PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
A year later, and I just upgraded to 2018 and STILL can't do any of the report features I want and need. Jeez! I just can't conceive of how/why a product like 2007 was so incredible, and now, in 2018, this software still is not up to snuff.
Quicken, why are you ignoring all our pleas to make the program as good as it was more than TEN YEARS AGO!!!!!!!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
Short answer: Quicken 2007 was the culmination of 20 years of development, and Quicken 2018 is the product of about 5 years of development. Yes, it should have been easier to recreate than to create the first time. Yes, it should have been started sooner and finished sooner. There were a lot of missteps in the years following Quicken 2007. And they were under-resourced when they did start working to create a full-fledged successor. It appears they now have a firm commitment to complete building a modern Quicken Mac with most of the features of Quicken Windows and Quicken 2007 -- but it's taking longer than anyone wants. New report functionality will certainly be released this year, but it's anyone's guess how much and how soon. I wouldn't say they're ignoring the pleas of Quicken users -- they just aren't capable of moving faster.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
Honestly, this logic just does not work! Why would Intuit give Quicken 2007 a lobotomy, to then sell it to the people who bought it? And why would anyone want to buy something so terrible and put their name on it? This all just does not make any sense? You say 20 years went into something that was superb, only to have the people who made it sabotage a superb product and then sell it? WHY? I just do not understand!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
If I recall correctly, Quicken was a standalone company that was bought out by Intuit, which was mainly interested in the Windows business. Intuit had an inferior product, for Windows only, as I recall. So they concentrated on Quicken Windows development until they realized that Mac users were (still are) more intense, more loyal, more demanding and still a market they should not ignore.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
@LCopp: You're right, you're not understanding. The much-admired Quicken 2007 was a dead-end. It was the culmination of two decades of development, but it became apparent to the engineers at Quicken that they could not modernize it to keep up with significant changes in the Mac operating system. For just one example, the entire on-screen look of Quicken 2007 is built on QuickDraw, the Mac's original screen imaging technology -- technology Apple started removing support for with the release of Mac OS 10.4 in 2005. So the Quicken team decided that the only path forward was a complete re-write of Quicken for Mac from scratch, using new programming languages, frameworks and tools.
Work began after Quicken 2007 debuted in 2006. But the first attempt at a replacement system was such a mess that it never made it past beta testing before it was killed. Quicken then bought Mint, and put its CEO in charge of Quicken. With a revamped plan and a new development team, a second effort to re-write Quicken Mac eventually came to market in 2010 as Quicken Essentials, which lacked investing and many other features. A more complete Quicken Deluxe was promised for 2011, but it never happened. The former Mint CEO left, and the Quicken Mac development team was disbanded. It took a couple more years before yet another Intuit management team was in place and decided to hire a new product manager and developers to build a modern Quicken Mac on the code base of Essentials. More than two years later, Quicken 2015 went on sale -- incomplete still, but including investment features, and a major upgrade for Essentials users. Now, three years later, Quicken 2018 has many more features, security updates and bug fixes -- but the list of large and small features users want number in the triple digits.
