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Posted by Stewart Berman on July 20, 2006, 11:41 pm
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>I consider the ability to download to Quicken to be a
>significant feature that an fi has to offer me; it is worth
>money to me, and I have no trouble getting what I want in the
>way of desireable products, good service, reasonable rates ...
>and downloads to Quicken.
You are fortunate.
>I fail to see how taking advantage of downloading can be
>considered a negative simply because it is theoretically
>possible that the provider of the downloads might go out of
>business; one can always change software, change fi's and/or
>enter transactions manually. And OFX is an open standard; fi's
>that can do Web Connect or Direct downloads already have the
>capability to create (and are creating) OFX files of your data
>... any software whose manufacturer wishes can process OFX
>files. (Money and others already do this).
It is called either disaster recovery or business continuity planning
or both. The trick is to be able to switch reasonably quickly if
necessary. That is why I said I should have done the preparation
awhile ago. Quicken is a closed system. The only way to get your
data in or out of a Quicken database is to use Quicken. So for
planning purposes you should periodically go through the process of
actually extracting your financial records and porting them to an open
system.
I always thought one selects a financial package to fit the business
not the other way around. I don't want to use a fungible financial
organization.
>And if imagining Intuit going out of business creates a sense of
>concern for you, why do you limit your concern to Intuit? What
>about all the other software and hardware products you may use
>to keep your records? What about the fi's you deal with?
That is why I run both Windows and Linux desktops. I am looking for
software with open standards for data storage. I don't mind if the
software is proprietary I just don't want the data storage to be.
I can move my business to other financial institutions -- it would
just cost time and money on an ongoing basis whereas the cost of
switching software packages is one time.
Stu
>I fail to see how taking advantage of downloading can be
>considered a negative simply because it is theoretically
>possible that the provider of the downloads might go out of
>business; one can always change software, change fi's and/or
>enter transactions manually. And OFX is an open standard; fi's
>that can do Web Connect or Direct downloads already have the
>capability to create (and are creating) OFX files of your data
>... any software whose manufacturer wishes can process OFX
>files. (Money and others already do this).
>>
>> You mention that for investment accounts you might not get the
>> option
>> to review the transactions or to match them to existing
>> register
>> transactions. They may all be imported as "New" transactions.
>>
>> Is this the case for credit card and bank accounts?
>
>I can't tell you what the exact rules are. I have seen
>different behavior at different times and with different year
>versions of Quicken.
>
>>>Only to say that Quicken is much more important to me than
>>>*any*
>>>financial institution I deal with. There's no chance I would
>>>abandon Quicken (or force myself to continue to use some older
>>>version) so I could stay with some fi.
>>
>> So Quicken is more important to you than a forty year business
>> relationship (not to mention significantly reduced costs in
>> your
>> business financing)? What happens when Intuit starts charging
>> $150
>> per year for upgrades? How about $1,500?
>
>Absolutely.
>
>Not only is this silly ($1500), but it has nothing to do with my
>statement. If Intuit wanted $1500 tomorrow for me to continue
>to download, and I decided to give up downloads (or even look
>for another product) it would *not* be because I was trying to
>"stay with some fi", it would be because Quicken was charging
>too much ... not the same thing. Quicken is an excellent
>product *because* it offers such useful capabilities at such a
>reasonable price.
>
>Even sillier is forgetting that Intuit does not operate in a
>vacuum; if Intuit was able to get $150 for downloading, there
>would not be other products around that could offer clearly
>better capabilities for noticeably less money. The price of
>Quicken is set by the market, not arbitrarily by Intuit. If
>anything, I suspect that the inflation-adjusted price of
>downloading will tend to drop rather than rise.
>
>But if you want to know if I would pay a monthly or yearly
>subscription fee: yes!
>
>I deal with many financial institutions (and a couple of them
>for 40 years); none of them offer me what Quicken offers me and
>every one of them could be replaced by one of many other
>financial institutions. If there were to be some minor
>differences between a new fi and an old one, I have not seen any
>evidence that those differences would come close to trumping the
>capabilities that Quicken offers. (And if I were a Money user
>who liked Money as well as I like Quicken, I would say the same
>thing for Money.)
>
>But I don't usually have to worry about giving up Quicken
>downloads with my fi's; in fact it's been the other way around.
>The two fi's that I have dealt with for 40 years only offered
>qif file downloads when I first started using Quicken. Since
>then one has begun offering Web Connect downloads and the other
>now offers Direct downloads from their bank, credit card and
>investment accounts. (Similar trend with other of my fi's that
>I have not been with as long).
>
>I consider the ability to download to Quicken to be a
>significant feature that an fi has to offer me; it is worth
>money to me, and I have no trouble getting what I want in the
>way of desireable products, good service, reasonable rates ...
>and downloads to Quicken.
>
>> I have used Quicken since the early 90's and it will probably
>> take a
>> bit of effort to switch to another system but it is something
>> I should
>> have been prepared to do years ago if no other reason than as
>> protection against intuit going out of business.
>>
>> I suspect that anyone using Quicken 2006 would have an
>> exception
>> comment in any external audit because they are locked into
>> Intuit to
>> interact with their financial institutions. If, for any
>> reason (i.e.
>> Intuit goes out of business or suffers a major failure) they
>> are
>> cutoff from Intuit's servers they are also cutoff from their
>> financial
>> institutions.
>
>I fail to see how taking advantage of downloading can be
>considered a negative simply because it is theoretically
>possible that the provider of the downloads might go out of
>business; one can always change software, change fi's and/or
>enter transactions manually. And OFX is an open standard; fi's
>that can do Web Connect or Direct downloads already have the
>capability to create (and are creating) OFX files of your data
>... any software whose manufacturer wishes can process OFX
>files. (Money and others already do this).
>
>And if imagining Intuit going out of business creates a sense of
>concern for you, why do you limit your concern to Intuit? What
>about all the other software and hardware products you may use
>to keep your records? What about the fi's you deal with?
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