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Intuit sells Quicken to private equity firm in management buyout
- flog 11y agoAll looking pretty good for cloud accounting products like Xero.com - the desktop is dead!
- MajorLOL 11y agoHonestly, is this a good thing? I run quickbooks for a small business - if I wanted a Xero equivalent, I have to pay $70/mo?! That's crazy!
- nightski 11y agoIt's true. They are trying so hard to push Quickbooks online too. But no, I am just fine with my 2014 QB Pro thank you very much.
- yoodenvranx 11y ago>the desktop is dead Perhaps I am already too old, but the idea of cloud application sucks and I hope the desktop never dies. In my opinion the cloud should only be used to synchronize my data between my devices but it should never be the sole source of my programs. If I spend money on software then my main requirement is that I can install it locally and run it independent of the mother company.
- geggam 11y agoRecently I replaced the kids laptops with Desktops. They use the desktop and the smartphone when not at the Desk. Cheaper to upgrade / fix / repair / replace. I build clouds for a living. There is no cloud. It is just someone elses computer.
- georgeglue1 11y agoI mean, Intuit has moved its core accounting products to the cloud a while ago as well right? I'm not sure I understand how Xero is connected to Quicken-type services.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- orionblastar 11y agoQuicken is good when it works with your bank, I have a bank that doesn't work with Quicken and only exports to an older Quicken file format that is no longer supported. I remember when Microsoft Money was Sun downed, I thought Quicken had beaten them. But it seems Inuit still has financial problems and sold Quicken.
- yitchelle 11y agoAmazingly Microsoft Money Sunset is still available as a download and free to use. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=Money+plus+sunset&form=dlc https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=Money+p...
- the_unknown 11y agoThank You!! This is the best news I heard all day. I loved MS Money and only moved away because I thought it was inevitable. I didn't know about this option.
- Tempest1981 11y agoHow does it compare to Quicken, and can it still download transactions?
- orionblastar 11y agoThe download transactions used to require access to a website that I think Microsoft took down that would connect to banks. Most banks had to provide an API for MS-Money to download data from them, and not all banks support that API anymore. You might find that some banks still provide MS-Money format files for download that you can import. Here is how you used to do it for an unsupported bank: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/836196 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/836196 Some banks still support MS-Money others do not. MS-Money will take QIF or QFX files and import them I think. Even if your bank does not support MS-Money file formats you can find a converter here: http://ms-money-file-converter.en.informer.com/ http://ms-money-file-converter.en.informer.com/ I think Quicken is more advanced than MS-Money. It has been updated to modern technologies while MS-Money is frozen in time and a legacy app.
- hackuser 11y agoIs anyone, besides open source projects, investing significantly in desktop consumer software?
- rgovind 11y agoSlack?
- knowaveragejoe 11y agoYou don't need the desktop clients as far as I'm aware.
- sandmansandine 11y agoSlack's desktop client is really just Electron I believe
- timberburn 11y agoThat's the direction consumer desktop apps should move. Cheaper to develop, maintain, update, etc.
- cobalt 11y agothat's arguable
- trimbo 11y agoSlack is aimed at businesses
- supercoder 11y agoSlack is just a web app wrapped up on the desktop
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- asdfologist 11y ago
- isomorphic 11y agoI'm just not going to put all of my financial records in once place under one vendor in the cloud. On the other hand, I'm not going to trust Quicken after years of neglect and no sane way of getting my data out. I used GnuCash for a few years, and was generally satisfied with many parts of it, yet it was horribly broken in some ways. And it isn't easy to get data out, even though it can use a native XML storage format. These days I'm forcing myself to use Ledger http://ledger-cli.org/ http://ledger-cli.org/ The UI is essentially the UI of your favorite text editor (with all the efficiencies and pain that entails), but no one can argue that your data is held hostage! It's a text file!
- soccerdave 11y agoI'm curious how you are organizing your data. Do you have one file per account (checking, credit card) or is it all in one big file? I've looked at ledger a few times and get a little overwhelmed, part of it though is because Quicken is so easy since it downloads everything.
- zdw 11y agoThere are tools for OFX download and import - there's a larger ecosystem site here: http://plaintextaccounting.org http://plaintextaccounting.org Ledger supports an "!include" statement that works exactly how you'd think it would and is super handy.
- Karunamon 11y agoRe: Getting your data out, Quicken has supported OFX and CSV import/export since at least the 90's, and it's enough of an industry standard that any other place you take your data will support the same.
