One of the nice perks of this blog is that folks like to hear my opinions on books and utilities, and this time I was lucky enough to get a copy of Quicken 2015Â Canadian Edition. For full disclosure, I am a Quicken “fanboy” as I have been using it for about 15Â years. I will try to have a balanced view of the utility (but I use it and will continue to use it).
There is a newer version of Quicken out there, and I have reviewed Quicken 2016.
Review
I am using the full-blow Quicken Home & Business, so this is the full-blown version (Quicken 2015Â Canadian Edition). I should use the business functions more, and if I do that, I will have a separate review of that functionality.
It was interesting that Intuit seems to have changed their file formats, so the first thing that the install does (after removing the old version of Quicken) converts your data files to a new design. This always worries the hell out of me, so it would be very prudent to make sure that you do a full backup of your Quicken files before you do the upgrade.
I didn’t get a “boxed” version of the software, so I have had to do some sleuthing to find out what is new with Quicken 2015 Canadian Edition. Still, the first thing I noticed is that there is a feature called Portfolio X-ray in the US Version, and it does not appear to be included in the Canadian version. I keep hearing rumours that the Canadian version of Quicken may be discontinued, and this doesn’t help give me a warm fuzzy on the topic. The other missing feature from the American version is a free credit score check.
After my initial sadness about these missing features, I found Quicken 2015 Canadian Edition did have some useful new tools for me. The official website says the following components are helpful:
- Helps you choose the TFSA account type when setting up an investment account
- Lets you review and work with transactions from your spending, asset and liability accounts with the All Transactions register
- A projected account balances graph that shows you how much money you have left after upcoming bills and income
- Bond maturity report
- Investment Transactions report now displays a shares subtotal
These are all valuable things for investing folks (like me) to help with tracking their investments. The fact that a TFSA is an account type is beneficial, although I suspect this was in Quicken 2012.
I also like that they have added an ability to “look forward” in your spending for an extended period, using the Show Reminders function (it’s a little alarm clock in the upper right corner). I “look ahead” at the reminders I have at least a month to remind me of the bills that I have set up as reminders in Quicken (a beneficial function). The reminders are now marked with a clock to show coming soon.
Another interesting feature (that is not new in this release) is attaching images (like scanned receipts and such) to a transaction. Thus, you can track those things and can produce the ticket if requested (as well).
I took advantage of the update to set a password on my file so that if it somehow got into the wrong hands, it would take a little work to get the data out of it. I am still wrestling with the automatic update function with the banks. I think TD doesn’t like Quicken talking to it without me being involved.
Overall View
Given the time of the season, Quicken is a great way to organize yourself for the holidays and plan your finances for the new year.
This is a good tool for most folks to track their spending. There are other tools around, but this tried and accurate tool works excellent (for me) and can make your life simpler.
can one still use earlier versions of Quicken Home and Business and have the bank download feature work? Do the patches fix that? I am really upset at Quicken doing this expensive subscription b.s. thing. is there another program that works fairly well? I am going to abandon Quicken H&B if they don’t stop this nonsense and just sell the fully functional program with at least a 3 year functionality or even more.. Office doesn’t stop working because there are new versions and Quicken should keep working for at least 3 – 4 years.. how expensive is the download feature to them? Probably not much..
I don’t think they work after a few years, but you’d have to check that bank by bank (since their downloads seem to have two different Quicken download types). You won’t be able to download stock information, that surely breaks year after year.
How can I purchase Canadian version of Quicken 2017 for Mac. I would prefer the download but would consider discs.
You can’t the last Canadian Quicken version for a Mac was in 2007, wait ’til Monday I’ll have a post for you!
Quicken Home and Business 2015 stopped downloading for me and two calls to get help resulted in them telling me I need to buy a $ 599.00 program from them to correct this. Made two calls, gave access to my computer and they would not replace the old email address with a new one that I established. This is just a ripoff.
#Wow
Hi
I was wondering where I could find a book to explain how to use quicken 2016 Home & Business ( Canadian Version)
Lots of books but all for American Quicken!
If there is no money in Quicken putting out new versions of their software in Canada, you can guess how many books there might be about the Canadian version.
I lost my Quicken Cash Manager 2015.
How can I re-download it.
Thanks.
You should be able to use the code and redownload it? Intuit support might be able to help.
I have used Quicken for years. At first I was furious that they withdrew support for my 2012 version but eventually succumbed to them and bought 2015. What a damned mistake that was. The auto-update just plain will not work but the most frustrating part of all is the unbelievable SLOW speed. If I try to switch from one account to another, it takes enough time to go to the bank and ask the teller for the balance.
