An Update from Eric Dunn, Quicken CEO

Coach Natalie

Dear Simplifi user,

I am writing with the latest on Quicken and Simplifi and to give you an update on our company. 

Over the past 6 months, Quicken for Windows has seen improvements in a number of areas. We have listened to your input and continued to make the new modern dashboard more flexible, so that it has now become a great “home base” for an increasing number of Quicken users. We have also responded to several customer requests in the area of investments: the RSU tracking feature* now includes additional options for grants (gradient, single vesting; rounding), we’ve made the portfolio value report sortable and provided lot detail to help with tax-loss harvesting, and we’ve added an entirely new Income by Security* report to give a clearer picture of investment income. We have also added real-time quotes*. Coming soon will be support for Roth IRAs in the Paycheck Wizard, many refinements to reports, and a re-introduction of the ability to see pending transactions when downloading from banks — we took your input from the brief, earlier appearance of this feature to redo it with much easier ways for you to turn it on and off, either overall or account by account. For more information, see release notes here. 

As mentioned in my last letter, Quicken for Mac has “fast-followed” Quicken for Windows with its own slick implementation of the modern dashboard, soon enhanced with more customization and with new Income & Expense and Net Worth cards. Quicken for Mac also has a much-improved flow when adding accounts, a new daily frequency option for Reminders, all-new Reconciliation Reports, expanded portfolio charting, and continuing progress on driving down already-low crash rates and bug incidences. For more information, see the release notes here. 

My personal favorite new feature in the Quicken Companion apps (web and mobile) is the addition of real-time quotes*, which has now made these apps my daily “source of truth” for investment information. The Companion team has also continued to add key desktop functionality to the companion apps, and you can now add, edit, and delete categories, tags, memorized transactions, and renaming rules. You can also now view year-to-date (YTD) and annual budgets, and you can now customize reports in the companion apps. 

We have been hard at work on both the web and mobile versions of Simplifi. These now allow dataset sharing so that you and a spouse, partner, or advisor can share access to finances without having to share passwords and logins. We have also added a new net worth report, support for investment transactions as well as positions (in early access on the web), and improved investment performance reporting — both IRR and time-weighted return (web early access). This month, the mobile team is finishing a complete top-to-bottom rewrite of the Android and iOS apps with the same great functionality, but MUCH faster performance. We think you will be impressed! Also coming very soon will be enhancements to the Spending Plan to support upcoming transactions and improve the handling of transfers. For more information, see the release notes here. 

We continued our work on modernizing and improving connectivity to financial institutions, with updates to our connections to Bank of America and American Express since my last letter. We know that having to set up connectivity again can be annoying or frustrating, and we have tried hard to make the changeovers smoother as we gain experience with the new systems. We do think we have gotten better, which is important because we expect more bank migrations in the years ahead. We also recognize that some bank bill-pay customers lost access within Quicken to bill pay because of the new connectivity protocols, which don’t support external bill-pay access. Although we don’t have a good solution right now, we have a project underway to make major improvements to our own Quicken Bill Manager, which we believe will make it a worthy successor to integrated bank bill pay in about a year. 

On the company front, we have been slowly adding to our team and now have about 200 employees. We were fortunate to be able to add some additional space at our Menlo Park site without relocating, which has allowed us to staff some new projects and also welcome a record crop (11) of college summer interns. We remain a scrappy but professional crew with big ambitions — but enjoying our work and not taking ourselves too seriously. 

Thanks for being a Simplifi user!

CEO, Quicken Inc.

Chrobrego

What exactly are the 200 employees at [Quicken] doing? I see more development with financial apps run by a single person than I do with this company of 200. The last update fixed a total of 4 small things. Any big improvements in the works?

Flopbot

Read it again @Chrobrego. This isn't an insignificant thing.

This month, the mobile team is finishing a complete top-to-bottom rewrite of the Android and iOS apps with the same great functionality, but MUCH faster performance.

I'm glad to read this. The way I see it, if they're building a better, more stable base for Simplify, I'm very happy. Maybe it will lead to more and faster features in the future.

RobWilk

I complain a lot about this software, I admit. But when I do, I, too, don't take myself too seriously. Part of it is that I know if you have 200 employees you're paying every month, my $4/month doesn't amount to a very large part of one employees one-hour wage (where I am, minimum wage is at least $15/hour). In other words, if I'm the only one experiencing the things i'm complaining about, big deal get on line. To me, the question is are these problems enough to make me leave the app, no, so instead i learn to work with and around any quirks it has. I haven't found another app that does what this app does (if all it had was the cash flow chart, that might be good enough for me, the savings goals i'm now using are a big plus too), if I found one I might consider switching (or at least try it). I've seen several apps temporarily get past the censors in here, so far i've regretted trying every one of them (but i will try them again, including some of the same ones, to see if they got better, eventually). They're also clearly listening to the community input here, and the fact that any of the things i've complains about have been fixed as a result is amazing.

I already have in my savings goals money set aside to renew simplifi in June or july 2023 and 2024.

-Rob

p.s. sometimes i sound more upset than i really am, because "squeaky wheel gets thte grease."

farm_astronaut

Should we expect a dark mode version for the iOS app any time soon? Interesting that the web version and the app are disconnected in this aspect.

Keep up with the great work. Simplifi is one of my favorive platforms at the moment.

mjp2

Hello Quicken Management.

I have been wrestling with Quicken for years; working through the technical challenges of data download, data synch and data file errors and reconciliation problems when trying to figure out why Quicken does what it does when arranging my finances in the Windows desktop app. The Simplifi version, although clearly designed for a different audience, who would not be interested in advanced features like those found in Premier and beyond; has it quirks too. Basic stuff like having a real check register in place so a person can see what their account balance is for each transaction at every point in time is missing from this application, which is actually ridiculous to me, if for no other reason than this capability is found in the long-standing desktop versions.

