Bring back Quick Report for Mac (77 Legacy Votes)

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @GWHorter

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question, although I apologize that this feature isn't currently offered.

I have moved your post to the ongoing Idea thread to add Quick Reports to the subscription version of Quicken.

This Idea has been marked as "Under Consideration" meaning the Idea is currently being reviewed by the development team, however there is no ETA at this time.

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

GWHorter

Thank you. is there a way to get close with a custom report?

jacobs

@GWHorter  If you read other posts in this thread, you'll see that you can fairly easily accomplish many of the things we could do in Quicken 2007 Quick Reports -- but not all. 

It's pretty easy to create reports for Payees or Categories or Tags (Classes are now Tags). You can't create reports based on Memos, but you can Search for them and then print the transaction register of the Search results, which is pretty close to the same thing. 

Many of us who loved Quicken 2007 felt something was drastically missing when we moved to the modern Quicken Mac. I felt that way when I first started using it, and I still do miss the Quicken 2007 approach at times -- but generally, once I adapted to Quicken Mac's way of doing things, I can find most of what I want to find pretty quickly and easily. A key thing to understand is that the developers felt a robust Search function would relieve the need for some of the old Quick Reports. Quicken 2007 had Find, which searched through accounts one at a time, but Quicken Mac's Search is much better and more powerful. Let's say I want to find out what I paid the last time I renewed my magazine subscription to Traveler magazine. In Quicken 2007, I would open Quick Report, enter a time range, enter 'Traveler' in the Payee field, and Quicken would think for a bit and produce a report of my transactions. In modern Quicken, I click on All Transactions on the left sidebar, enter 'Traveler' in the Search field, it thinks for a few seconds, and I get a register of my transactions. In both cases, I can print the report if I want to. The same approach is true for searching for something by category or with a specific words or words in the Memo field. Search in Quicken Mac works to replace many (not all) of the reasons people used QuickReport in Quicken 2007.

There are some additional vestiges of QuickReport in modern Quicken Mac. If you are looking at a register with a particular transaction, and you want to find other instances of transactions for the same Payee or the same Category, you can Control-Click on the transaction and select "Report on (payee name)" or "Report on (category)". These function similar to Quicken 2007 QuickReports.

For other searching in Quicken Mac, you can create a report that can be tailored around Payees, Categories, Accounts, or Tags. It does take a few more clicks than a QuickReport, but it allows more customization.

My point overall is that while we longtime Quicken 2007 users love QuickReports, it's because it was a primary way to quickly find things in our database. Modern Quicken Mac has a different interface and in some cases a different approach, but I found that once I got over my frustration at not having QuickReports on the menu, I could actually do all the things I did before, and in most cases just as easily. But it does require a bit of a mindset change to work the way the program was built rather than trying to use it the way its predecessor was built.

I hope that helps a bit. Post back here if there's some specific type of QuickReport you used to do that you're having trouble replicating in Quicken Mac now.

smayer97

… you can Search for them and then print the transaction register of the Search results, which is pretty close to the same thing. 

...developers felt a robust Search function would relieve the need for some of the old Quick Reports. 

...I found that once I got over my frustration at not having QuickReports on the menu, I could actually do all the things I did before, and in most cases just as easily.

Search does NOT find only the split lines that match criterion but pulls entire transaction. Search therefore cannot give totals on only the matching split lines.

You cannot save searches for re-use like reports.

Still cannot create reports on Memo field...a BIG hole. (you can vote specifically for this here: Report based on keyword of Memo/Notes

Current "QuickReports" requires you to first find a similar transaction with the trigger field you are interested in (Payee, Category, Account or Tag)...you cannot create a QuickReport without this step. (Still missing is QuickReport on Security.)

Missing is also selecting date range criteria, including 'Custom Dates' (another request to vote on), that can be used to generate Quick Reports in QM2007. Current QuickReport defaults the last 12 months only.

Of course, there is also still the a lot missing in the ability to format reports (let alone that current reports take up SO MUCH more space to create than other versions of Quicken).