So no, no one "sabotaged" the product; there was a legitimate vision to re-create it, but the team was too small to do so quickly. And the sale of Quicken was not just about the Mac product; remember that Quicken Windows is still the flagship product of the company. (Intuit did say they weren't focused on Quicken, a very small piece of their overall business, and they sold it so it could have more of a chance to succeed on its own.) As for how "terrible" the current Quicken Mac product is, it's worth noting that there are more users of the modern Quicken Mac than the Quicken 2007 of old; although there are some of us still clinging to Quicken 2007, and some who are using Quicken Windows even thought they'd prefer to move to Quicken Mac, a lot of people find Quicken 2015-2018 at least good enough for their needs. Others will continue to hold Quicken's feet to the fire to deliver additional features and functionality until the program approaches Quicken 2007.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
@Harvey Kabaker: Your history is not quite right. Intuit was created by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx in 1983 after Cook observed his wife paying bills at their kitchen table and thought software could make the process easier. Proulx, a Stanford student at the time, wrote the first version of Quicken (in Microsoft Basic). They ran Intuit out of Proulx's basement for awhile. Current Quicken CEO Eric Dunn was the 4th employee of the young company, which went trough tough times and would ave gone under had some of the employees not agreed to keep working for 6 month without pay. An Apple II version of Quicken followed. In 1987, Intuit purchased an early Mac personal finance program called Electric Checkbook (from State-of-the-Art Software), and Dunn worked on converting it into the first version of Quicken for the Mac, which debuted to resounding and immediate success in early 1988.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back 2007 Reporting Flexibility. Simply put, the way 2017 "assumes" you want the report they way it groups and sorts it is highly arrogant. I had a lot of flexible memorized reports which helped me especially at tax time. Now, I will spend hours manually sprint through the crap that Quicken 2017 vomits. This is so important that if I find another program that provides flexible reporting (iBank is just as awful), I will dump Quicken in a minute AND post it to the 1000s I am connected to on both FaceBook and LinkedIn... that's how awful reporting is.
Well it looks like Quicken for the Mac is still woefully behind the times on its reporting capability. I don't know what else they need from us. I've voted for enhanced reporting several times and still nothing. It's not like they need a design spec that's brand new. Just duplicate what's available in QWIN. I know I'm not alone in saying I won't be paying for any updates until this is rectified.
I am grateful for your knowledge. It helps to sooth my frustration and agitation using a program that was superb and is now very time consuming.
I haven't downloaded or bought Quicken for Mac for several years. I have tried, but nothing compares to the functions offered for the Quicken 2007 version. For my business I rely heavily on the flexible reporting functions of 2007 and what they used to call "classes." Any chance the new quicken for Mac has these flexible functions?
I haven't downloaded or bought Quicken for Mac for several years. I have tried, but nothing compares to the functions offered for the Quicken 2007 version. For my business I rely heavily on the flexible reporting functions of 2007 and what they used to call "classes." Any chance the new quicken for Mac has these flexible functions?
The good: yes, Quicken 2018 has a comparable feature to 2007 "classes". They're called "tags" now, and they're actually more flexible because you can have multiple tags on a transaction.
The bad news: the reporting in Quicken 2018 is still limited, and not nearly as flexible as Quicken 2007. This is an area of high priority, according to the developers, and last year they rolled out the foundation of a new reports engine which will eventually replace the limited reports that are descended from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials product. Right now, the program is a hodgepodge of the old reports and a few of the new reports, and it takes some exploration and experimentation to find what you can do with each. We've been led to expect some major improvements with the reports in the not-too-distant future, and eventually all the reports should move to the new system. We just don't know how soon we'll get additional changes, and whether they will arrive all at once or be trickled out over a long period of time. Right now, some people can get all they need out of the existing reports, but some Quicken 2007 users who used the heavily-customizable columnar reports find Quicken 2018 still inadequate for their needs.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
I haven't downloaded or bought Quicken for Mac for several years. I have tried, but nothing compares to the functions offered for the Quicken 2007 version. For my business I rely heavily on the flexible reporting functions of 2007 and what they used to call "classes." Any chance the new quicken for Mac has these flexible functions?
Thanks. I will wait til they upgrade the reporting. I will stay with Sierra until that happens!
I haven't downloaded or bought Quicken for Mac for several years. I have tried, but nothing compares to the functions offered for the Quicken 2007 version. For my business I rely heavily on the flexible reporting functions of 2007 and what they used to call "classes." Any chance the new quicken for Mac has these flexible functions?
Actually, Tags are similar to Classes but they are different...
Quicken allows multiple tags to be added to a transaction. The trade off is there are no sub-Tags like sub-Classes, so you lose the Parent/Child relationship between tags. Therefore, when converting over from QM2007, all sub-Tags are converted to simple tags.
