What we do differently
An honest list of where PennyBolt and Quicken part ways.
PennyBolt is not a Quicken replacement in the sense of matching every feature. It’s a deliberate re-design of the parts that matter most to people who track spending and net worth. Some Quicken features are absent because they were out of scope for v1. Others are absent because we made different choices.
This page lists both, plainly.
Not in v1
No investment tracking. PennyBolt doesn’t calculate portfolio performance, track lot basis, or import brokerage transaction history. You can add brokerage accounts as asset accounts and update the value manually, but that’s the extent of it. Investment tracking is the largest gap relative to Quicken and the most commonly requested feature for a future version.
No scheduled or recurring transactions. PennyBolt doesn’t create transactions in advance or remind you of upcoming bills. Enter transactions when they happen, or import them from your bank after the fact.
No bill pay. PennyBolt doesn’t connect to your bank to make payments. It’s an accounting tool, not a payments tool.
No live bank connection. PennyBolt doesn’t sync with your bank in real time. You download a file and import it. This is a deliberate choice, not an omission — see the note on privacy below.
No mobile app. PennyBolt v1 is desktop-only: macOS, Windows, and Linux. There is no mobile app.
No budget tracking. PennyBolt v1 doesn’t have budget envelopes, spending targets, or budget-vs-actual reports. Use categories and the Sankey chart to understand your spending patterns.
No tax schedule reports. Quicken’s tax-related reports (Schedule A, Schedule C, and so on) are not in PennyBolt v1.
No attachments. You can’t attach receipts, PDFs, or photos to transactions.
Where we made different choices
Fewer reports, designed better. Quicken offers dozens of reports, most of which most people never open. PennyBolt ships three: net worth, Sankey flow, and spending trends. These cover what the majority of users actually want to see, and they’re designed to be read at a glance rather than configured.
No live bank connection, by design. Giving a piece of software permanent, automatic access to your financial accounts is a significant trust decision. PennyBolt takes the position that your bank download belongs to you to review before it enters your records. You import when you choose to, as often as you choose to. Nothing happens to your file while you’re not looking.
One file, no cloud. Quicken’s model involves Quicken Cloud sync, server-side backups, and subscription authentication. PennyBolt’s model is a file on your disk. You control it, you back it up, you move it however you want. This simplifies the security surface and means PennyBolt will still work years from now regardless of what happens to us as a company.
Double-entry under the hood. Quicken uses a register-based model that can get inconsistent. PennyBolt uses double-entry accounting, which means the books either balance or they don’t — there’s no in-between. If an import creates an inconsistency, PennyBolt tells you. You don’t discover it three years later during a tax audit.
See also
- Quicken to PennyBolt, word for word — terminology mapping.
- Privacy and security — what PennyBolt does and doesn’t phone home for.
- Your first week — what to verify after switching.