So there are still MANY things you cannot do with current search or reports.

So, much functionality like QM2007 QuickReports is STILL missing with no work-arounds.

G-Dude

It is now the year 2022 AD. Why in the world haven't you brought back Quick Report??? I'm so tired of seeing things that aren't broken being "fixed." Quicken Mac 2007 is a prime example - a much better interface than what you have now...

jacobs

@G-Dude It would help for you to explain what aspect(s) of Quicken 2007 Quick Reports you find difficult or impossible to accomplish in current Quicken Mac. As discussed earlier in this thread, there are some things which could be done in Quick Reports which can be done in current Quicken Mac, even though it's not called the same thing. There are other things which can't. The developers don't want to hear "just make it like Quicken 2007!". They do want to hear: "I used to be able to create a report to show x, y, and z in just three keyclicks, and now I can't generate a similar report". Actual use cases help them understand what users are asking for, and help increase the chances of the idea being implemented. 

smayer97

I believe all the gaps with the current "Quick Reports" have already been identified in this thread.

firefly

As a multi-year user of quick reports, I am very dismayed at not having this functionality. It's making preparing for my tax return absolute hell.

I've tried the other ways of doing things–but seemingly–but am missing key figures that used to be easy to obtain. In addition, when I great summary reports, I literally can't change the name of some of my reports–it prints "Category Summary 2020" (even though my search was for 2021), and the header is blank.

Will quicken add this essential feature back? That, and being able to keep separate business and personal expense lists by year without subtracting them from my net worth would be very helpful. (I did call about this issue, I was told that it wasn't an option).

I so prefer earlier versions of quicken.

Whatever assistance you can offer would be beneficial. Unfortunately for me, I need to get this done yesterday, so 2021's a wash–but if this functionality were added back to the software, I would stop looking for accounting alternatives.

Quicken Jared

firefly said:

As a multi-year user of quick reports, I am very dismayed at not having this functionality. It's making preparing for my tax return absolute hell.

I've tried the other ways of doing things–but seemingly–but am missing key figures that used to be easy to obtain. In addition, when I great summary reports, I literally can't change the name of some of my reports–it prints "Category Summary 2020" (even though my search was for 2021), and the header is blank.

Will quicken add this essential feature back? That, and being able to keep separate business and personal expense lists by year without subtracting them from my net worth would be very helpful. (I did call about this issue, I was told that it wasn't an option).

I so prefer earlier versions of quicken.

Whatever assistance you can offer would be beneficial. Unfortunately for me, I need to get this done yesterday, so 2021's a wash–but if this functionality were added back to the software, I would stop looking for accounting alternatives.

Hello @firefly, 

Thank you for bringing up the subject of Quick Reports.

Currently, this proposal has been suggested and is under consideration. I have merged your post into the original Idea suggestion so that you can add your vote. For reference, you can vote on the Idea by going to the first page and clicking on the gray box with the upward-facing triangular arrow under the original post.

I hope that is helpful.

Thank you,

Quicken Jared 

jacobs

@firefly  Can you elaborate what you are having trouble getting reported in Quicken Mac? There are some equivalents of the old "Quick Reports" if you know where to look for them, other things you can do with regular Reports, and other things you can do by filtering a register and printing that as a report — but there shouldn't be much, if anything, which you can't get easily reported for doing your taxes. 

You mentioned wanting to see Net Worth for business and personal accounts separately. This is actually easy to accomplish. If you have some accounts which are personal and some which are business, and you keep them in the same Quicken data file, you can quite easily generate two separate Net Worth reports which total the appropriate accounts. Open a Net Worth report, click Edit, click on the Accounts tab, and check or uncheck the accounts you want in a personal Net Worth report. You can save that report with a name such as "Net Worth (personal)". Then start with a new New Worth report, again go to accounts, and uncheck the personal accounts and check the business accounts. Save this one as "Net Worth (business)". Does that get you what you wanted?