This report type is certainly key to some, like myself, but the lack of report features does not stop there. I highly recommend you to add your VOTES to related IDEAS found on the:
Exporting is also an issue in this. Not only are you not able to make reports like in 2007, when you check the include Memo/Notes, it will not include them or print them!
Exporting is also an issue in this. Not only are you not able to make reports like in 2007, when you check the include Memo/Notes, it will not include them or print them!
Debbie, what version of Quicken Mac are you using? The "New Report" reports in Quicken 2017 and 2018 do correctly print and export the Memo/Notes field (and other fields you can optionally add to reports). It's not quite the flexibility of Quicken 2007, but it's substantially close for many (not all) types of reports.
The original reports in Quicken 2015 and 2016 are carry-overs from the under-developered Quicken Essentials product that was first released in 2010. The developers spent a lot of time over the past year re-writing a new reporting engine and user interface from the ground up, and this is what now exists as the New Report options in Quicken 2017 and 2018. The old reports still exist, and not all of the old reports have been replicated in the new reports yet, which makes this confusing for many users. The product manager has promised we'll see more new reports released this year as they work to completely replace the old reports with the new, more robust reports -- we just don't know what we'll get when.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
Exporting is also an issue in this. Not only are you not able to make reports like in 2007, when you check the include Memo/Notes, it will not include them or print them!
That sounds good. I am using the 2016. We are a very small home based music business and buying a new program every year isn't feasible. I will watch for 2019 and see what they offer. I wish they offered one more like 2007 for small businesses with the tax information that we get now. That is the only aspect that has been helpful. A lot of what it can do is way beyond our needs or understanding. I also wish they would offer a fix for 2016! Here's hoping.
Exporting is also an issue in this. Not only are you not able to make reports like in 2007, when you check the include Memo/Notes, it will not include them or print them!
Even though their focus is on completing the development of the new reports, I do think they should fix the export of the Memo/Notes field for Quicken 2016 users; that was pretty clearly a bug of omission. I think they ought to fix that for users of the older software while it's still under support.
Hopefully, the expanded new reports will show up in Quicken 2018 later this year. They're no longer holding new features for one big annual release. The designation of 2018 or 2019 should be largely meaningless except for their retail marketing efforts; new features are released as soon as they're ready. (But it will probably take until next year for many more of the features, large and small, that people value in Quicken 2007 to be created in the modern Quicken.)
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
Alan,
First, I understand your frustrations with reports in Quicken Mac; I and many other longtime Quicken users share them.
Second, please understand that your comments here do not go directly to Quicken, and it's unlikely that someone on the development team or senior management will read what you've posted here. It's somewhat unfortunate that Quicken utilizes this forum as primarily user-to-user support, with some limited support help from their forum moderators. But general comments and complaints likely do not get passed on very often.
Third, if you did software development then you should understand better than most users that "making the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features" is often impossible, as was the case here. The original Quicken Mac was built on old Mac technologies which have been slowly being retired over the years. It's not as if one can simply take the program and re-write it in a new development environment. Everything from the memory management architecture to the networking technology to the core database to the screen graphics is completely, radically different. (And, it should be noted, many of those under-the-hood changes are for the better, as any Quicken 2007 user who has had to re-index his/her data file many times due to unreliability of the old database can attest.) I wrote a system for my business in COBOL back in the early 1980s; moving it to a modern object-oriented development environment built around a SQL database required complete re-creation of everything from the ground up.
Re-starting from scratch has some positive and some limitations. It allows the developers to thin about whether there's a better way to do something. Perhaps a feature was developed 30 years ago because it was the only way to work around technology limitations at the time, and there's a better way to do it now. In some cases, features developed decades ago may not be used or needed any more. On the flip side, in some cases, the current development team might not understand the significance or use for certain old features, or might miss entirely that they existed somewhere in the code. In some cases, the developers chose to use shortcuts the macOS provides instead of spending weeks/months writing their own code; totals at the top -- one of my absolutely biggest complaints about modern Quicken Mac! -- is one such byproduct, because the MacOS frameworks provide a way to do this without writing tons of code. Same with the one-line register instead of the old two-line format; macOS provides an easy way to generate lists from a database, but the two-line format would require development of custom code for drawing everything on the screen. And the old way of doing that, which utilized deprecated Mac QuickDraw technology, is completely incompatible with modern Quartz/Core Graphics screen graphics layer.
