Lion OS X 10.7 and Quicken 2007

Unfortunately, that solution:

1. Requires a reboot to use quicken

2. Does not allow you to run Quicken while running your other application

3. Does not allow easy suspend/resume with Quicken running.

4. Takes longer to transition

5. Wastes more disk space. (Vbox uses dynamically expanding virtual disk)

The Virtualbox solution enables all these capabilities.

All your points are correct, but is a more complicated solution, violates OS X user liscence, also requires installing Snow Leopard on virtualbox, and unfortunately such solutions often have problems. Also, don't know how time machine would work with your solution. In many cases, simpler is usually better and with less problems. If one uses Quicken once a day and has a fast Mac, it is a useable solution. The best solution would be for Intuit to upgrade QEM to be a full fledged Quicken or for iBank to incorporate all the features of Quicken 2007.

Let me address your objections....

1. Does NOT violate the License. I am only running one copy of Snow Leopard and running on Apple branded hardware in complete compliance with the license.

2. Time machine backs up my quicken file as usual. Simple incorporated into a 12 GB VM file. I suppose if I wanted to I could have the TM in the VM run and backup to a disk image on the host Lion based machine.

3. More Complicated. I was quite simple to install in Vbox and provides MUCH more flexibility once done.

James Belt wrote:

My understanding is the iBank does not support Classes or Tags. Therefore, if you use classes, when you import the classes are converted to sub-categories which I imagine could be a real problem for some.

That seems to be true. Now my classes for "Medical" ("Dental", "Insurance Premiums", etc) are each a class: "Medical/Dental", "Medical/Insurance Premiums". So far I have been able to live with this.

Michael Spiegelman wrote:

I have used Quicken products for many years. I am currently using Quicken 2007 primarily to track investments. I have over 30 years of investment data saved up. Most of the messages I have seen so far on this website deal with banking functions. I don't use Quicken 2007 for banking. In light of Lion not being compatible with Quicken 2007, is there an alternative program that has similar capabilities for tracking investments (tracking transactions, dividends, capital gains, etc.) that can be used with Lion?

I am in the process of finalizing a conversion to iBank and have also used Quicken for investments for years. Ibank imported all my securities transactions just fine. It seems to have retained the "cost" data and the long-term/short-term info accurately. I've been able to reconcile to Quicken to the penny in all my brokerage accounts.

Ibank is missing some features which I've asked for on their forums. For example, it does not seem to be able to report securities across brokerage accounts but only to report by account. You can get a clear report showing all the positions in each account. But you can't get a sum of how many shares of XYZ Corp. you have in all accounts. Also, it does not have a "goal" field in security setup like Quicken does. I use this field for "asset class" of each security so I can do asset allocation. I've also asked for this feature.

Ibank also seems to handle puts and calls which I believe Quicken does not. iBank has "buy or sell to open" and "buy or sell to close" transaction types.

I will say this -- iBank has very active tech support on their forums where IGG Software engineers are responding directly to posts by all the Quicekn users converting to iBank.

Hope this helps.

Codfish1 wrote:

A week ago, I partitioned my HD into one section with everything except Quicken and the other much smaller section with simply Snow Leopard and Quicken 2008. It works perfectly. Shortly I will upgrade the first partition to Lion and everything will work properly and simply.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that solution require you to completely erase your hard drive and then reinstll everything again? Because I thought partitioning your HD would wipe everything.

no need to erase anything. just set the parameters of each partition. quick and easy (if you have a large enough hard drive!)

Thanks for the tip on SEE FInance. I downloaded it and found it accepted the QIF file easily and accurately. I DO use splits, which was the bane of trying to import 20+ years of data into iBank. I wish iBank was right--it had me with more than $1 mil in my account.

I'm going to run SEE Fin side-by-side with Quicken for a month of so and see how it performs, but at first glance it looks good. Downloads work better than Quicken in my quick experience.

This weekend I succesfully transitioned my Quicken 2007 data to iBank 4.2.5. There was some cleaning up to do but reports and bank balance match that in Quicken. Some very old data had to be deleted. Other than that it was pretty clean.

Liking the forecast reports and easy of connecting online. Still wish it had built-in bill payment and real "classes."

Jim Llaurent wrote:

Still wish it had . . . real "classes."

Is iBank one of the programs that converts classes into subcategories?

Have you or anyone tried the tax reports? I'm not sure how good they are. I'm going to run Q7 and iBank side by side until Dec and see how they compare.

Yes

Do you think they are as good as Q7

Thanks for the info.

Several people have discussed having years of investment history that they would not be able to access if they change over to Lion from Quicken 2007. Does anyone have knowledge and or experience with Stock Market Eye?

It says you can transfer the QIF files. Would this be a solution to those who need the investment side?