Quicken Classic Reviews

by Will-K2

The application continues to ask for a numeric passcode I did not set. Only was around this is for me to enter random numbers in until the application asks me to sign-in, which then lets me log in as normal and view my accounts. But then the passcode issue returns a few minutes later and if I try to disable the passcode, it asks me for the passcode, which again I did not set to begin with.

After spending two days with Quicken phone support, they just gave up on the issue. First they did not even know what I was talking about, which tells me they don’t care much about QuickenClassic. The next representative actually knew about their own app but could not find any documentation on how to reset the passcode on their end. After that it was basically a line of representatives all throwing an idea at the wall before they just gave up and said they would put in a help ticket with the application development team. Never heard back and the issue still exists 5 updates later.

Then the beautiful thing is when QuickenClassic does work, it locks out my banking accounts. Quicken has an issue with certain companies where their account sync does not properly understand how to pass verification codes, so it ends up in locked out accounts. I would stay far away from QuickenClassic.

by PYanagawa

Takes so long to enter transactions. You need to confirm everything you enter before you move to enter data into another field. If you do not save the transaction and try to go back to view an entry, nothing is saved and you have to start all over again.

The Payee field shows all the transactions you have previously saved in alpha order, but does not show recent or frequent transactions, which takes much more tine to enter the payee. So you will need to constantly enter the names of payess until the list becomes short enough to select the correct payee.

If you sort transactions entered by date, with latest ones first, while the list of most recently entered transactions appears at the top, the most recently entered transactions for that date are at the bottom of the list, with the balance from yesterday being applied to the most recent transaction. The most recent transactions should be at the too of the date to provide a sequential order but this was not implemented.

What a joke. QuickenClassic really needs a lot of work. Just like the Windows app, every time a new version gets released, there are numerous bugs which have not been fixed. Quicken really needs to hire some new programmers who can get things right !!

While the mobile sync does work well, everything else in this iOS implementation is defective in its implementation.

by Nlecuyer

I tried a subscription to Quicken, which included the bill pay service for free as well. I found Quicken wasn’t too my taste and didn’t use it much (YNAB much better for me) so I did not renew the subscription. Once the subscription lapsed, the bill pay service started billing my checking account $9.95 per month. I immediately called them to complain, stop the billing, and request a refund. They told me they would do this but it’s two months later and they are still billing me. I’ve placed merchant dispute and stop-payment requests with my bank as well. I know that the bill payment service is outsourced — but Quicken selected the bill pay service and used non-coordinating terms of service. That’s terrible. So in addition to the bill pay service I also blame Quicken. My advice: don’t use Quicken, use YNAB instead. Much better software and much better customer practices!

by Newmans99

I have used Quicken for almost 20 years, I have gone through good and bad times with it. Unfortunately, we have entered into another phase of dark times. While the desktop product is gaining new features and is improving the mobile experience has consistently been a disappointment.

First, the UI is horrible and the workflow is wrong. Quicken needs to stop overriding the native UI and leverage the underlying platform. The decision to replace native pickers creates crashes and significantly reduces performance and battery drain. Get with it Quicken.

Second, after entering hundreds of transactions, on my phone, and then trying to sync it throws an error on the Windows desktop. Quicken supports recommendation is to reset the cloud (deleting all of my transactions) and suggests that I should use mobile only to view transactions and not enter any as the sync doesn’t really work well. When I asked to escalate they said that there were no options and that development will look at the logs but the only option is to delete your records.

What a horrible experience. If other tools were just slightly better I would end the long term relationship with Quicken over this bad experience. I would strongly recommend that you look at other options and avoid using Quicken if you can.

by Mr.bill727

I’ve used Q desktop for at least two decades. I’ve always thought this was the top of the list for banking, investing, budgeting, etc. so I tried QuickenClassic to sync with what my desktop shows. I got one bank account out of 5, not the checking account even tho QuickenClassic seems to think it is; 1 investment account of 4. There seems to be no way to go into any setting to view any of the other accounts. Absolutely worthless unless someone can tell me how to make QuickenClassic work.
After doing some searching on the web, I found a mobile app user guide with some references to get QuickenClassic working like it should (hint to Quicken, put a stinking link to your user guide to help people get started). I still had to play games to get the accounts I wanted to see updated and synced. Why QuickenClassic only saw 2 accounts to start with, who knows. Now, it appears I can check the accounts I want to see and they will sync. Not before.