And finally the unfortunate reality is that with a small development team, even after years of work, they're only part-way through the list of features from legacy Quicken Mac/Quicken Windows, despite a desire to achieve something close to feature parity. So we users are stuck with some steps forward as well as some steps back. Because each of us uses Quicken differently, we perceive those limitations anywhere from minor to show-stopping.
As I said at the start, I understand your frustrations and share them. I'm not apologizing or justifying for Quicken; I'm just trying to explain how we got where we are today. I continue to be hopeful that more and more items from the collective users wishlist will get added to the program over time, and that the modern Quicken Mac will eventually be a suitable successor for Quicken 2007 and Quicken Windows users. But I've experienced the slow pace over the past four years and know that we still have quite a ways to go before that dream is reality.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
As you discovered, the reports functionality is still very underdeveloped but apparently they have redesigned the reporting engine last year which will enable new reports to be developed as a result.
First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click VOTE at the top of THAT page, so your will vote count for THIS feature and increase its visibility to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version.
You also want to add your vote to each of the components that make up the other essential related report featuresdescribed here.
While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the List of Requests for Report Types. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. Your VOTES matter!
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
To jacobs: Thank you for your very thoughtful and detailed response. However, I heartily disagree with you on one important point that you made regarding upgrading a successful existing program to a new platform. Countless applications have been upgraded to the new Mac platform through the years. Some more easily than others, I'm sure, but the effort has paid off for those who persisted. For example: Adobe products, Microsoft Office, Omni products, to name a few. And, I think you are offering an unnecessary apology for Quicken, in spite of your saying otherwise. In the 10 or so years since Quicken 2007, a dedicated team of software engineers could have produced a far better product than is being offered now.
It is also very disheartening to hear that "Quicken utilizes this forum as primarily user-to-user support, with some limited support help from their forum moderators." I would expect more from a responsible software company.
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
Having developed a software system for my retail business in the early 1980s, I can appreciate the difficulty in design, development and testing. However, what I cannot fathom is that Quicken 2007 from a user functioning point of view was very good. It provided all of the necessary elements to an effective accounting system that was user friendly. It would seem the better approach would have been NOT to reinvent the wheel but to simply make the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features. Version 2018 is so foreign to 2007 that is frustrating. Simple things such as "Totals" now appear at the top of the column instead of the bottom as traditionally presented. Ach! And, we can no longer print an accurate Balance Sheet from a prior period (excuse my that no longer exists) it is now Net Worth in a different format. Why because the genius who designed it did not provide for preserving the Portfolio Accounts values from prior periods. Also, why the colors? These are, first of all, redundant as the red numbers also show a (-) sign and secondly, they love to drink up ink cartridges (Was there a side deal with HP?)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
Peter, my guess is that companies like Microsoft and Adobe have Mac development teams that are more than 10 times larger than Quicken (and sell more than 10 times as many copies of their software).
Of course it's disappointing where we are more than 10 years after Quicken 2007. Former parent company Intuit made many, many mistakes that have cost us. Their first attempt at re-writing Quicken was such a mess that it never made it out of beta. Their second attempt was Quicken Essentials, which was significantly limited in functionality. Then they pretty much disbanded the development team, and several more years went by. When a new management team took over at Intuit, they decided to restart development and build on the base of Essentials to create a full-fledged Quicken for Mac replacement. I don't know for sure, but I believe the development team at that point was only a few people. The entire memory management had to be re-written to catch up to Apple's operating system changes, and everything about tracking investments had to be created because that had been left out of Essentials. The networking code had to be re-written because of security changes to Internet protocols. Even after the next-generation program debuted in fall 2014, required back-end changes to servers, and then the move off some of Intuit's servers after Quicken was sold, consumed large chunks of programming time. The saying "two steps forward, one step back" pretty well describes the saga.