My advice is “Don’t buy this product”
The 2012 version was fine.
I bought Quicken H&B to be able to maintain downloads from my banking institution and fought with it for several hours, with the help of Intuit Support, and couldn’t get it to run. Kept hanging, EXTREMELY slow, and useless. I finally uninstalled it and reinstalled 2012…got my money back! Shame on Intuit for forcing customers to buy new software…have been using Quicken for 15+ years. I need the download ability so am going to give MoneyLine a try. Seems a shame to have to start over because I can’t upload a qif file, but it is definitely better than what I have.
Have been using Quicken Cash Manager for years. Installed CM 2015 recently and all seemed fine until I backed it up and tried to print, as usual. Printouts do not resemble registers in several areas, some entries in the millions of $$ + and -, but amazingly at the end of the month, the balance is correct. Finally, had to uninstall and purge PC of all things Quicken, but have not found same type of program that I am happy with. Also, I paid $50.00 for Cash Manager 2015 and now I am stuck with it. Please advise what I can do to fix CM 2015 so that it is usable!! I am very disappointed in this issue of Cash Manager 2015 and unhappy that I spent $50.00 and cannot use the program. I had planned to buy Quicken in the future each time it is necessary to upgrade. Hope to hear from you with a solution to my problem!
I would suggest contacting the Intuit Help Line (as I have nothing to do with Quicken or Intuit).
http://quicken.intuit.ca/personal-finance-software/index.jsp
I recently migrated from windows 8 to MAC . Unfortunately the Mac Version (2015) is only avealable for on US market. Apple Store suggested me to use Quickbooks canadian version on line. Not so confident than I could use my historical data and so one. For simply produce basic report and download bank account credit cart transaction , do you think that US Version for MAC 2015 could be use in a Canadian Environnement? I can buy the USA Mac Version on Amazon.ca
Thank you
Depends on what you mean by use? It most likely will have problems with Canadian banks and may not register so you won’t be able to download stocks and such, thus making it less than useful, I wouldn’t do it.
I’m surprised that anyone would recommend Quickbooks; it’s an accounting package for small business. Think ‘bookkeeping’. Frankly the only solution to your problem is to run Quicken Canada 2015 in a virtual machine like Parallels or VMware.
Personally, I use Parallels. It runs Windows under MacOS and integrates well within that environment. You should be able install Quicken and import your Quicken data. I don’t download banking data so I can’t vouch for that aspect, but I maintain stock prices and have had no issues there.
BTW, I commented earlier on the various amounts of grief I’ve had updating versions of Quicken; this time it worked. All of it. A happy camper this time.
VM’s make me nervous, but yes Quickbooks is an accounting package, that is for sure.
One benefit I get out of the vm is that I can back up the whole thing in it’s entirety, make a change and go back to Square 1 if things go awry. I’ve been on Parallels for probably six years, running Windows on MacOS and been very pleased. For support purposes, like when your Quicken update hoops, Windows is unaware of the host OS.
In reply to Jean-Marie Fecteau, while trying to buy the american version I am quite sure I saw a message from Intuit saying I should not buy the US version if I wanted to sync with canadian banks IF A WAS A WINDOWS USER but the situation was different for Mac users since there is not a canadian Mac version, thus the Intuit message was saying the Mac US version would work with canadian banks.
You might want to doublecheck but I think you could use the US version.
From all the negative comments, I probably won’r upgrade. Heck, I’d pay a fee for 2012 version to keep downloading from banks. I like 2012 and 2015 has nothing I want except for downloading. I guess for the next year I’ll be manually entering data.
2015 seems to work OK for me, but is it worth buying, just so you can download to it? The banks I deal with allow for the creation of QIF files, don’t those work with older versions?
I had no choice but to upgrade from 2012 which I absolutely loved using because I switched to Windows 8.1 from Windows 7 and 2012 would not run.
I have now spent 2 weeks fighting with a buggy piece of software that seems to take pleasure in duplicating transactions and not reconciling with the online balance. It hates my investments, and every time i try and do an account update it wants to create a new temp account to dump their transactions in to.
TL;DR – very disappointed customer who has been using their product for decades.
Does anybody have a nice Excel/Spreadsheet template to use for on line banking? I am starting to think that maybe Excel might be my next logical step. (Did I think that or write that?)
Apparently you can have Quicken installed on 3 computers. That is the good news. The bad news is a file copy is supposed to be available in your file when you sign onto your account at Quicken. In my case, there was no file available to download onto my 2nd computer. It took me 3 days and I think 4 techs before I finally got a file copy to download and several more chat sessions before I was able to register it. What a Mickey mouse outfit Quicken is………….