by Nshalvat

1) Since I downloaded the latest update about 2 weeks ago, now my app opens, flashes the account list & immediately minimizes. Double-click, choose QuickenClassic from the open apps, same thing happens. Can’t use it. Left my previous review here (from 2016). I really need to find a better alternative. Add that I’ve just gotten off the phone with support about a syncing issue. List 2 months of data thanks to the (not) knowledgeable rep. Not a happy camper. 2) previous review...Agree with the other reviewer that everything is harder to read. But here's the kicker, when on my iphone, I try to add a note to a transaction and the keyboard pops up and covers the note field you ate typing in! I move it up above the keyboard to verify and then when I go to type, it disappears behind the keyboard again! It gets better, click 'Done' on the keyboard which on every other app makes the keyboard go away & here it adds a carriage return! Frankly, I don't think Quicken has an A-team. Support is terrible; design/programming is bad and testing apparently is not important! Who doesn't completely test adding a new transaction?? It's the basic functionality of QuickenClassic ! Sheesh.

by PlatinumMedallion

It takes quite a bit if fiddling to get it to sync with the cloud reliability so the desktop and mobile version don’t overwrite each other and everything works fine until one day you need to call support (I wasn’t able to add new online accounts) and they ask your sign out of your cloud account and then the next time you sign in you lose all your attachment - all your records are wiped and you’re left a fragment of the information. This is a consistent problem I’ve had to years. Their cloud is beyond broken and can jeopardize your business and become a nightmare for accounting. They can’t seem to get their cloud act together now so I DREAD anytime I need to add something new or adjust something or call support. Backup anytime before you do something and backup everyday and backup your backups just incase something changes at the backend and keep your records outside quicken for atleast a year just case it wipes everything out. I’ve had this happen to me atleast 4 times in the last 6 years and yet I dread it. You’ve been warned!

by JKCA Dun

I am a long time quicken user and I would love to have a financial software that works well on both a mobile device and desktop. Quicken on a desktop is still my favorite tool, but this mobile (phone/tablet) software is really not worth the effort to install. I can enter transactions on my phone to stay current, but I frequently don’t take the time and just update the desktop when I get home, but looking at the pending transactions from my bank’s website. The most valuable feature would be able to see scheduled/up coming bills and the balance forecast similar to what is on the desktop. The need that I have is to be able to open up my phone and see not only what is in my account, but what the upcoming expenses are and the forecasted balance... that will tell me what I need to know... do I have enough money to do something, and still maintain the balance that I want.

by Christopherelang

What I was hoping when purchasing quicken was that my wife and I would be able to easily keep track of our income and monthly bills. The goal was to set up the desktop software, then use QuickenClassic to be able to quickly glance at how much we have currently, and quickly view upcoming schedules bills and income so if we are out shopping, we can easily determine how much we have available to spend.

Since the desktop version can be not accessed on more than 1 machine, it makes QuickenClassic vital to being able to use this as a household budgeting and finance tool, but it essentially just spits out some basic data, but doesn’t give any useful information such as a future calendar or list of future scheduled transactions and balances like you can get on the desktop version. The lack of this feature makes QuickenClassic basically useless.

Hopefully Quicken adds some new functionality and usage ability to QuickenClassic in the future. I’m currently looking for alternatives that will allow me to access my data everywhere rather than a single computer and in a useless app.

by WeRtheborgUwillBassimilated

Seems that sync issues are resolved, at least the ones I care about. The UI got a badly needed update. My complaint now as I’m starting to use it again is using it to update the transactions. It lags when saving the data. You do it enough time and you just want to give up. It doesn’t save you time, might as well do it on the desktop. So defeats a he purpose of having an app to use as a time saver.

Old review:
The apps works when it's not having issues. I can no longer sync my PayPal accounts bec sync stopped working for those accounts. I'm just syncing my checking and saving and one cc account and sometimes it works. Far from all the other accounts I have. I haven't seen any updates for over a year. Hoping for better alternative...

by OV10driver

QuickenClassic needs a LOT of improving. While using the Mobile app on my IPhone or iPad, initially it took in excess of 8 hours to Sync with my desktop information and show transactions. I found out the hard way NOT to sign out of the account, but to leave it running in the background. If you sign out (like every other financial application), when you try to renter QuickenClassic , it requires another 3+ hours of “refreshing” to sync the data and transactions.
Although my desktop version of Quicken shows income categories, the Mobile app does not include that in the monthly summary.
The account balances need to show a running balance for QuickenClassic to be useful at all.
I’m deleting QuickenClassic and will wait for a SUBSTANTIAL update and rewriting of the software before reloading, because right now, it is unusable.

by IReed_929

QuickenClassic is out of sync with my online accounts as well as the desktop version (which I love). It’s about 2 business days behind reality, which is weird. Things I change on the desktop version don’t show up in QuickenClassic , even when I refresh, until I give it a few days. I wanted QuickenClassic to be an on-the-go snap shot of my current balance in my accounts, but it has not planned out that way. Pretty useless tool, which is disappointing. I don’t even care so much about customization (I mean, that would be nice), but at the very least, I wanted it to sync with the desktop version of transactions I’ve entered. Or heck, I would just like it to match my online accounts of transactions that have actually posted instead of having a day or two lag!