To me, there are three positives to take from all this. One is simply that we have a modern Quicken for Mac. Quicken, at least on the Mac, could have died multiple times in that mess of transitions at Intuit. The second is that progress is clearly being made. It you compare Quicken 2018 with the Quicken 2015 of three years ago, a lot of features and improvements are evident. The third is that the current management has stated a goal and a commitment to bring Quicken Mac to feature parity with Quicken Windows. And yes, it's frustrating that it's taking so long and that we're still as far away as we are. But there is hope that holds more promise than just wishful thinking.
As for this forum, it should be noted that Quicken does provide official support by both phone and live chat; this forum is an additional place where users can help each other, but it's not intended to be a full branch of Quicken Support. Users can also report bugs or problems which don't require personal response to Quicken from a link on the Help menu. Saying they're not a "responsible software company" seems overly harsh.
QMac 2007 & QMac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
2018 for Mac The LAYOUT of the 2018 TRANSACTION DOES NOT provide an option for the layout as provided in my 2007 SCREENSHOT where Classes (now tags) are at top of columns and Income/Expense down the left size. this was enabled in using Mac 2007 Income & Expense report, and REPORT LAYOUT:Categories down left side, Column headings Class/Tags across top Please include this IMPORTANT report option for 2018.!!!!!
2018 for Mac The LAYOUT of the 2018 TRANSACTION DOES NOT provide an option for the layout as provided in my 2007 SCREENSHOT where Classes (now tags) are at top of columns and Income/Expense down the left size. this was enabled in using Mac 2007 Income & Expense report, and REPORT LAYOUT:Categories down left side, Column headings Class/Tags across top Please include this IMPORTANT report option for 2018.!!!!!
I am so glad that I stumbled on this Quicken Community. I have had Quicken Home Business and Rental Property 2018 Version since January. Had Quicken 2000 for many years and was happy with it. When I got a new printer it was not compatible with it. SO, I thought it was time to update. May as well get the latest while I am doing it. WOW! What a headache. I thought the reports for tax purposes would be available just as they were in 2000. NOT. We had to file for an extension on tax filing. I am still struggling. Is there a tutorial or YouTube out there? At least I feel reassured that I am not developing dementia. Suggestions welcome.
I agree that reporting capabilities are under developed in QM2016. As a result reports in QM2007 are not carried over. This is the EXACT same need I have and one of the main reasons that is holding me back on QM2007.
If you have not done so already, I suggest you add your vote for these features to help guide the priorities by the developers. As per the directions of intuit Admin, you can submit your request for bugs/features for Quicken 2016 for Mac by entering into the field "Something not listed? Tell us:" here: http://www.quicken.com/mac/feedback
This is the surest way for them to see your request. The field may appear small but you can type in quite a bit.
(if you have too many details, you can always post them here and place a link to this thread in your feedback)
Take the time to also vote on any of the listed features that Intuit is considering.
Barbara Primm Completely off topic... going to have moved to a separate thread...
I agree that reporting capabilities are under developed in QM2016. As a result reports in QM2007 are not carried over. This is the EXACT same need I have and one of the main reasons that is holding me back on QM2007.
If you have not done so already, I suggest you add your vote for these features to help guide the priorities by the developers. As per the directions of intuit Admin, you can submit your request for bugs/features for Quicken 2016 for Mac by entering into the field "Something not listed? Tell us:" here: http://www.quicken.com/mac/feedback
This is the surest way for them to see your request. The field may appear small but you can type in quite a bit.
(if you have too many details, you can always post them here and place a link to this thread in your feedback)
Take the time to also vote on any of the listed features that Intuit is considering.