Quicken does work well for Canadians I find. Like other people I can’t see to be able to track mutual funds properly. Cannot find RBC Global Asset Management inc.
Just with it had all the features that our friends down south have.
Wave Accounting is free and does this much better (seamlessly) with Canadian Banks. https://www.waveapps.com/accounting/
Today I was forced to upgrade from Quicken 2012 to Quicken 2015, if I wished to continue downloading data from my financial institution after April or May 15.
I find that despicable. There is nothing in the 2015 version that I need and yet I am forced to spend $100 to get the functionality that I already have. What a terrible way to do business. Then to add insult to injury, I am forced for a 2nd time to do something against my will. I cannot register your product without giving you all kinds of mandatory personal information. Again, a terrible way to conduct business
An angry and coerced Quicken user
It does seem like Intuit thinks they have a captive clientele. Shocking!
I recently converted to Quicken H&B (Canadian version). Only reason – investment quotes update.
All investment account freeze – very slow to move around. went back to 2014.
Called Tech support – there is nothing they can do!!! Suggested – stay with 2014 or use USA version!! WOW!!! –
I have been noticing this problem with 2012, 2013 and 2014 and now 2015. Once they release patch, it seems to work.
Tech support predicts that patch will be released by yearend… that is December 2015… !! I guess just in time for 2016 version..
Intuit does not seem to care.. they have a kind of monopoly.
I have recently updated to Quicken H&B 2015 from 2012. The only reason I did so was the end of life for online updates in April 2015. There are numerous bugs (budgeting, hangs, unresponsive menus, speed, etc.) and I can not find a way to contact Quicken to report these. Does anyone know how to do so? Thx
This link doesn’t help ? http://support.intuit.ca/quicken/en-ca/index.jsp ?
Installed Home @ Business 2015. The problem I have run into is that US accounts do not seem to work. Also, there seems to be no actual contact support for the 2015 version.
What do you mean by no support? You can’t contact Intuit? If that is the case that is not good. 😡
The only way that I found to get support is via a chat session. Try
https://quicken.custhelp.com/app/contact/plvl1
I just purchased it tonight and spent a number of fruitless hours trying to get it to recognize the RBC Mutual Fund ticker symbols. I purchased it thinking to get some of the functionality I had back in the 2009 version (where it worked well). No luck so far. Tracking RRSP’s with Mutual Funds seems the biggest issue.
Hopefully an update soon.
Using Win7 with 8Gb ram, and its not very fast.
It certainly got vey confused on a few of the TD E-series Index funds too, but after one or two crashes it seemed to be ok.
Like you I update very two or so years, and every time that I do, I do so with fear and trepidation. My last update wiped out all but the last twelve months of stock price updates. The only reason I discovered the data loss was when I started looking at portfolio growth greater than one year. 20 years of data: poof! It took at least two weeks for me to recover from that. One thing learned from that fiasco was to completely back up my virtual machine, that way I can recover immediately. I too have been using Quicken since the days of floppies, and still, they frighten me!
I have years of data that I do actually check, I haven’t done it yet, let us hope it is there!
The US version of Quicken does have more features but there is always an outcry whenever they put out a new version. The new versions tend to have big bugs and cause major problems. My solution is to update every 2 or 3 years and wait a few months after they put out a new yearly release. BTW, Quicken US forces you to update every 2 or 3 years by withdrawing support for automatically downloading account transactions in older versions – this is part of the reason everyone gets upset.
Nice…
Interesting…..my only issue is your comment about how TD doesn’t like Quicken talking to it without your involvement. Didn’t one of the big banks – possibly all? – say that if you get Mint or another software program accessing your bank accounts , it invalidates the “zero liability” on your accounts/debit card for fraud/unauthorized transactions, or something like that?
I admit we stick to the spreadsheet, and haven’t upgraded….possibly because we are too lazy.
No, I think your point about the Banks not being happy about you sharing your log in info with 3rd parties is well taken as well.
I’ve been using Quicken in one version or another since I first installed it from 3.1 floppies over 20 years ago. I update when I get sucked in to the rah rah about new features and then find I can’t get them to work. Or they stop supporting the version I’m using. For example I can never get my mutual funds to update, and as of about six months ago I can no longer update all my accounts at once – I have to do them one at a time from each account page on the bank page. I’m not sure if this is a Quicken issue or a TD issue, as neither support staff was able to help me other than pointing at the other. I usually consider myself pretty computer savvy so I’m not sure what the problem is, but I will stick with my current version (Home and Business 2012) until it blows up. Then I may just switch to spreadsheets. Is it obvious I’m fed up? lol
I tend to update every once in a while, but it would be nice if they gave us some of those nice US features.