Intuit is not a Mac friendly company. They make an OS X version of Quicken, but it is artificially crippled in order to try to get banks to pay them money. Intuit will only let you import files from banks that pay extra to let their customers download transactions into Quicken for Mac. The fact that you paid for Quicken and the bank paid for a Quicken server isn’t enough. They want the banks to pay another fee for their Mac users–even though there is no additional hardware or software involved. The end result is that Mac users get a product that will only work with a handful of banks. This article discusses a method to get around this limitation.
Intuit quicken 2007 free download - Quicken Certificate Updater, CSV2QIF, OFX2QIF, and many more programs. Convert CSV to QIF and import into Quicken PC 2005-2018, Quicken 2007 Mac, YNAB. OldVersion.com provides free. software downloads for old versions of programs, drivers and games. So why not downgrade to the version you love? Because newer is not always bett. Quicken is one of the few programs to generate a new version every year, and at first glance, Quicken Mac 2007 seems almost identical to the previous version ( ) except for the inclusion of the.
When I used a PC I was a heavy Microsoft Money user. When I switched to a Mac, I assumed that after all the good things I had heard about Quicken that I’d be better off. This did not turn out to be the case. I bought a copy of Quicken, installed it, headed over to my bank’s website and downloaded the QFX file using the WebConnect button and told Quicken to import it. I was greeted with the following error box.
Me: Why can’t I import a QFX file into Quicken Mac.
Quicken: Because your bank doesn’t support Mac QFX files.
Me: But they are both text files based on the OFX standard.
Quicken: But banks decide which formats they want to support.
Me: Are you telling me that there is a difference between an QFX file for a Mac and one for a PC.
Quicken: Yes they are different.
Me: Why would people use OFX if it was limited to only one platform?
Quicken: I don’t know.
Me: Ok on a bank that supports the “Mac format” there is only one link to download. How can it be a different file?
Quicken: I don’t know, but banks have to support the Mac format for Mac users.
Me: I’m looking at a QFX file right now from a bank that supports Macs and one that doesn’t. The file format is identical.
Quicken: No they are different.
It was at this point that I realized I was not going to get anywhere with tech support. So I started trying to figure out what was causing the problem myself.
I don’t know what it is like to use their PC product, but from an OS X standpoint Quicken is Evil. It isn’t that their product is bad, it is that they follow absurd business practices that will make your life miserable if you are using something other than Windows. If you go to the Quicken site and look at their list of supported banks, it looks very good and reassuring. Most major banks are listed, so it should be no problem to download and import transactions. The problem is in the fine print. Very few of the banks support “Quicken for Mac”. This seems odd because the OFX, QFX and QIF file formats are completely independent of the operating system. In fact that is the whole point of OFX–to have a platform independent way of representing financial data. It should work on PalmOS, OS X, Windows, Linux, HPUX, anything.
In older versions of Quicken and other money management software, you’d simply download a .QIF file and import it. QFX can work the same way, but it contains additional information about your account and bank. Most banks have upgraded to using QFX (WebConnect) because it helps prevent repeat transactions so you don’t have to be as careful about selecting the exact dates for import.
It turns out that when you try to import a QFX file, Quicken looks at the ID of the banking institution in the file and then goes to the Intuit web site and asks if it should allow you to import the file. Intuit’s site sees that the request is coming from a Mac and then checks to see if the bank with that ID is listed as supporting the Macs. If they don’t Intuit sends back a message telling Quicken to not allow the file to be imported. Banks have to pay Intuit extra money to say that they support Mac. Since the number of Mac users is smaller than PC users, many banks don’t pay the extra fee. In my opinion this amounts to artificially crippling their product for Mac users. The files are identical for any type of computer.
Quicken 2006 Update
There is a way around this stupid limitation. You simply tell the QFX file to use a different Bank ID number. If you choose a bank that supports “mac format”, Intuit will let you import the file.
First download the QFX (webconnect) file from your bank and then open it in a text editor. You should see a section that looks something that looks like:
Quicken 2011 Download
INTU.BID stands for the Intuit Bank ID. and INTU.USERID is the bank’s user id. These two numbers function as the username and password to allow or disallow Mac users from importing files. Intuit allows Washington Mutual (shown above) to let their customers use Quicken on a Mac, so by replacing your INTU.BID and INTU.USERID sections with what is shown above you can import the file.
