My First ~ 3 Months with Quicken Simplifi
Here is my honest opinion of QS.
I have been using QC (Quicken Classic) for 20+ years. I travel extensively, 80% of my time, QC sync was just not reliable or I found useable. QC served my needs while not traveling.
I sought alternatives. QS (Quicken Simplifi) and a competitor. I will not comment here on the competitor.
These are my opinions. Would I recommend QS? Sure, for entry level user or those not detailed “into the weeds”. That’s who it is really built for.
PROs
- Interface is clean and simple.
- No issues with checking, saving, credit cards, assets. Sync often, works. Like the "pending" transactions.
- Dashboard is simple and provides basic information for most users.
- Some reports are great.
- Watchlist. I do like this feature. Only enhancement would be to allow the end user select between “Projected” or “Remaining”. I would rather see “remaining” projection is pixie dust or show both.
- Asset tracking is the same as QC. Which is a nice touch.
- Savings goal. Works.
CONS: Investment
- Way to basic. Needs at least some more control. Just way to limited very limited.
- You can’t export data is beyond me to dump into a Pivot table / PowerBi. Data Prison?
- Can’t even run a basic report like “Income Interest/Dividend”. This is a must. Yes. You can modify “Action” as workaround, but for me, I have to many accounts to do transactions one by one since QS will not let you modify multi-transactions at once for “Action”. Also “Actions” are prebaked. I have not added all my accounts at this time just for this reason.
- Portfolio is always asking for input by me on some money market or cash to update cost basis. Why? This is what QS should be doing so I can track income for interest/divided and stocks, ETF, CEF, Mutual, etc. performance.
- Reports. Well. There is none. The portfolio, balance, and performance not considered reports they are dashboard information (my opinion). Need to be able to print out the graphs, can't find a way to do that. Reporting area needs to be major focus.
Other:
- Cash Flow. Not very useful to me. One area QS should consider re-thinking.
- Spending Plan. Still playing around with this area. I don’t use “bills”, etc.. I much prefer the QC budget tool over QS. The layout and interface should be more like QC. My opinion, the input interface is not user-friendly. To many “clicks” to create and update.
- “Coming Soon” Please define “Coming Soon” 1 month? 1 year? 5 years?
- Transfer. Works good in identifying matching 95% of the time.
Overall, as I mentioned. QS is more for entry level or those that don’t get into the weeds.
Will I keep using QS? Not sure yet. I will see what improvements are made in 2026 and re-evaluate. Right now, QC is still my go to. I can’t continue maintaining QC and QS in parallel. I will need to make a find determine by end of 2026. I will provide update as enhancement rollout depending on definition of "coming soon"
Comments
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You make some very good points. I agree with all of your Pros. I also agree that Cash Flow is something that doesn't help me much, but may be of great use to others.
The philosophy with Simplifi was to simplify. For that reason, I surmise, Investments and Reports are so weak. The assumption was that most people didn't need all those bells and whistles. I do agree that both need to be beefed up, and I think they will be at some point, but they have low priorities. I'll point out that some brokerage firms will update the cost basis but Fidelity for one does not, so you have to update those yourself. And yes, it's a pain. Let's face it: everyone today has investments.
I disagree with you on the Spending Plan. This is the main reason I have stuck with QS because I never could use Classic's budgeting. Just too complicated and made you feel like a failure unless you were going to fiddle with every single category each month. I still use Classic and I look at my Budget there every once in a while and I wince. It's awful. With The Spending Plan, you put in your bills and a spending limit for maybe 4-5 categories, and you are done. You can see how much you will have left and plan your Savings from there. I urge you to consider making more things bills. I include things like doctor's visits, plumbing and house repairs, lawn care, etc, because they have to be done and have to be paid. It is not discretionary at all. That leaves me with just food & groceries and recreation that may vary somewhat (even though my tennis dues, video subscriptions are bills).
Over time, I've noticed that Simplifi has somewhat abandoned their Simple approach and has added more features. The decision to create QBP based on Simplifi perforce made that necessary. And perhaps as a result some of the original features of Simplifi don't work quite as well as they should. That would be auto-categorization and matching transactions to recurring bills and income. I think those things will get cleaned up.
Steve
Quicken Simplifi (Safari & iOS) Since 2021
Quicken Classic (MacOS) Since 2009
MS Money (1991-2009) and Dollars & Sense (1987-1991)0 -
Agree with @SRC54 that with time, I do see Simplifi trying to do more and more things. In his recent annual letter, Eric Dunn stated
“Quicken Simplifi remains the top choice for new Quicken users.” & “Quicken Classic remains our flagship offering.”
I’d suspect that at some point, Simplifi will replace QC as Quicken’s flagship product. To get there though, they’ll need to build more and more functionality in. If it’s not there now, it likely will be.
Chris
Quicken Simplifi user since 2021.
Quicken Desktop user since 2014.
Spreadsheet user since forever.1
