Quicken is a personal finance management application for creating a budget, tracking expenses, and managing investments. Its Mac and Windows versions share key features, such as budgeting, bill payment, and a debt reduction planner, and the Windows version offers basic rental management and business accounting. Quicken’s personal finance tracking app, Simplifi, is great for managing your finances, investments, and debt. However, it lacks rental property management features.
Simplifi is priced at $3.99 per month (billed annually), while Quicken’s monthly fee ranges from $4.99 to $9.99 (billed annually). Quicken has received strong reviews from third-party sites that praise its versatility and ease of use. However, some users report issues with connecting bank accounts and lost data when updating the software. Nevertheless, it is an excellent choice for sole proprietors or small businesses without employees seeking affordable software with robust expense and income tracking capabilities.
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Quicken Alternatives & Comparison
If you’re interested in learning more about how Quicken compares to other leading accounting software such as QuickBooks, check out our Quicken vs QuickBooks comparison.
Quicken Reviews From Users
Users Like | Users Dislike |
---|---|
Can add recurring future-dated transactions | Issues with connecting bank accounts and lost data when updating software |
Versatile solution, depending on your situation | No monthly billing |
Easy to use and affordable | Home & Business version is unavailable for Mac users |
Quicken received high ratings for its ease of use and straightforward layout that is easy to navigate, reporting a short learning curve to get up and running. Users also appreciated its affordability and range of plans that cater to different needs. Users, however, dislike that Quicken’s service is billed only annually, and some complained about issues with updating software and connecting bank accounts. Others lamented the fact that it doesn’t offer a mobile app.
Based on user reviews from popular third-party review sites, Quicken received the following scores:
- Software Advice[1]: 3.9 out of 5 stars based on almost 400 reviews
- G2.com[2]: 4.2 out of 5 stars based on around 65 reviews
- Trustpilot[3]: 3.5 out of 5 stars based on more than 22,000 reviews
Featured Industry Uses on Fit Small Business
- Best QuickBooks Self-Employed alternatives: Best for personal finance and rental property management
- Best Xero Competitors: Best alternative for individuals with a few rental properties
Quicken Pricing
Quicken offers a choice of three desktop app-based plans: Deluxe, Premier, and Home & Business. Prices run from $4.99 to $9.99 per month (billed annually). Quicken also offers a mobile and web app called Simplifi, which is priced at $3.99 per month (billed annually).
Quicken Plans Compared
Simplifi | Deluxe | Premier | Home & Business | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Monthly Price (Billed Annually) | $3.99 | $4.99 | $6.99 | $9.99 |
Free Trial | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
Discount | 40% off | 40% off | 40% off | 40% off |
Platforms | Mobile and web app | Desktop app (Windows & Mac) | Desktop app (Windows & Mac) | Desktop app (Windows only) |
Free Quicken Phone & Chat Support | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Priority Access to Live Agents | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
Automatic Download of All Transactions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Add Manual Accounts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Automatic Categorization of Income & Expenses and Define Custom Rules | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Create Custom Income & Expense Categories | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Add Notes & Memos to Transactions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
What-if Analysis | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Create a 1-Month Budget | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Create Multiple Budgets | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Auto-detect Bills | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Bank Bill Pay | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Customize Your Portfolio View to Meet Your Investment Needs | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Make Same-day Online Payments | ✕ | Additional fee, starting at $9.95 per month | ✓ | ✓ |
Import Tax Information From TurboTax | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
Buy/Sell Tool to Model Tax Implications of Planned Transactions | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
Business & Rental Property Reports | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Track Accounts Receivable (A/R), Accounts Payable (A/P), Profit and Loss (P&L), and Cash Flow | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Email Custom Invoices From Quicken With Payment Links | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Track Income & Expenses Across Multiple Businesses | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Track Tenants & Rent Across Multiple Properties | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Quicken New Features for 2023
- Real-time quotes: Investment customers who are subscribed to Quicken Premier or Home & Business will get real-time stock quotes of publicly traded stocks.
- Crypto support: You can now add and manage cryptocurrency the same way as any type of security in your portfolio. Quicken tracks up to eight decimal places for more accurate tracking of cryptocurrency positions.
- Restricted stock unit (RSU) support: If you’re an RSU holder, you can now choose how RSUs are represented in your net worth or portfolio. For instance, you can opt to include the potential value of unvested RSUs or remove them completely to reflect your actual net worth.
- Investment partnership support: If you’re involved in a limited partnership, you can track your activities, such as venture capital funds and private equity, fund contributions, and cash or stock returns.
Quicken Features
Quicken offers many useful features, whether you’re using the Deluxe, Premier, Home & Business, or the Simplifi app. Your dashboard is easy to navigate, and you can access key sections such as rentals and accounts there. For personal finance, you can create a budget, manage your bills, or plan for retirement. Business tools include invoicing clients and tracking A/P and A/R, while rental tools allow you to manage tenants, track your property’s market value, and scan receipts.
Your financial management journey begins on the dashboard or Home tab, which gives you a holistic view of your finances. The dashboard enables you to manage and track your budget, spending, and bills. You can customize the Home tab by creating multiple views and choosing which financial areas show up.
Get a better handle on your household spending with Quicken’s personal finance management tools. Whether you’re creating a budget, managing your bills, or planning for your retirement, it has the features you need to reach your goal:
- Expense management: Understand where your expenses go by sorting your accounts and transactions in one place. Create customized categories, track spending by categories and amounts or types of expenses, see spending trends, and get an idea of what your future finances will look like.
