Quicken Financial Life beta expires, community closed

Maybe I’m late to the party, but I found that my Quicken Financial Life beta build had expired.  Unfortunately, there is also no newer build to download.  So, no more testing of that software.  But I’m not crying.

After launching the software last night, an error appeared alerting me that the build expired and to go to Check for Updates to see if a newer build existed.  Problem was the software would not allow you to access the Check for Updates option that the error message references – the program just closed.  I also found my download link had been changed to say that the beta program was full and no longer accepting anyone.

Fine, I knew the program still worked in May when I last used it, so I turned back my clock and sure enough the program fired up.  I was able to check for update – there was not one.  But I also was able to see the community page and a note I’d missed saying that the forums had been closed and no new posts would be allowed.  The Quicken staff promised to go through all feedback left in the forum and it would be left online, as read-only.

So, that’s it for beta testing.  I think the product has a lot of potential.  Unfortuantely, some of the basic functionality – like importing QIF files – was missing.  I think that the simplistic approach that Financial Life is built around is very Mac like and so it feel more like a Mac program than a warmed over Windows version that Quicken for Mac 2007 feels like (don’t own Quicken for Mac, but I have used it).  Ultimately though, the beta version I was testing felt half baked and wasn’t usable for me as a real money management package.    My biggest issue (as with most packages) is getting my historical data – and there was no way for me to that with Financial Life.

I hope that the final release of Financial Life will be on the market soon, but I fear that it will be too feature incomplete to compete with online services and existing software – Moneydance, Moneywell, etc.