- cgrinds 11y agoLikewise, I've moved to beancount http://furius.ca/beancount/ http://furius.ca/beancount/ and the awesome fava https://github.com/aumayr/fava https://github.com/aumayr/fava 21 years of Quicken data converted to a lovingly crafted text file. Ahh. Also a big fan of Moneydance http://moneydance.com http://moneydance.com and have written a budget plugin for my family's needs
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoPrivate equity firm, huh? First round of layoffs w/in 6 weeks.
- raincom 11y agoyeah, thats what happened at TIBCO. They got trim it right away.
- johan_larson 11y agoInformatica, too.
- curun1r 11y agoFrom what I've heard, the Quicken team is already pretty trim. It's just not growing and not in the cloud, so it doesn't align with Intuit's overall goals. The private equity basically just bought a discount annuity. FWIW, they didn't reveal the terms, but they did say that they expected around $500m from all three divestitures, and Quickbase and Demandforce are bigger.
- Tempest1981 11y agoYep. I read that they doubled the size of their Mac team. My first thought was, "what, from 1 to 2?" Anybody happen to know how big the Quicken team is?
- curun1r 11y agoIntuit holds an annual internal developer conference (CTOF) and it appeared that the contingent from Quicken all sat at one lunch table. Probably between 10-20 devs, though I guess it's possible some didn't attend.
- kilroy123 11y agoVery interesting. Mint must of been making, a um, mint for inuit. I was always skeptical it was a big money maker for them. This move tells me it is far more profitable.
- nathankane 11y agoNo, Mint isn't even reported in Intuit public earnings reports because its contribution is so small it's not material to overall earnings
- milesskorpen 11y agoWhat makes you think that? Everything I've heard suggests that Mint is very far from profitable.
- AznHisoka 11y agoI'd wager acquiring mint was one of their worst decisions ever. A product that's losing popularity year after year and a pain to maintain technically too. Wouldn't be surprised if they shutdown the product in a year.
- rblatz 11y agoNo buying mint and then basically freezing the product was their worst decision.
- 1024core 11y agoAnecdata of size 1: I used Mint initially, and then gave up on it. I was too scared of keeping all my eggs in one basket!
- newjersey 11y agoThis is why I refuse to do credit score tracking on Mint. They do not need that information.
- lancewiggs 11y ago
- mathattack 11y agoInteresting. I wonder if this is the start of a pattern of desktop companies who have converted to SaaS ditching their origins. It makes sense that there is residual value, and the current owners don't want to be distracted.
- aceperry 11y agoIf the SaaS companies are dumping their desktop offerings, who is buying them? Like you, I'm wondering if this really is a pattern, but it sounds interesting.
- mathattack 11y agoGenerally the companies that gut and harvest (like CA) differ from the builders.
- thorntonbf 11y agoIntuit has squandered the Quicken brand for years with lousy updates and even worse customer support. In some respects it's good to see them sell it to someone who might do something with it. Unfortunately, the Quicken name is now so tarnished that the private equity firm likely has one swing at a decent update. Anything less than a homerun and they might as well shut it down.
- shostack 11y agoSince it is a private equity firm, what makes you think they are interested in doing anything other than gutting the business?
- L_Rahman 11y agoI work at a PE-owned company (over 20 years in PE ownership now) and the strategy is to seek growth, not to cut costs by shedding headcount. Caveats: 1. This is anecdotal evidence, and many PE firms actually do buy companies with the intention of firing people. 2. I don't know whether this is the most common activity or just generates the most press/attention. I would be pretty interested in a statistic that looks at PE company acquisitions and compares company headcount at entry and exit.
- Tempest1981 11y agoAgreed -- it's a weird strategy. "Hey users, look how bad we let Quicken get... Now try our cloud products!"
- tunesmith 11y agoOn a Mac, the only software I've been able to migrate to is Banktivity (formerly iBank). The migration wasn't perfect but I eventually successfully ported over more than a decade of transactions including investments. Every once in a while I look into gnucash or ledger but so far I've always run out of steam before I've been able to ensure that they'd truly give me feature parity for the features I care about. At any rate though, it is a joy to not be using Quicken anymore.
- an4rchy 11y agoInteresting that it's a management buyout. It sounds like the head of Quicken has a significant stake in this buyout. So, obviously he has some amount of confidence in the company to put his own money into it.
