4 ms·

Wells Fargo and Intuit Join Forces to Ruin My Weekend

34 points by blahedo 15y ago

dmboyd 15y ago
Another reason to go for open source software. I use homebank and the files work seamlessly across platforms (linux mac windows) and they accept qif, csv etc imports. GnuCash is actually a pretty decent clone of quicken if you are more used to that.
there 15y ago
if he's so angry at intuit, why did he give them more of his money? there are plenty of alternatives out there that work on a mac and can download OFX transaction data; ibank and gnucash being two off the top of my head. back in 2005, i spent $200 on quickbooks basic to do invoicing for my software business. i had a dedicated windows machine just to run the software, and it was terrible. the interface was confusing, it wouldn't do what i needed it to, and it had a ton of things that i didn't need. worst of all, i was constantly bombarded with messages in the application advertising intuit's other products and services like check printing, payroll, and online data backup. at one point i needed to prepare an estimate, only to get a popup message telling me the $200 version i just bought didn't have that feature, but that i could easily spend more money and upgrade to a better version. at that point i gave up and made my own web-based billing system (http://corduroysite.com http://corduroysite.com) to do what i needed, and then turned it into a SaaS.
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  > if he's so angry at intuit, why did he give them more of his money? Because he's just trying to get some shit done in the short term. I use GnuCash for my business accounting. It is very painful software. And I run it on my Win 7 virtual machine because the OS X support stinks -- and that kind of musical OS chairs is one thing he is trying to avoid.
  - there 15y ago
    then why do you use it?
  - jsstartup 15y ago
    If he's trying to get some shit done then he shouldn't be using a Mac for business. It's that simple.
- lylejohnson 15y ago
  I went with Moneydance (http://www.moneydance.com/ http://www.moneydance.com/) when I got fed up with the Quicken for Mac situation a few years back, and I've been mostly happy with the switch. It's a Java app, and as a result looks out of place amongst my mostly native apps, but it's pretty reliable and gets the job done.
  - karlmdavis 15y ago
    Looks like they support importing from Quicken Essentials for the Mac [1]-- might be a good alternative for the author. [1] http://moneydance.com/blog/archives/434 http://moneydance.com/blog/archives/434
pbreit 15y ago
Small business accounting remains a wide open category for new entrants. However, I'm not sure web-based solutions are the right approach. For whatever reason, it feels like accounting should be a piece of client software. Perhaps because there is some UX richness that is still lacking in the browser. Perhaps because because it feels like the data should be local. Also, I think it would be difficult to do a lousier job in putting forth standardize financial data formats than what Intuit has done. In most cases, a simple CSV file would have sufficed. But Intuit with all of it's complicated, multi-dimensional data formats, one for each product with many becoming outdated. Yuck.
- r0s 15y ago
  As a small business bookkeeper, I agree that new blood could really improve things. I think it could be web-based though, as long as security took top priority.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
How good is Mint in filling the role of these softwares. I would naively guess that someone could better accommodate these people.
- meatmanek 15y ago
  Well, if he's pissed off at Intuit, then Mint might not be the best choice for him - it's also run by Intuit.
- ante 15y ago
  It's not geared towards business owners (invoicing, vendors, cutting checks, double entry book keeping, reconciling, etc) Mint hits that sweet spot with single individuals, maybe married couples, with multiple accounts who want to get an overview and bottom line.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Agreed. As an individual, I switched to Mint from Quicken precisely because Quicken was too much tool for the job. Mint works for tracking your spending, Quicken (and related products) are more sophisticated.
- ethank 15y ago
  Mint removed features about a year ago where you could do more granular filtering of transactions, and started pulling the description of transactions from different fields than they used to. So for instance, it was impossible to filter my car from my mortgage as both were tagged FINANCIAL and rulesets wouldn't catch either. There is a LONG running support thread about this (http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/use_statement_names_instead_of_mint_names_in_transaction_rules?utm_content=topic_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reply_notification http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/use_statement_names...) and no response from anyone at Mint. Lets be honest: Mint was a lead generation tool on top of Yodlee's backend. Great UX, horrible experience. I'm back to using Wells Fargo's web based tool, which is OK.
ante 15y ago
You probably should have known better. Mac support for Quicken and Quickbooks have always been terrible. Here is their official word on the subject: http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/getting-started/upgrading-and-conversion/8207.html If you want to experiment, here's a link to the pre-release of Quickbooks 2011 http://web.me.com/quickbooksmac/2011/pre-rel.html I wish there were real alternatives but there's really nothing on the market which does the job as well as qb/quicken
8ig8 15y ago
I've been very happy with my switch to Ledger (http://ledger-cli.org http://ledger-cli.org). Quickbooks was a blackhole to me. I was never entirely sure what was going on behind the scenes. Ledger has helped me _get_ accounting.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Be careful though because many of the things that Ledger advocates muddy the water between cash and accrual accounting, and it offers 'features' that are natural to the way a programmer thinks but that are against proper accounting practices. Ledger is fine when you know accounting and want a text-based tool to take out the drudge work, but it's not good to learn accounting from.
  - 8ig8 15y ago
    Thanks for the heads up. Admittedly my finances are pretty easy. I do everything on a cash basis. My statement about _getting_ accounting was a bit broad. Ledger simply has helped me understand how money flows and I'm more comfortable managing it because Ledger feels transparent to be. I can debug it if needed.

