Quicken Essentials (finally) Out For Mac

The new version of Quicken for Mac, Quicken Essentials for Mac, was released last week after a four year period without a refresh.  The application is geared towards users that need basic functionality out of their financial software. Aaron Patzer, Vice President/General Manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group, said of the application,

"It's called Essentials because it's what we consider to be essential for most users - about 80% of users.  We went to people's homes and watched them use it.  The majority of them want to know: How much do I have?  How much do I owe?"

The software clearly reflects the mentality of providing users with a very simple overview of their money and where it is going.  As someone who is looking for exactly that kind of functionality, I got myself a copy and checked it out.  The layout is super simple, with one window and all of the application's tools, accounts, budgets, and reports organized in the left side navigation.  It has a very iTunes-esque feel to it.

The best feature of the application, and one that a lot of simple financial software applications have trouble with, is the categorization system for transactions.  The Quicken team have developed a learning algorithm for Quicken Online.  This system allows users to self-tag their purchases.  Quicken save the tags and then applies them to other user's data.  The more self-tagging that goes on, the smarter the system gets.  Intuit is looking to combine a second approach, of doing a simple Yellow Pages look-up, with their learning algorithm to obtain a 95% categorization accuracy.

Moving data seems to be hassle free.  Simply save a copy of your old Quicken data and open it in Quicken Essentials for Mac.  No big fuss about it.  As a first time user, I set up some web-based connections to my accounts. This is a great piece of software for anyone who is looking to simplify their financial life, not complicate it.  For users who may need a little more functionality out of their financial software, this may not be the choice for you.