I wound up”creAte a copy” in 2007 and it cleared up most of my issues hopefully until Quicken offers current editions with same functionality. Bunny Rogers
I am so glad that I stumbled on this Quicken Community. I have had Quicken Home Business and Rental Property 2018 Version since January. Had Quicken 2000 for many years and was happy with it. When I got a new printer it was not compatible with it. SO, I thought it was time to update. May as well get the latest while I am doing it. WOW! What a headache. I thought the reports for tax purposes would be available just as they were in 2000. NOT. We had to file for an extension on tax filing. I am still struggling. Is there a tutorial or YouTube out there? At least I feel reassured that I am not developing dementia. Suggestions welcome.
Different topic and platform creating a new post to address issue
I would like to be able to see a category summary report, i.e. current YTD, and have columns for different tags. I have 3 businesses and each has a tag. My personal transactions have no tags. I would like to pull a category summary report and see the four columns and the total, such as Quickbooks will do with the P&L by class report.
I am aware I can pick which tags to include in the report, but I would like to see side by side the different tags as well as the total for ease in making sure things are posted to the correct company.
Comments
Quicken, why are you ignoring all our pleas to make the program as good as it was more than TEN YEARS AGO!!!!!!!
Work began after Quicken 2007 debuted in 2006. But the first attempt at a replacement system was such a mess that it never made it past beta testing before it was killed. Quicken then bought Mint, and put its CEO in charge of Quicken. With a revamped plan and a new development team, a second effort to re-write Quicken Mac eventually came to market in 2010 as Quicken Essentials, which lacked investing and many other features. A more complete Quicken Deluxe was promised for 2011, but it never happened. The former Mint CEO left, and the Quicken Mac development team was disbanded. It took a couple more years before yet another Intuit management team was in place and decided to hire a new product manager and developers to build a modern Quicken Mac on the code base of Essentials. More than two years later, Quicken 2015 went on sale -- incomplete still, but including investment features, and a major upgrade for Essentials users. Now, three years later, Quicken 2018 has many more features, security updates and bug fixes -- but the list of large and small features users want number in the triple digits.
So no, no one "sabotaged" the product; there was a legitimate vision to re-create it, but the team was too small to do so quickly. And the sale of Quicken was not just about the Mac product; remember that Quicken Windows is still the flagship product of the company. (Intuit did say they weren't focused on Quicken, a very small piece of their overall business, and they sold it so it could have more of a chance to succeed on its own.) As for how "terrible" the current Quicken Mac product is, it's worth noting that there are more users of the modern Quicken Mac than the Quicken 2007 of old; although there are some of us still clinging to Quicken 2007, and some who are using Quicken Windows even thought they'd prefer to move to Quicken Mac, a lot of people find Quicken 2015-2018 at least good enough for their needs. Others will continue to hold Quicken's feet to the fire to deliver additional features and functionality until the program approaches Quicken 2007.
I haven't downloaded or bought Quicken for Mac for several years. I have tried, but nothing compares to the functions offered for the Quicken 2007 version. For my business I rely heavily on the flexible reporting functions of 2007 and what they used to call "classes." Any chance the new quicken for Mac has these flexible functions?
The good: yes, Quicken 2018 has a comparable feature to 2007 "classes". They're called "tags" now, and they're actually more flexible because you can have multiple tags on a transaction.
The bad news: the reporting in Quicken 2018 is still limited, and not nearly as flexible as Quicken 2007. This is an area of high priority, according to the developers, and last year they rolled out the foundation of a new reports engine which will eventually replace the limited reports that are descended from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials product. Right now, the program is a hodgepodge of the old reports and a few of the new reports, and it takes some exploration and experimentation to find what you can do with each. We've been led to expect some major improvements with the reports in the not-too-distant future, and eventually all the reports should move to the new system. We just don't know how soon we'll get additional changes, and whether they will arrive all at once or be trickled out over a long period of time. Right now, some people can get all they need out of the existing reports, but some Quicken 2007 users who used the heavily-customizable columnar reports find Quicken 2018 still inadequate for their needs.