I am literally paying for both desktop and Simplifi versions with the hopes that one of them will serve my needs. I spend way too much time fixing problems while trying to manage my finances through these apps and sadly I still must rely on my spreadsheet for way too many financial management decisions considering my investment into this technology.

I personally wish that Quicken would pick a lane. Ideally, given the advancement of web based financial applications, Quicken should develop a web based solution, moving a way for computer data file issues, that provides the level of financial comprehensiveness of their more advanced products; if desired by the customer. This capability should have an offline update function that allows the end user to continue to access and update their financial records if Internet access is not present. (can’t do this with Simplifi).

Finally, whatever Quicken does; what is most important is that they produce a product that works. What I have learned (because I looked around) is that all financial applications have their own implementation philosophy to meet what it considers its target audience needs. I understand the complexities software development\delivery world, as a result I also know that innovation is not innovation unless it supports the customer’s needs with minimal problems. Quicken has been in the game too long to still be struggling delivering basic services; reliably. The only reason I have not left Quicken is because I have found no other application that provides the same feature set. But given the time I spend wrestling with the product, including money spent. I am about to resign myself to using a less capable competitor – because it works. Finally when you make announcements about the release of future capabilities, provide an estimated target date so the consumer doesn’t have to wonder if this is the month we’re finally going to get the feature that we have been looking for and was promised.

Thank you for your time and consiideration

ajbopp

Simplifi is not a version of Quicken, any more than Excel is a version of Word. Simplifi is doing something very different from Quicken (and it does it very well).

My suggestion is to take some of that time you spend fixing problems and make a list of what your needs for financial software actually are, then go out and find the product from whatever company fills those needs the best. That may be Quicken, or Simplifi, of something else entirely - it may even be your spreadsheet. It almost certainly will not be Quicken and Simplifi, though someone's needs might be broad enough that no single tool will ever fit the bill.

Given the kind of tool Simplifi is, I'm not sure what people would expect of a line-item balance (you aren't the first to ask for it). Such a function would quickly be rendered meaningless given the sorting and filtering functions that were built into the register.

mjp2

Making the Word to Excel comparison is a poor response to my post because these are obviously very different applications used to do very different things. However, Quicken touts both products as budgeting, expense tracking, or financial management applications; so they are in the same category of applications. While there are benefits to using either product and yes I am aware of their difference; the fundamental concern is that they both; in their own way have basic problems that they shouldn’t; to the degree that their own product specialist apologize frequently or try to make concessions in response to the numerous customer complaints found on various forums. Both products are pretty good; but as stated before the “basic” problems that are found in these applications should be seriously addressed so that Quicken can return to the top 5 rating when searching preferred financial applications.

Flopbot

@mjp2, I'd have to agree with @ajbopp. Everyone's finances are different, but I did this sort of 'software survey' back in 2019/2020 and looked into 17 different options (actually tried 9-10 of them) and then made the complete and - hopefully - final switch from Quicken to Simplifi. For a few months, I too was keeping up two DB's and therefore I'm not surprised at all that you're spending all your time simply tracking down errors. Those few months drove me nuts! Personally, in my seven years using Quicken Desktop, I found myself frequently spending 4+ hours tracking down and seemingly endless succession of 'penny-errors' (where a transaction had changed from $4.32 to $4.23, etc.). After the switch, my time spend simply keeping a DB happy has precipitously dropped!

Your "pick a lane" statement also applies to you. I suspect Quicken (the company) is working towards a final end-goal of retiring Quicken Desktop, but that they're probably still many years away from having a viable solution; I don't know any more than you.

In your search, you might or might not find this post useful (click here).

Good luck in whichever lane you find yourself in…just use your turn signal. 😉

mjp2

Thank you for the response. I think because of the amount of information that I put out; the true message has been lost. My general frustration with the products is not that I am trying to get them to do to the same things but the problems I am experiencing trying to get them to do what they are supposed to do, by their stated design is overwhelmingly annoying. To your point, after determining that Quicken Premier 's is more in line with what I am looking to get out of a financial package; I am focused primarily on using that application. My issue is the number of functional problems that I am having to work through to get it to work properly. To the point if that if quicken doesn't get it together soon; I am switching to another provider.

Flopbot

@mjp2 , makes sense. Because it sounds like you're finances fall more inline with Quicken Desktop right now than with Simplifi, you'll want to make sure to re-post to Quicken Desktop's Community (click here). Both Quicken Desktop and Simplifi have seperate communities and they aren't fungible. Still, you do make some good observations. For what its worth, I do strongly suspect that you'd find yourself spending less time tracking down random issues if you fully made the switch to Simplifi. Maybe we'll see you around againi!

gbkworf

I have been using Q desktop since 1992. I would certainly think they should have products that dont have bugs in them by now, but that is not the case. For the past year Q has been deleting my most important frequently used memorized transactions. I have spent hours with tech support, to no avail. I did discover part of the problem was doing a cloud sync. That would immediately gut my most recent memorized transactions. But Q deletes some of them even without a sync. Very annoying and no apparent fix. I have resigned myself to having to live with the problem. I have thought about leaving quicken, but I have decades of data. They say you will have access to them after you stop paying them, but its a lie. I had 2 separate accounts. After 6 months all my data was inaccessible. I did try Count About. You can import your Q data, which is very nice. But the UI sucked and access to your other accounts was very slow. So, now I am stuck re entering transactions in full that should be memorized. GET WITH IT QUICKEN!