- ryandrake 11y agoIf there was one piece of desktop software that I think the world definitely needs an alternative for it's Quicken. I've got about 15 years of my financial life in my Quicken file, and I probably have used the software at least twice a week, religiously, during that time period. I've grown so dependent on it in a way I've never grown dependent on any other software. If it were to stop functioning tomorrow, I'd be screwed. It's funny because I'm sure I don't even use like 95% of Quicken. I don't use the budget, or the bill paying, or the charts and reports, or the tax crap, or the retirement planning or all the other various bells and whistles Intuit has decided to bolt on to its vast menu structure over the years. I use it as a checkbook register and as a way to plan the month so I don't overdraw my checking account (which would probably happen monthly if I didn't have Quicken), and to download credit card transactions weekly to watch for fraud. That's it. Surely those two functions are the MVP for any alternative. There is no way in hell I am going to upload 15 years of financial history to "the cloud". Not a snowball's chance in hell. And yes, I've tried GnuCash. It's just not as good. Clunky UI, double-entry accounting, Yuck.
- WalterBright 11y agoDoing my taxes this year, I find it amazing how incompetent most financial software is (including Quicken). For example, take a simple task: download all your financial data for the last year. Log into your bank's site. There is no button for "last year". You have to laboriously enter 01/01/2015..12/31/2015. Then you're given a choice of formats. Download ALL of them, because sure as shootin', Quicken will only import one of them, and that's one is different for every different account! (Stunningly stoopid.) Then try to get the statements, just try, my pretty. There is no "get me all the statements from last year." Nope. You download them one at a time, and some of them download to the same file name! So it's clicking around, then rename the file to "January 2015", then repeat for the next one, etc. Oh, you wanted the tax 1099 forms? That's a whole 'nuther section on the web site. Buy anything from Paypal? This is the killer. Paypal lists the payee as "Bob". Your credit card statement lists the payee for the same transaction as "Carol". The credit card downloaded data file lists the payee as "Ted". And, Quicken somehow calls it "Alice". Can you believe it in 2016? Naturally, you cannot download the full information about the transaction anyway. Download the CSV file, and Paypal randomly leaves out information you have to manually edit back in, like the item description which appears on the web site but not in the CSV data. And why does my bank list the payee for a check as "Check 236"? The bank knows who the money got sent too. It's all on a computer.
- jrcii 11y agoWhat gets me is when I see software designed this way and then start imagining how much money was spent developing it, and fellow software architects sitting back with their arms folded staring at the screen thinking what a good job they did.
- edoloughlin 11y agositting back with their arms folded staring at the screen thinking what a good job they did Isn't that a basic job requirement for a software architect at BigCo?
- raverbashing 11y agoYes they used several UML diagrams, several design patterns. They couldn't code a line of it but the drawings look nice This is so close to reality it hurts
- greggman 11y agoMy impression is Intuit worked to make sure the online pay system keep changing their protocol just to force you to upgrade to a new Quicken every 2 years. Can anyone confirm?
- erikb 11y agoThere is a lot of complaint about this kind of software, and I have to agree, it's often not well done. But that shows us that the money flows in different directions, right? Maybe there is a value to having a good tax guy.
- chvid 11y agoI think the story here is that it is much better to do business in the web space where the user pays monthly, her data is stored (locked?) in the cloud and she can be costantly upsold features. Compared to the desktop space, where the user pays a one-off price, stores her data locally and in general does not update her software.
- scentoni 11y agoDoes anyone here use http://www.gnucash.org http://www.gnucash.org ?
- nikolak 11y agoI use it primarily because quicken on mac is completely useless when you have multiple accounts with different currencies. They even list your totals wrong like "100 USD + 100 GBP = 200 EUR" last time I tried it. And there aren't that many alternatives for personal use since i don't need anything extremely complex. GNUcash is probably the ugliest piece of software that I use regularly, but at least it works. Depending on one's needs YNAB or Quicken might be a better choice though - but neither work well with multiple currencies or even accounts.
- jldugger 11y agoI do. A few years ago I put together a presentation on how to use it effectively for personal finance: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CUSct3YGvpVdKI_D_jCI8M9nFz462xQMhQxK4GSwWpE/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CUSct3YGvpVdKI_D_jCI... The long and short of it is that GNUCash rests upon an ancient bed of Scheme and C, and so isn't quite ready for the cloudz.