This entire post is now redundant. The new Quicken for Canada includes both a Mac and PC version, as part of your license. This means you do not need to run VMWare to use Quicken on a Mac (or an iPad or iPhone). Glad to see the owners of Quicken decided to bring this back.
One of the really lousy things that Intuit (or Quicken) did to Canadians, is they stopped having a version of Mac Quicken that worked in Canada for about the past 10 years. Mac Quicken 2007 is the last supported version of Quicken that runs on a Mac. This means works with Canadian banks, as well. I have read that Mac Quicken 2007 no longer works with either the current Mac OS, or the Canadian Banks.
There is a very good article about how you can use VMWare to run a PC version of Quicken on your Mac. The article outlines the steps needed, and is an excellent resource for those that feel they are nerdy enough to get it to work (thanks to InvestorJunkie).
The Mac Quicken Challenge
As my regular readers know, I am that nerdy, so I tried this out, and it worked, but, not the way I wanted.
The Mac I used was a MacBook Pro with 8 GB of memory running, Mac OS Sierra.
Download a trial version of VMware (which will give you 30 days to try things out). You will need to either have a spare Windows 7, 8 or 10 license hanging around. It can run on a trial Windows license as well.
The VMware Fusion documentation is really straight forward (IMHO) so setting up your PC environment while time-consuming is straightforward. The hard part is figuring out how much memory and disk space you want your VM to use. On my system, I gave it 4 GB of memory and 60 GB of disk space (which was on an external USB hard drive)). This seemed to be sufficient to get it all running.
You will also need a Quicken for PC license (click here to buy from Quicken). I had a permit, so this cost me nothing. If you don’t have a spare license, I would think about whether you want to spend that much money on an experiment.
I installed Quicken, restored an old Quicken image and gave it a tryout.
This hybrid Mac Quicken worked, no problem. However, I found VMFusion as being a cumbersome process on my laptop (it might work better if you were running on a Mac Mini or a desktop system, which might have more processing power or memory). I was also comparing run my Hybrid Mac Quicken to running Quicken on an older PC Laptop (Dell) that I had lying around.
Mac Quicken Findings
Both versions of Quicken worked fine (both PC remote and Mac VM). The advantage the VMWare version has is that I can run it on your Mac wherever you are. The PC Quicken, I had to have the PC available (using Remote Desktop) to make it work.
In the end I found the VMFusion idea a little too cumbersome for my liking. The system kept slowing my Mac laptop down. Unfortunately, bringing up Mac Quicken was slow to begin with.
I have stuck with running Quicken on my old PC laptop. This was a fascinating experiment. I am not saying this is a bad idea, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to.
“…they stopped having a version of Mac Quicken that worked in Canada for about the past 10 years. Mac Quicken 2007 is the last supported version of Quicken that runs on a Mac. This means works with Canadian banks, as well. I have read that Mac Quicken 2007 no longer works with either the current Mac OS, or the Canadian Banks.”
This is not true. I continue to use QM2007 with all my Canadian FIs/Banks (RBC, CIBC, TD, etc…I use over 20) just to name a few. And BTW, Qm2007 still runs on macOS 10.14 (Mojave), those this will probably be the last macOS that can run it. QM2019 Subscription still does not meet my needs (lacks too many features still, in terms of ease of data entry, reliability and validations, report customizations, etc).
Quicken Home & Business Canada 2019 does not include the accounting essentials, a Profit and Loss Statement or a Balance Sheet! Their support is not very good. I was told that I could backup 6 months of Mac entered data to a Quicken Backup file and import it into Windows. NOT COMPATIBLE W WINDOWS! The only way I could get data over is to use their Quicken Windows Transfer File mechanism, .QXF, which missed some accounts and renamed categories. At least a log file of errors was generated. I don’t think Quicken MAC is being developed anymore.
Quicken Mac is being developed according to this page
I have a brand new iMac running macOS Sierra (latest version). The Quicken version that I have been running on this and my former iMac is Quicken for Mac 2007. Downloading transactions from my Canadian bank works flawlessly for all chequing, savings and credit card accounts.
It will be interesting to check out the new 2017 version of Quicken for Mac. I may take the plunge as I see it is available as a download on Amazon.com for under $50 US. My concern would be that I will not be able to get a refund if I find it not to be functional for me here in Canada.
Yeh, if you look at it as a risky purchase you might be OK. Quicken seems to be trying, but we shall see how it all goes over the next year.
I’m the product manager for Quicken Mac and Quicken Mac 2015, 2016 and 2017 all work in Canada. We allow you to download transactions from Canadian banks via Quicken Connect or web connect. We have many Canadian Quicken Mac 2015, 2016, and 2017 customers using these new versions. The feature set doesn’t match 2007 yet so if interested, make sure it has the features you need. The application was started from scratch and we’re still working our way adding back 30 years of features but we’re a separate company from Intuit now and making good progress.
Where does someone order this useable product ? Keep me posted on the product I am very interested in trying it out, even if it has a small subset of the new functionality, an ability to use Quicken on a Mac again would be a good thing.
would Quicken Mac 2017 be able to read the QDATA.qdf file from a Canadian Windows Quicken?
Not sure, I would ask @SoftwareMarcus on Twitter about that one, he seems to be the new Quicken Mac mouthpiece.
I’ve been running Microsoft Money on Windows 8 in Virtual Box VM on a 10 year old iMac for a few years. No license needed for Virtual Box but I still need a Windows license. I can’t remember exactly how much RAM I give Windows, not more than 500MB though. It takes a while to boot up the Windows VM, but from there Money runs faster than on the even older laptop I used to run it on.
I think if I felt a little more comfortable with VM’s this might have worked better, but it just isn’t working the way I wanted.
Since switching to Mac several years ago, I have given up on Quicken all together. Just too inconvenient to make it worthwhile. I’m also mad that there is no Quickbooks for Mac in Canada either. How hard would it be to adapt the US Version for Canada?
I guess the size of the market just isn’t big enough.
Still not a good excuse, on my to do list is just getting away from Quicken.