by DerekB12

I’ve been using quicken for years. I just recently switched to the 2017 version so I could use QuickenClassic. I like the ability to view all of my information on QuickenClassic , but I don’t like how static QuickenClassic is. I can’t change or customize anything in QuickenClassic . It would be nice to be able to access several different budgets within QuickenClassic so that I don’t have to go back to my laptop, view the budget I want to see in QuickenClassic , and then sync with the cloud. It’d be nice to change that.

And why is the “Everything Else” category negative on QuickenClassic budget but like the other categories on the desktop version? That makes no sense and is confusing. When I see two different values that are available for me to spend for one budget, that’s confusing.

by Paleophone

i use the phone app version of this to keep track of my everyday cash transactions as i run errands. QuickenClassic slows me down-- I'll be in a rush and find that, with no warning, I need to login to use it, which means that i don't log a transaction at the time, and forget it later.

The most annoying feature is that my phone seems to need an active internet connection to log a transaction. sometimes this is not possible in the minute that i am trying to use it. I would think that, by this point, QuickenClassic could work while offline and simply update the next time a connection is established.

app is improving, but it still has a ways to go.

by Robert Dubya

Problem with viewing Quicken Mobile in landscape mode on iPad quickly fixed by very responsive developer.

Just updated to version 5.20.0 and noticed that I can no longer view Quicken in landscape mode on my iPad.

In the past I have been critical of Quicken on my iMac and the mobile apps for my iPhone and iPad. I was a bit miffed when Quicken went to a subscription service but I have to say that Quicken is now much improved on all of my devices and is very helpful with planning and managing my checking accounts and other finances. I don’t have complex finances, gratefully, and the current state of Quicken is meeting my needs. A while back I had an ID/Password issue that I could not resolve on my own. A call to Support had me back in business after an hour on the phone. The rep was excellent. So, let’s hope they don’t keep “refining” Quicken to the point where they mess it up.

by Inthesand

Making almost all the quicken fields searchable Is a huge improvement. I also like that I can now restrict searches to a specific account. In previous versions, a search within an account would bring up results from all accounts. I think quicken could make it a little more obvious on how to Search all transactions. I stumbled on it when I pressed "recent transactions."

The addition of reminders is welcome. I would like to see a longer history. I realize that takes up storage space but storage is pretty cheap these days. Right now it seems to be limited to around 2 1/2 years whereas I think five years would be far more useful. And if there was anyway to sync some reports so I could run them from my iPad, that would sure be great as well. But, as it is now, it's a lot more useful for me than QuickenClassic has been in the past

by Average Shopper Dude

I enjoyed the Quicken software. QuickenClassic is nice. But I feel that QuickenClassic is just a regurgitation of what the desktop version is without customization. I feel that as a mobile app I need more customization. For example, I want to be able to see my budget right up front. When I am out and about, that is the information I care about so as to not blow my budget. The other information is great. And needed to make decisions on finances. But I would much rather just make those big decisions off the desk top version. I would like to see QuickenClassic customizable so that I can view what I need to view on the main screen. Thank you.

by Justin052089

I’ve been stuck on the 2017 version of Quicken for a few years now. It’s always worked great and it keeps all my accounts and finances in order. The best part I like about it, is to plan financially months, if not a year into the future.

I remember using the iPad app and being disappointed at the lack of information and how far away from the desktop app it really was. I always dreamed of a Quicken like program for the iPad.

I recently had to update Quicken 2017 to the new (sadly) subscription based program. It’s worked fine but the annual fee annoyed me.

I decided to fire up QuickenClassic again after not touching it for 3 years.

Wow!!! It brings so many of the features I wanted! I can actually see each account and transactions for each account, along with future balances!

It’s great I can now get all this information on my iPad without firing up my laptop to see it all!

by JEGL

Love QuickenClassic. It minimizes the amount of time that it takes me to do my finances at the end of the month.

2 suggestions:

1 - Better payee search. If the payee has two words and you only remember the last one, QuickenClassic can't find it.

2 - I wish it could memorize the location of a payee even if it can't find the 1st time. I live in Panama where geolocation services are very limited.

3 - I wish I could get rid of Yelp. I travel to Latin America and the Caribbean frequently and it is worthless. I have to move Yelp out of the way which is one more step.