- Budgeting: Plan your personal or household expenses and compare them to your actual spending. You can track your budget on the web or a mobile device easily.
- Bank feed integration: Connect your bank accounts to track your income and spending effortlessly.
- Bill management: Send your payments through QuickPay for digital bills and Check Pay for physical checks. You can also set up automatic billing alerts so that you’ll never miss payments again.
- Retirement planning: Quicken gives you an overview of your assets, holdings, and investments, including 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). It includes a Lifetime Planner―available in Windows―which helps you envision all kinds of financial scenarios.
Quicken Home & Business is suitable for freelancers needing basic support for creating customer estimates and invoices, tracking A/R and A/P, and creating several reports:
- Invoicing: Choose from several templates to create customized invoices and add a payment link to PayPal. You can print your invoice or email it directly to your client.
- Estimates: Create an estimate, and then print or send it to your customer through email. You can track your estimates in the Estimate list.
- A/P and A/R tracking: Purchase Quicken Home & Business to start tracking your A/R (invoices), A/P (bills), loans, and fixed assets.
- Deduction finder: Know if you qualify for more than 100 common tax deductions. If you do, Quicken lets you add the tax-related categories you need to simplify tax time.
Quicken’s rental property manager provides helpful features to streamline landlord responsibilities. These features are available only on Quicken Home & Business. Its key rental features include the following:
- Contact management: Organize and manage all your contact details, including rental agreements, security deposits, and move-in and move-out dates, all in one place.
- Tenant management: Stay on top of your tenant lists, income, expenses, bank accounts, documents, loans, and property value.
- Market value tracker: Gain insight into your holdings and view snapshots of your portfolio by type, sector, or allocation using its integrated Morningstar’s X-ray tool (Windows users).
- Receipt scanning: Make expense tracking a breeze by saving your receipt data as a QIF file or importing it to Quicken.
- Document storage: Store and manage documents related to your properties, tenants, and projects.
In every Quicken plan, you can use the web companion for more accessibility. However, you still need to buy the desktop version to use the web version. There’s no difference between the desktop and web versions. The major downside is that the desktop and web versions don’t sync automatically, so you’ll have to sync before and after using them to ensure that the two versions are up to date.
Download the Quicken mobile app on Google Play or the App Store to manage your finances anytime and anywhere. After you set up your mobile app, your information will be synced between the mobile app and your desktop program via the Quicken Cloud. This mobile app isn’t a stand-alone service of Quicken as you still need to get the desktop version to use the mobile app.
Simplifi by Quicken focuses on personal finance. Unlike Quicken, it’s purely cloud-based since it has no desktop app. While it doesn’t have features for freelancers like Quicken Home & Business, it offers more streamlined personal finance tracking because it has both mobile and web browser access.
Here are some of Simplifi’s notable features:
- Spending and savings management: Track your spending across all of your bank accounts, create income and expense categories, and set custom saving goals on Simplifi. The custom saving goals feature isn’t present in Quicken Starter.
- Budgeting: Create a one-month budget, budget for savings, and track spending history. As a personal finance tracker, Simplifi only offers one budget per month. If you need multiple budgets and rollover budgeting features, we recommend any Quicken plan.
- Bill management: Simplifi can auto-detect bills, alert you about unusual bills, and project cash flow. These features are useful in planning your spending and ensuring healthy liquidity.
- Debt, investments, and mortgage tracking: If you have debt and equity securities, Simplifi can serve as a tracker. You can include education (529) and custodial accounts, retirement 401(k), IRAs, and 403(b). You can also track your home value and net worth.
Quicken generates ample financial reports, including cash flow, P&L, account balances, transactions, payee comparisons, budget spending, cash flow comparisons, and banking summaries. However, it cannot generate a balance sheet for your small business or rental properties. If you need a balance sheet, you’ll need a double-entry bookkeeping software like QuickBooks Online.
Quicken Customer Service & Ease of Use
While Quicken generally is easy to use, some of its features are unintuitive, and you’ll need to devote time to learning to use them. The platform offers multiple options for customizations, so you can make it completely personalized to your needs.
Quicken also offers plenty of support options to help you get the most out of the software, such as a Getting Started guide, a community forum, and a help center. Quicken is ready to respond to your questions over the phone and through live chat. If you subscribe to Premier or a higher plan, you get unlimited priority access to its customer care phone support for one year.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The most notable difference between Quicken and Simplifi is that Simplifi is a web and mobile app, meaning that there isn’t a desktop application that needs to be installed. Simplifi isn’t the mobile version of Quicken—it’s an entirely different personal finance app that was designed for iOS and Android users and web platforms. Quicken’s mobile app, on the other hand, offers mobile access to Quicken data for Quicken subscribers.
Yes—if you manage only a few rental properties and need a basic solution for creating invoices and tracking bills and tenant payments, then Quicken Home & Business may be right for you.
Yes—for landlords. Quicken is especially useful for individuals with real estate properties. However, you may want to read our comparison of Quicken vs QuickBooks to determine if it’s a fit for your business.
No, Quicken doesn’t provide tax preparation services. However, you can use it to organize your tax-related data and export it to tax software like TurboTax.
Yes, Quicken has a mobile app that is available for iOS and Android users. The app allows users to track their expenses, view account balances, and receive alerts.
Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a fairly straightforward solution for managing your business and personal finances side-by-side, then Quicken offers pretty good value for your money. It has a good set of features, plus its mobile app gives you the ability to manage and view your finances on the go. Quicken Home & Business delivers the most value to small businesses and rental property owners looking for a simple way to manage their finances.
[1]Software Advice
[2]G2.com
[3]Trustpilot