April 04, 2004

Intuit to cut Quicken support

The Washington Post has an article about how Intuit, the company that makes Quicken, is planning to cut support of older versions of it's flagship personal finance software.

Starting April 20, Quicken 98 and Quicken 99 users will no longer get online or phone-based tech support; on May 18, Quicken 2000 users will be on their own as well.

On those dates, those users will also lose the ability to pay their bills online with the program and download updated financial data from Intuit's servers -- instead of zapping off their utility bills and having the latest stock prices automatically plugged into their portfolios, they'll get error messages.

Their option will be to spend $39.95 to upgrade to Quicken 2004 Deluxe -- that's including a $20 mail-in rebate -- or to go back to putting paper checks in the mail and typing in stock quotes manually.

Now here's a few things to know about Quicken, and I speak not only as a user (from Quicken 2000 and now the Mac 2004 version) but as someone who has taught classes on how to use it.

  • No matter what version of Quicken one uses, there is much bloat ("extra features") included with the yearly upgrades. Most of the bloat is useless and is designed to *gasp* bring in more revenue for Intuit.

  • Most people* using the product do not need much more than the account register features, import their online banking .qif files, and the categorized yearly reporting features. And the .qif files can be imported by downloading to your hard drive and then imported into Quicken offline. One does not need the Quicken software to go online in order to use it.

    *For those who run a small business, I'm not convinced that Quicken is appropriate software to use, but that is another argument for another time.

  • Don't ask me the differences between their Basic, Premium and Deluxe versions. I don't know either, but if I had to guess they correspond to how much more money you'll spend for bloat.

  • The WaPo article touches upon a personal sticking point I've had with the way the whole Quicken "system" operates. If you use the Quicken bill pay and/or the Quicken.com stock quote and investing features, you have to use the Quicken servers. Thus, when Intuit chooses to pull support, you're up a creek. This is why in my classes I would make sure that my students realized that they could pull their own stock quotes/do bill pay through their financial institution's Web site.

In all reality, the problem for Intuit is that there not much innovation to be done in the area of personal finance software, therefore, one needs to add bloat in order to move new versions of the product. Like I stated earlier, most people have relatively simple needs and the only way that they are going to purchase new versions of this type of software is if the support for the software ends.

If Intuit is going to end of life support for older versions of their flagship product, they as a company, need to make that clear before the user purchases the product. At least then, the user can make a choice as to invest their money in such a product. Otherwise, a move such as this comes off as crass and I personally see little excuse for disabling features for software that is still operable.

Posted by joy at April 4, 2004 02:44 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Annoyingly, this also means that the phone-in registration which applied to older versions of Quicken (may still apply to windows versions, don't know) also becomes impossible to use, as they won't hand out keys for the older products. Which in turn means that if for some reason you have to do a reinstall on your existing system, you are forced to pay for the upgrade or switch products.

My mother, a long time Quicken user (since version 1.00 when it was a product from Queensland!), recently switched allegiances for exactly this reason. The way she sees it is that the license agreement said nothing about end-of-lifing the product, and that since she thought she was buying the right to use it in perpetuity, they can keep their software.

Judging by their financial status (compared with their IPO -- I'm still smarting a bit about that, since stupidly I advised my parents to take advantage of it, being long term customers they were given an opportunity long before most others), a lot of other customers must feel the same way.

I'd agree too regards it being not a product for business use. In fact, in Australia it cannot be used in small businesses, since it lacks the critical GST management component. The more expensive, more bloated, QuickBooks has the component, but it is only available on "lease", and at an ever-increasing price (the kind of price one would expect if one was buying the product).

Certainly, MYOB seems to be sufficient at least in Australia for business use. That, and once you own a right to use it, you can continue to do so -- no license keys to break, no online products to stop working. At least, that's the way it is at the moment.

Posted by: Iain at April 4, 2004 05:30 PM

Iain, your comment reminded me of the fact the biggest gripe about Quickbooks happens to be the not so pleasant surprise that the tax tables for the program expire every year.

Posted by: joy at April 4, 2004 05:56 PM

Yes, that's one of our gripes too. It's worse than that for us insofar that the entire product expires every year. And, to make matters worse, if the ATO change the rules half-way through the financial year, which they have a penchant for doing, you have to pay for the upgrade.

In short, not a very user-friendly system. Much like the Australian tax system in general. :-)

Posted by: Iain at April 4, 2004 06:29 PM

Intuit is trying to switch to a service, or subscription, model for their software.

Up here in Canada, Quicken 2003 came with 1 year of online service (including downloading transactions from the bank). After that, you have to either purchase additional years, or upgrade to Quicken 2004. Of course, they really want you to buy their annual online service (that happens to include free software :-).

I agree, the software is bloated. They seem to redesign the user interface for every release (without, in my opinion, making it better).

The question becomes, what are the alternatives for a basic accounts register with analysis and budgeting tools?

Posted by: Miles at April 4, 2004 10:15 PM

I am in the process of re-setting up Quicken for the 2004 version. I agree with the posted comments. I would like to pass along this bit of info for those folks adding the software: when setting up the various accounts for connection with financial institutions, the user ID section is case sensitive. This is the ONLY place I've found so far that is case sensitive. After much frustration, my bank on-line support told me this.

Other comments: Quicken offers no way to close out a year. Therefore, the check register goes on forever.

Posted by: Norma at May 3, 2004 02:15 PM