Quicken allows multiple tags to be added to a transaction. The trade off is there are no sub-Tags like sub-Classes, so you lose the Parent/Child relationship between tags. Therefore, when converting over from QM2007, all sub-Tags are converted to simple tags.
This report type is certainly key to some, like myself, but the lack of report features does not stop there. I highly recommend you to add your VOTES to related IDEAS found on the:
- List of Requests for Report Related Features,
- List of Requests for Report Types
Click on each underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. Your VOTES matter!with the essential ones described and listed here
For background, you may want to read this post too. BTW, the columnar-type report is the basis for MANY other reports, as described in detail in this post a little lower; only the selection and formatting criteria are different.
Also, take a look at:
Is Quicken for Mac 2007 (QM2007) Compatible with High Sierra (macOS 10.13)?
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
The original reports in Quicken 2015 and 2016 are carry-overs from the under-developered Quicken Essentials product that was first released in 2010. The developers spent a lot of time over the past year re-writing a new reporting engine and user interface from the ground up, and this is what now exists as the New Report options in Quicken 2017 and 2018. The old reports still exist, and not all of the old reports have been replicated in the new reports yet, which makes this confusing for many users. The product manager has promised we'll see more new reports released this year as they work to completely replace the old reports with the new, more robust reports -- we just don't know what we'll get when.
Hopefully, the expanded new reports will show up in Quicken 2018 later this year. They're no longer holding new features for one big annual release. The designation of 2018 or 2019 should be largely meaningless except for their retail marketing efforts; new features are released as soon as they're ready. (But it will probably take until next year for many more of the features, large and small, that people value in Quicken 2007 to be created in the modern Quicken.)
It just seems that you folks made changes for changes sake forgetting all of the goodwill version 2007 had garnered in spite of the years to make improvements.
First, I understand your frustrations with reports in Quicken Mac; I and many other longtime Quicken users share them.
Second, please understand that your comments here do not go directly to Quicken, and it's unlikely that someone on the development team or senior management will read what you've posted here. It's somewhat unfortunate that Quicken utilizes this forum as primarily user-to-user support, with some limited support help from their forum moderators. But general comments and complaints likely do not get passed on very often.
Third, if you did software development then you should understand better than most users that "making the existing very satisfactory program work on a new platform etc. without giving up any features" is often impossible, as was the case here. The original Quicken Mac was built on old Mac technologies which have been slowly being retired over the years. It's not as if one can simply take the program and re-write it in a new development environment. Everything from the memory management architecture to the networking technology to the core database to the screen graphics is completely, radically different. (And, it should be noted, many of those under-the-hood changes are for the better, as any Quicken 2007 user who has had to re-index his/her data file many times due to unreliability of the old database can attest.) I wrote a system for my business in COBOL back in the early 1980s; moving it to a modern object-oriented development environment built around a SQL database required complete re-creation of everything from the ground up.
Re-starting from scratch has some positive and some limitations. It allows the developers to thin about whether there's a better way to do something. Perhaps a feature was developed 30 years ago because it was the only way to work around technology limitations at the time, and there's a better way to do it now. In some cases, features developed decades ago may not be used or needed any more. On the flip side, in some cases, the current development team might not understand the significance or use for certain old features, or might miss entirely that they existed somewhere in the code. In some cases, the developers chose to use shortcuts the macOS provides instead of spending weeks/months writing their own code; totals at the top -- one of my absolutely biggest complaints about modern Quicken Mac! -- is one such byproduct, because the MacOS frameworks provide a way to do this without writing tons of code. Same with the one-line register instead of the old two-line format; macOS provides an easy way to generate lists from a database, but the two-line format would require development of custom code for drawing everything on the screen. And the old way of doing that, which utilized deprecated Mac QuickDraw technology, is completely incompatible with modern Quartz/Core Graphics screen graphics layer.
And finally the unfortunate reality is that with a small development team, even after years of work, they're only part-way through the list of features from legacy Quicken Mac/Quicken Windows, despite a desire to achieve something close to feature parity. So we users are stuck with some steps forward as well as some steps back. Because each of us uses Quicken differently, we perceive those limitations anywhere from minor to show-stopping.