34 points by blahedo 15y ago

Another reason to go for open source software. I use homebank and the files work seamlessly across platforms (linux mac windows) and they accept qif, csv etc imports. GnuCash is actually a pretty decent clone of quicken if you are more used to that.

there 15y ago

if he's so angry at intuit, why did he give them more of his money? there are plenty of alternatives out there that work on a mac and can download OFX transaction data; ibank and gnucash being two off the top of my head. back in 2005, i spent $200 on quickbooks basic to do invoicing for my software business. i had a dedicated windows machine just to run the software, and it was terrible. the interface was confusing, it wouldn't do what i needed it to, and it had a ton of things that i didn't need. worst of all, i was constantly bombarded with messages in the application advertising intuit's other products and services like check printing, payroll, and online data backup. at one point i needed to prepare an estimate, only to get a popup message telling me the $200 version i just bought didn't have that feature, but that i could easily spend more money and upgrade to a better version. at that point i gave up and made my own web-based billing system (http://corduroysite.com http://corduroysite.com) to do what i needed, and then turned it into a SaaS.

shaggyfrog 15y ago
> if he's so angry at intuit, why did he give them more of his money? Because he's just trying to get some shit done in the short term. I use GnuCash for my business accounting. It is very painful software. And I run it on my Win 7 virtual machine because the OS X support stinks -- and that kind of musical OS chairs is one thing he is trying to avoid.
- there 15y ago
  then why do you use it?
- jsstartup 15y ago
  If he's trying to get some shit done then he shouldn't be using a Mac for business. It's that simple.
lylejohnson 15y ago
I went with Moneydance (http://www.moneydance.com/ http://www.moneydance.com/) when I got fed up with the Quicken for Mac situation a few years back, and I've been mostly happy with the switch. It's a Java app, and as a result looks out of place amongst my mostly native apps, but it's pretty reliable and gets the job done.
- karlmdavis 15y ago
  Looks like they support importing from Quicken Essentials for the Mac [1]-- might be a good alternative for the author. [1] http://moneydance.com/blog/archives/434 http://moneydance.com/blog/archives/434

pbreit 15y ago

Small business accounting remains a wide open category for new entrants. However, I'm not sure web-based solutions are the right approach. For whatever reason, it feels like accounting should be a piece of client software. Perhaps because there is some UX richness that is still lacking in the browser. Perhaps because because it feels like the data should be local. Also, I think it would be difficult to do a lousier job in putting forth standardize financial data formats than what Intuit has done. In most cases, a simple CSV file would have sufficed. But Intuit with all of it's complicated, multi-dimensional data formats, one for each product with many becoming outdated. Yuck.

r0s 15y ago
As a small business bookkeeper, I agree that new blood could really improve things. I think it could be web-based though, as long as security took top priority.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

How good is Mint in filling the role of these softwares. I would naively guess that someone could better accommodate these people.

meatmanek 15y ago
Well, if he's pissed off at Intuit, then Mint might not be the best choice for him - it's also run by Intuit.
ante 15y ago
It's not geared towards business owners (invoicing, vendors, cutting checks, double entry book keeping, reconciling, etc) Mint hits that sweet spot with single individuals, maybe married couples, with multiple accounts who want to get an overview and bottom line.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Agreed. As an individual, I switched to Mint from Quicken precisely because Quicken was too much tool for the job. Mint works for tracking your spending, Quicken (and related products) are more sophisticated.
ethank 15y ago
Mint removed features about a year ago where you could do more granular filtering of transactions, and started pulling the description of transactions from different fields than they used to. So for instance, it was impossible to filter my car from my mortgage as both were tagged FINANCIAL and rulesets wouldn't catch either. There is a LONG running support thread about this (http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/use_statement_names_instead_of_mint_names_in_transaction_rules?utm_content=topic_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=reply_notification http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/topics/use_statement_names...) and no response from anyone at Mint. Lets be honest: Mint was a lead generation tool on top of Yodlee's backend. Great UX, horrible experience. I'm back to using Wells Fargo's web based tool, which is OK.

ante 15y ago

You probably should have known better. Mac support for Quicken and Quickbooks have always been terrible. Here is their official word on the subject: http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/getting-started/upgrading-and-conversion/8207.html If you want to experiment, here's a link to the pre-release of Quickbooks 2011 http://web.me.com/quickbooksmac/2011/pre-rel.html I wish there were real alternatives but there's really nothing on the market which does the job as well as qb/quicken

8ig8 15y ago

I've been very happy with my switch to Ledger (http://ledger-cli.org http://ledger-cli.org). Quickbooks was a blackhole to me. I was never entirely sure what was going on behind the scenes. Ledger has helped me _get_ accounting.

roel_v 15y ago
Be careful though because many of the things that Ledger advocates muddy the water between cash and accrual accounting, and it offers 'features' that are natural to the way a programmer thinks but that are against proper accounting practices. Ledger is fine when you know accounting and want a text-based tool to take out the drudge work, but it's not good to learn accounting from.
- 8ig8 15y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. Admittedly my finances are pretty easy. I do everything on a cash basis. My statement about _getting_ accounting was a bit broad. Ledger simply has helped me understand how money flows and I'm more comfortable managing it because Ledger feels transparent to be. I can debug it if needed.