Intuit Completes Acquisition of Mint.com
By Aaron Patzer, VP and General Manager
New VP and GM, Aaron Patzer
This week, Mint.com and Quicken will come together into one organization, the Personal Finance Group at Intuit, where I will be the new Vice President and General Manager.
In the past, you may have heard me say things like “Quicken isn’t quick enough”. I stand by all the things I’ve said when Quicken was a competitor – there is much to improve in Quicken going forward. I like to think that the great improvement we’ve already seen in Quicken 2010 was at least in part inspired by the competition of the past few years.
What I couldn’t say in the past, as a rival, I’ll say now. Quicken desktop is the best tool out there for handling your investments. It does tax-lot accounting, time-weighted returns, and has unparalleled accuracy and depth in this area, making it a good fit for someone with many assets. Quicken has great tax functionality, like the ability to export medical or business expenses to make calculating your deductions easy. Even Quicken Online has a few features we’d love to add to Mint.com – the ability to track cash and outstanding checks more easily, and import historic data.
In the future, everything that’s good about Mint.com will be incorporated into Quicken desktop, and vice versa. Over the next year we’ll be incorporating better categorization technology in Quicken, so that you see exactly where you money is going, with less effort. We’ll be adding a new “savings engine” in Quicken that looks at all of your financial accounts, and finds products with better interest rates and fewer fees. With this savings engine, you’ll have a software “advisor” that lets you know when it’s time to refinance your mortgage, or switch to a different savings account that yields more interest. We’ll pull cash and check tracking and the ability to import past transactions into Mint.com.
Both the online and desktop experience will improve dramatically – creating a continuum of products for people as their financial lives and needs change. The new, combined Intuit Personal Finance team can help even more people save and do more with their money.
Tags: Mint.com, quicken products | Categories: Announcement, Personal Finance |
As a Quicken user since 1991, I wish you all the best in your new position. I am a member a large group of frustrated users who have provided feedback / bug reports for 4-5 years and never see anything but cosmetic changes from year to year.
If you want to grow in this market, a return to blocking and tackling known bugs in Quicken desktop software will go a long way. The product is woefully inadequate as an investment manager for anyone who trades frequently or has managed accounts with frequent trades. Bugs in Transaction groups and Calendar functions constantly re-set dates so users can’t depend on reminders and payments get missed.
Users by and large don’t trust the “cloud” with this sensitive information. Fix the desktop software and prove your committment to customers who have geen with Quicken for years, and would like to again find reasons to stay with Intuit.
like alex and joshua, I am hoping mint.com will now be able to access all the credit cards that quicken online does. And that you can confirm this soon!
I have always found this to be a frustration as for iPhone use mint has a stronger platform but I cant track my credit card (with a credit union) because mint “doesnt support” where quicken does…
I am also hoping that mint and quicken (desktop product) become integrated to work together.
I have been a quicken and quickbook user for almost 10 years, I am in the process of getting an iphone and must say I am very disappointed with the offerings by Intuit. Why, in God’ name would anyone ever want to store your personal financial info on someones else’s computer as you have with the mobile offerings. Unless versions come through that allow me to sync to my desktop only I will be looking elsewhere. The fact that Intiut uses its money to buy up competitors like Mint is only an attempt to stifle the competition. Leaves a poor taste in my mouth. May make good business sense, but the money would have been better spent improving the product.. I guess intuit doesn’t believe in competition. Makes me want to go back to pencil and paper
Hopefully you can bring change, but I am disappointed so far. Quicken Online received an upgrade at the beginning of November (about the same time you started) and has been rendered very unreliable since. As part of the Quicken Inner Circle group, I have left a couple messages detailing this, but have seen no response by the Quicken team. I am prepared to wait one more week, and will then begin looking for a new option.
Best of luck in your new venture!
DannyB
What are your thoughts on the Quicken for Mac project? The team somehow determined that potential Mac users weren’t interested in tracking stock purchase prices. How they came to that conclusion has me scratching my head in bewilderment since to me, and from what I’m reading a large number of other users, that is one of the top features that is a REQUIREMENT. Since any of us that REQUIRE that feature will likely not buy a product released without it would you consider delaying the release and restoring the functionality that was already previously there that customers rely on? Does Intuit honestly expect Mac users to have to re-enter old stock data by hand into TurboTax? If so then why would we pay Intuit? They are just creating MORE work for the customer rather than reducing it.
Cordially,
–
Scott Sprunger
Aaron,
Congrats on the new assignment and good luck!
As you settle in, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the development of quicken for Mac and how Mint will/won’t influence it. For Quicken Mac users it’s been a couple of years of missed deadlines, half truths and broken promises, so there’s probably nowhere to go but up. From the outside, QFM 2010 looks like a software development that lacks tight requirements definition and control and has no serious commitment from management. Supposedly the feature set is what users are asking for, but I’ve seen quite the opposite throughout the blogs/inner circle postings – users are just asking for feature parity with the Windows version of Quicken. Alas, it’s not to be. The QFM 2010 offering lacks basic investment tracking; doesn’t support direct online bill payment; and won’t even export data to use in TurboTax – it’s really a mess, especially after twice missing a promised delivery schedule. You know your SW development is in trouble when you have to release a posting on your public site that contains quotes like this:
“We know you’ve heard this before. In early 2008, we told you we’d release Quicken Financial Life for Mac later that year. 2008 came and went and we did not. At Macworld 2009, we told you it would be later this year…..”
I’d love to see Mint’s positive influence in the desktop version of Quicken (especially for the Mac
. Best wishes and good luck!
Pete
@Joshua/Alex
I’m in the same boat — I dropped Mint in favor of Quicken due to the unreliability of connecting to my credit union. To be fair, I encountered the same problems when I tried Yodlee directly, so the problem appeared to be theirs. I loved the Mint interface and features, but I sure hope the go with the Intuit back-end instead of Yodlee for the combined product.
I have the same question as Joshua – what happens if my financial institution is supported by Quicken Online and not Mint?
Hopefully the new Mint/Quicken will combine the bank’s and credit unions they support as well.
You’re in a for a reality check Aaron. Intuit is not your nimble startup like Mint was.
Sounds like you are contradicting what you have said in the past. While I am hoping you can turn Quicken around, it is interesting to see how money can change someone’s perspective. Just go with what Mint had.
Well, this is good news, in general. However, I *would* like to see something a bit more positive about Quicken for Mac. The public plans for QFM 2010 are downright pathetic. It doesn’t look like it will do even as well as the free Mint.com or Quicken Online, and is even a step back from the degraded QFM 2007 that we (Mac users) have been using.
You mentioned that “In the future, everything that’s good about Mint.com will be incorporated into Quicken desktop, and vice versa.” I would love to use Mint.com, but have had to use Quicken Online because of bank syncing issues. Is Mint.com going to get all of the bank-syncing goodness Quicken and Quicken Online have?
Is there going to be a simple way to migrate to Mint.com if you do provide these syncing capabilities?
Aaron, this is exactly what I was hoping to hear. I’m a very recent Microsoft Money refugee that is working on converting to Quicken 2009. I like what I’ve seen so far but have been worried that, with Microsoft getting out of the personal finance market and with Intuit acquiring Mint, there’d be little reason for them to improve the Quicken desktop application. From what you’ve said here, it sounds like nothing could be further from the truth. I look forward to completing my switch and to great things from Quicken in the future.
Congratulations on your new position and good luck with all you have ahead of you. Also, hello from your old hometown.
Sincerely,
- Byron Followell
Evansville, IN, USA