As I said at the start, I understand your frustrations and share them. I'm not apologizing or justifying for Quicken; I'm just trying to explain how we got where we are today. I continue to be hopeful that more and more items from the collective users wishlist will get added to the program over time, and that the modern Quicken Mac will eventually be a suitable successor for Quicken 2007 and Quicken Windows users. But I've experienced the slow pace over the past four years and know that we still have quite a ways to go before that dream is reality.
Meanwhile, you can add your VOTE for SubTotals on reports and Report Formatting Options.
First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click VOTE at the top of THAT page, so your will vote count for THIS feature and increase its visibility to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version.
You also want to add your vote to each of the components that make up the other essential related report features described here.
While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the List of Requests for Report Types. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. Your VOTES matter!
(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
It is also very disheartening to hear that "Quicken utilizes this forum as primarily user-to-user support, with some limited support help from their forum moderators." I would expect more from a responsible software company.
Of course it's disappointing where we are more than 10 years after Quicken 2007. Former parent company Intuit made many, many mistakes that have cost us. Their first attempt at re-writing Quicken was such a mess that it never made it out of beta. Their second attempt was Quicken Essentials, which was significantly limited in functionality. Then they pretty much disbanded the development team, and several more years went by. When a new management team took over at Intuit, they decided to restart development and build on the base of Essentials to create a full-fledged Quicken for Mac replacement. I don't know for sure, but I believe the development team at that point was only a few people. The entire memory management had to be re-written to catch up to Apple's operating system changes, and everything about tracking investments had to be created because that had been left out of Essentials. The networking code had to be re-written because of security changes to Internet protocols. Even after the next-generation program debuted in fall 2014, required back-end changes to servers, and then the move off some of Intuit's servers after Quicken was sold, consumed large chunks of programming time. The saying "two steps forward, one step back" pretty well describes the saga.
To me, there are three positives to take from all this. One is simply that we have a modern Quicken for Mac. Quicken, at least on the Mac, could have died multiple times in that mess of transitions at Intuit. The second is that progress is clearly being made. It you compare Quicken 2018 with the Quicken 2015 of three years ago, a lot of features and improvements are evident. The third is that the current management has stated a goal and a commitment to bring Quicken Mac to feature parity with Quicken Windows. And yes, it's frustrating that it's taking so long and that we're still as far away as we are. But there is hope that holds more promise than just wishful thinking.
As for this forum, it should be noted that Quicken does provide official support by both phone and live chat; this forum is an additional place where users can help each other, but it's not intended to be a full branch of Quicken Support. Users can also report bugs or problems which don't require personal response to Quicken from a link on the Help menu. Saying they're not a "responsible software company" seems overly harsh.
2018 for Mac The LAYOUT of the 2018 TRANSACTION DOES NOT provide an option for the layout as provided in my 2007 SCREENSHOT where Classes (now tags) are at top of columns and Income/Expense down the left size. this was enabled in using Mac 2007 Income & Expense report, and REPORT LAYOUT:Categories down left side, Column headings Class/Tags across top
Please include this IMPORTANT report option for 2018.!!!!!
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
- Where to find a Help Guide for Quicken for Mac?
- Quicken Mac FAQ list
- Quicken Windows FAQ list
- Help Guide and FAQs for Quicken Mobile
COMPLETE list of Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac to VOTE onObject to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires
(Canadian Q user since '92, STILL using QM2007)
Please reference the new conversation here: Creating a Tax Report in Qwin Home and Bussiness
I would like to be able to see a category summary report, i.e. current YTD, and have columns for different tags. I have 3 businesses and each has a tag. My personal transactions have no tags. I would like to pull a category summary report and see the four columns and the total, such as Quickbooks will do with the P&L by class report.
I am aware I can pick which tags to include in the report, but I would like to see side by side the different tags as well as the total for ease in making sure things are posted to the correct company.
Thanks!