It can be a little tricky to get the file imported because you’ll need to make sure Quicken associates it with the correct account. You may need to change the name of the bank on your account before you import the file. The easiest way is to create a new account when you import the file as shown in the image. You can then go in and edit the name of the account, but you’ll need to leave the name of the bank set to Washington Mutual.
Another possible way to work around the limitation is to redirect all traffic to Intuit to your local machine and return the proper codes to authorize the transaction regardless of which bank a QFX file comes from. Ideally someone could setup their own server to act like Intuit’s server and return affirmitive responses to all requests.
Update: more information in a new article
DownloadTrack, save and invest with the ultimate personal financial management software created for the Macintosh platform.
|
Track, save and invest with the ultimate personal financial management software created for the Macintosh platform.
Quicken for Mac 2006 now delivers all the most important features and benefits of Quicken Deluxe 2006 for Windows - along with exciting Mac exclusives that leverage the power of the Macintosh operating system.
What's New:
When entering transactions in the register, Quicken sometimes performed slowly on systems running Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3. This issue has been resolved.
Stability improvements were made to prevent Quicken from quitting unexpectedly when editing a payee name (while the split is displayed) after editing the category and amount for a split line.
Stability improvements were made to prevent Quicken from quitting unexpectedly when launching or during data file conversion on systems running Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Stability improvements were made to prevent Quicken from quitting unexpectedly when launching with certain internal files corrupted. The files in question are now repaired if necessary and Quicken launches as expected.
When canceling a Quicken Bill Pay payment, the payment would be incorrectly marked as a sent payment in the register. Quicken now correctly marks the cancelled payment.
When using Quicken Bill Pay, rules concerning postdated payments were sometimes evaluated incorrectly. This issue has been resolved.
When downloading transactions the Accept All button would become inactive after using the Accept button. This issue has been resolved.
After enabling an online account the Download Transactions window did not refresh properly. This issue has been resolved.
Quicken sometimes quit unexpectedly when creating a Smart Payee after deleting an online-enabled account. This issue has been resolved.
The security certificate used to ensure your online banking sessions are secure has been updated.
When selecting a downloaded transaction in the Download Transactions window, Quicken sometimes failed to copy the transaction to the register section of the window. This issue has been resolved.
In some cases investment transactions would reappear in the Download Transactions window after being accepted or deleted. This issue has been resolved.
In some cases the split ratio for downloaded stock split transactions could be reversed (i.e. 1 for 2 instead of 2 for 1). This issue has been resolved.
Quicken incorrectly displayed split transaction information for investment “Buy” and “Move Shares In” transactions under certain circumstances. This issue has been resolved.
Quicken now prevents disabling online functionality for an investment account if there are unprocessed transactions in the Download Transactions window.
When using the Scheduled Updates tab of the One Step Update window, clicking the weekday buttons rendered the buttons unreadable. This issue has been resolved.
When running a scheduled update, Quicken sometimes created and copied a backup file to .Mac when the Back Up to .Mac feature was enabled. This has been corrected so the backup is no longer created in this situation.
When using the Move Transactions window, some buttons overlapped register fields. This issue has been resolved.
You can now paste into the Number field of checking registers.
The File > Open Recent menu item did not display a submenu when there were no recent files to display. This issue has been resolved.
The Help menu now includes a link to the Quicken for Mac user forums.
Stability improvements were made to prevent Quicken from quitting unexpectedly when deleting a transaction from the Calendar.
The Add Note feature of the Calendar did not work properly for some customers. This issue has been resolved.
When entering transactions from the Calendar, some buttons overlapped register fields. This issue has been resolved.
You can now delete multiple transactions at the same time from within the Calendar.
The Export Report to Excel functionality has been improved for better compatibility with Microsoft Excel.
When exporting a QIF file, the custom export options for Securities and Security Prices were reversed. This issue has been resolved.
Stability improvements were made to prevent Quicken from quitting unexpectedly when saving a copy of the data file. This issue has been resolved.
The “Margin Interest” investment transaction type did not work properly for some customers. This issue has been resolved.
When displaying security detail graphs, a notation has been added to indicate when a stock split occurred.
Tax rates used in the Tax Planner have been updated.
Quicken has been updated to check with a new server for information about the availability of software updates.