QuickBooks Pro 2009 for Mac almost here

Amazon is now taking pre-orders for Quickbooks Pro 2009 for Mac. While I don't have any personal experience with QuickBooks, the three-star rating on QuickBooks 2007 for Mac indicates that Intuit has been equally bad in both the personal and business sides of the financial software arena.

Quicken Financial Life for Mac Slipping...

Ars Technica has a posting titled "Wither Mac Quicken?" The title is a bit more dismal sounding than the apparent reality. Checking out Quicken's FAQ page for QFLM, the schedule does seem to be slipping:

1. We will be releasing the product this Winter.
2. The public Beta of Quicken Financial Life for Mac will begin this Fall.

They also say that they won't have online bill pay, but that's not important to me personally.

My biggest complaint is they say the beta will "begin the Fall", but I haven't heard anything directly from them after having registered. Pedantically speaking, Fall doesn't begin until the equinox, but then again, it doesn't end until the solstice, either. I hope "Fall" doesn't turn out to mean December 20th.

What I'd like to see in a Quicken iPhone application

I'm a true-blue Apple-head -- I use a Mac at home and work, and I'm an iPhone user as well.  Now that we've got the App Store, it's interesting to think about what I'd like to see in a Quicken iPhone application.

1. As I've mentioned before, I use my bank's ability to download transactions for synchronization into Quicken, but my wife and I do all of the data entry into Quicken manually. The bank downloads serve more as a backup for me, for when a receipt gets lost or shoved in the bottom of a bag.  That brings me to desired feature #1:  On-the-go data entry. It would be handy to be able to make a purchase, start up iPhone Quicken, enter the transaction, and then throw the receipt away.  Entries would then get loaded onto the main computer at next sync, or perhaps using 'push' (when that becomes available later this year).

(This was one feature I liked about pre-OS X Quicken, circa 1998 -- they had a desk accessory that allowed for one-off item entry.  Lowered barrier to data entry = more frequent data entry = more accurate records).

2. I love my iPhone and keep a close eye on it, but it's small, portable, and easily sold on eBay. If my iPhone is lost or stolen, I shouldn't have to worry that bad people would have access to my bank info.  So, desired feature #2: No state secrets on the iPhone.  No bank account numbers.  You can use the alias for accounts I've got set up (for example, "Our Checking").  A current balance would be okay, but think carefully about transaction history.

3. I'm going to manage my checking account and (maybe) my savings account on the go.  Not my mortgage, not my IRA.  (I'd include credit cards on this list, but we're a Dave Ramsey household, and so we don't use credit cards).  Desired feature #3 is simple but important: Having the ability to select which accounts get synched.

4. In our manifesto we've expressed our desire for envelope-based financial management in Quicken.  Here's where an iPhone app could really shine -- support for virtual envelopes.  The trouble with doing real envelopes with real cash is that it's a pain (especially when the kids are in the car and you just want to buy gas at the pump). If the current state of envelopes were available on the iPhone, one could make better decisions on the fly. 

5. Also in the manifesto I cited one of things that made Quicken a killer app -- Quickfill transactions.  I shop at Safeway for groceries, I'm doing data entry, I type in "s-a-f", and boom! it fills in Safeway, fills in the Groceries category.  I just type the amount and I'm good to go. Quicken for iPhone should sync up with my Quickfill transactions.

6. This last item should go without saying, but we are talking about the folks who brought us Quicken 2006 for the Mac.  A clean, simple interface is a must.  

That's my wish list -- what's yours?

On The Front Page!

Quicken Financial Life for Mac has made Intuit's front page, but it's still just an invitation to join the beta program. Being on the front page is encouraging, but the fact that the beta program doesn't seem to have advanced (i.e., actually begun) is disappointing. Who knows?

Update: Bad link before -- now fixed!

Cannot Delete a Split Line in Download

If you're in the download window processing downloaded transactions, and you open up the split transactions, you cannot delete a split transaction. However, if you're adding a transaction from the regular register, you can. If the functionality is available in one place, it should be available in both.

No Exit

After displaying and changing a report, I often (but not always) get this dialog box when I close the report:


While the basic intent of this is good - "maybe you'd like to save this," the execution is horrible. Suppose I don't want to save it? In this particular case, this was my regular monthy budget report, which I customized to look at the previous month. I don't want to save it. How do I indicate that in this dialog box?

I can't! All I can do is click OK, get the Memorize dialog box, and click Cancel on it. Why the hell isn't there an option not to save this report? Clicking OK is totally counter-intuitive because it says I want to save it, which I don't.

And while we're at it, how about a Cancel button because I may have closed the report by accident.

This kind of user interface mistake is just unforgivable. It is such a fundamental operation that (in my experience) there's always a build-in method to do this automatically. Most/many/all modern user interface toolkits include a simple method to create a two-button (yes/no) or three-button (yes/no/cancel) dialog box. I would even be surprised if a student in one of my classes did something as lame as to only offer an OK button. That's how weak this bug is.

Dowloading Online Transactions

Why is it that "One Step" (to download transactions) and "Download" (to display them) are two separate windows? If they have to be separate, why is it that "One Step" doesn't bring up "Download" when it's done? And while we're at it, I think that "Download" is a misleading name - it seems like it's where you'd go to download transactions not view downloaded transactions.