ’re better off using Intuit ’s newly acquired Mint.com , which it appear to have been the guide for Quicken Essentials , or you may want to adhere with your current interpretation of Quicken or prefer another applications programme . While Quicken Essentials shows some promise for the future tense , it ’s the first meter in eld that Intuit has created an practical program for the Mac that is soup - to - nuts sword new , it ’s still miss too many basic lineament to make it a replacement for the Quicken of old .