4 - Pleeeeease add full support for account transfers. It is a pain to have to go back to the desktop version to complete one. I do this very frequently and it takes a lot of my time

5 - Better support for joint accounts. I want my wife to be able to use Quicken on her mobile but I don’t want her to see all my accounts just the ones we share. Basically to be able to to have different accounts on each phone. Today both have to be the same.

by Lonelysandwich

I have 20 years of Quicken data in my account, and have been using the iOS app for years, with so much friction and lag I wanted to pull my hair out every time I launched to enter a transaction. Before this update, the developers just never figured out how to make QuickenClassic work with large databases like mine, and there would be seconds of delay after every data entry. But finally, it works. No delay, just great sync, great UX, my entire financial history at my fingertips, synched to the cloud and on my Mac. Quicken is finally a complete product. Thanks, devs.

by Scotty321

QuickenClassic is one of the worst examples of how to create a mobile app. The terrible user interface is impossible to use, there are tons of bugs, and QuickenClassic has almost zero features at all. For example, we can’t even sort our account transactions from oldest date to newest date. If we try to do that, Quicken TEMPORARILY sorts the transactions from oldest to newest — but then it jumps us right back to the very top to our oldest transaction, so we have to keep scrolling forever to get to the bottom. Even worse, once we leave the account and come back again, Quicken reverts everything back to newest to oldest again. And it gets much worse than that. When we quit QuickenClassic and relaunch it, it doesn’t even remember where we last left off. So we can’t just quickly add a new transaction to our same credit card account. We actually have to manually navigate all the way into our very same credit card account again — just to add a new transaction. Compare this terrible app to the excellent PocketMoney app, which is the world’s best mobile finance app.

by Savvy Engineer

I am less than pleased with the Quicken app on the iPhone and iPad. The Mac version is very capable and approaching my ideal for money management (almost like the old Quicken).

The iOS app version put up pretty graphs but seems to be about useless for doing mobile input of your finances or mobile reconciliation. For instance, if I make a credit card payment and download the results from my bank, I can — on the Mac version or web version — change the account to Transfer: and QuickenClassic finds the other side of the transaction in the credit card account and matches it appropriately.

The iOS version won’t let you do that. I can’t change it to transfer. In addition, the iOS versions don’t let me attach anytime thing except photos to the transaction. Other versions will allow me to attach a PDF. And there’s tons of wasted (IMO) screen space. Syncing seems to be a problem as well. I can compare the web version and the iOS version and corrected transactions aren’t appearing in the iOS.

What I expected and hoped for was an iOS version of the Mac/PC app. Until I get it, it’s off my devices and I’ll use the web version in the browser.

by Bobby Baracho

If you use the desktop version and like it you are going to hate QuickenClassic. There is no resemblance between what you look at on your desktop and what you look at in QuickenClassic . People tell me that my iPad Pro is supposed to be basically a laptop computer. I certainly disagree. I hate the desktop version because you can’t hide reconciled transactions without changing your account balances. I hate QuickenClassic because I can’t look at it and figure out how to do the same things on QuickenClassic that I do on the desktop version. It’s like having two totally different systems. In my mind they need to go one of two ways, either delete half of the functions in QuickenClassic and just stream line it down to a few basic things. Or, go full out and make it just like the desktop version.

by MekaLekaHiMekaHineyHo

I use Quicken everyday to reel in my family’s finances. It’s important to us to best track all expenses such as reoccurring purchases (eg: scheduled autopays, credit card bills, subscriptions, etc). There are no surprises with spending thanks to the Quicken app on our Mac.

However, the mobile app is typically only good for one thing: Data entry. And that’s when it works. For me, being able to snap a photo of receipts is huge for tax reasons. However, as of this latest update, I’m being asked to sign back in constantly. The problem here isn’t the inconvenience of signing in. But rather that all my payee are gone and need to be refreshed - if I’m lucky enough to get the refresh away from WiFi. So QuickenClassic, multiple times a week as of late, has rendered itself useless.

As for the location based payees, I’m unable to actually select them for use. All that happens is that I’m able to highlight them. I can only use my self-entered payees.

This version definitely needs help ASAP to make it functional again. Because, as of now, it’s not able to work for me as I need it to.

by CryoFuel

Sometimes it will sync, sometimes it won’t. One day it’s nice to use and gives the user warm fuzzies all over their body. Other times it leaves a user with frustration emoji’s stuck to their face for the rest of the day. No rhyme or reason to help ferret out the root cause, and no pattern to help identify the faults. Sometimes it’ll connect to the connected bank accounts and other times it displays an error for weeks to try again “later”. Sometimes it’ll sync to the cloud so that the changes are reflected on the desktop software, and other times it doesn’t. The desktop software is reliable, and changes made there often times show correctly in QuickenClassic , though. The screens within QuickenClassic transition smoothly, too.