You mentioned being unable to change the title of a report, but it should be easy to edit and save a report with a new title. For Category Summary, I first to first take a minute to detour to see if you're using the newer category summary report and not the old one which is know to have data errors and is slated to be removed from the program. ("New" is relative; the new reports engine was introduced about 5 years ago, while the "old" reports dat back to the predecessor program to the current Quicken Mac from 2010.)

You can easily tell if your saved reports use the "old" reports engine or the "new" reports engine. An old Category Summary report looks like this at the top:

Telltale signs:

• It shows the criteria under the menu bar
• It has the "Update View to show me" and "Show Memo/Notes" controls on the right side above the columns
• There are no column headings
• The first major heading is "Money In"

The new reports, like this Category Summary Year To Date report and Category Transaction report, have some easily visible differences:

Telltale signs:

• There is a View menu in the menu bar, for determining which columns and rows are visible
• It has a row of settings under the menu bar which affect the report type (summary or transaction), and what data appears in the rows and columns, and whether there are time intervals (yearly, monthly, quarterly) 
• There are column headings
• The first major heading is "Income"

I hope that helps make the "old" and "new" reports clearer at a glance.

With that out oof the way, let's turn back to report titles. As long as you're using any of the "new" reports, simply click in the title area of the report, and full see it will become editable. Change the title to reflect the year, or whatever title you want, and then click the Save button on the far right. It's as easy as that. (If you're using the old reports — which I again don't recommend — you can click Duplicate and then Save; a dialog box will pop up where you can change the name of the report.)

Your post indicated you're having other problems with reports, so if you post back here with what you're trying to accomplish, hopefully I or someone else here will be able to help show you how to do it. 

FredB-LA

I have been a Quicken power user since 1994. Sorry to vent, but the Quicken 2007 reporting functionality, and Quick Report feature in particular, was comprehensive, elegant and "done." In most cases it provided precise, predictable results with virtually no need for workarounds or obscure ways of accomplishing simple tasks. For posters who ask for specifics, most of us have not been able to run Q2007 for many years, so it's impossible to screenshot side-by-side examples of 2007's easy vs. today's roundabout. In almost every OTHER way today's Quicken for Mac is a far better product. Customer service is exponentially better than it was for the 2010 decade. But as reporting goes, it's an embarrassingly regrettable example of developers failing to address the single glaring and critical shortcoming – reporting – which taints the entire product. Just because more users don't post this complaint doesn't mean reporting is just fine. It is not, by a mile. Newer users simply don't know what they are missing.

jacobs

@FredB-LA I've been a Quicken Mac user for just as long, and I actually stuck with Quicken 2007 for a long time because the reports capabilities of the modern Quicken Mac was problematic to me until a few years ago. In many ways, I now find reports in Quicken Mac fine. In some areas (such as investments and budget), I still find what's available lacking.

But just telling the developers that reports don't measure up to Quicken 2007 doesn't accomplish anything. I'd guess that none of the current Quicken Mac development team worked on Quicken 2007 going back 15 or more years ago, nor have the developers of today likely extensively used Quicken 2007 as we longtime users have. So in order to make headway, it's necessary to be able to spell out specific features we find lacking in the current Quicken Mac.

In the process of doing that, users sometimes post things which actually can already be done in Quicken Mac that they just don't know about, so it's great to be able to point them in the right direction. In other cases, they point out things which legitimately cannot be done, or can be done only in a difficult or convoluted way — and for those issues, we try to get them to vote for and contribute to Idea threads like this to help the developers understand not only a desire, but the use cases for specific features. In some cases, they already understand and agree with the need, but just haven't been able to get to writing the code yet; in other cases, we've seen where they genuinely didn't see the need for something until reading users' explanations about why a feature was needed. 

RDudum

Love the Quick Report feature and hope it comes back soon.

jacobs

RDudum said:

Love the Quick Report feature and hope it comes back soon.

@RDudum As I wrote in the post above yours, just saying "bring back an old feature" isn't likely to generate traction with the developers. As noted in the other thread you posted in, you can do some of the things we used to do with Quick Reports with modern Quicken Mac's "Report on…" functionality. And you can do other "quick report-like" things with the global Search feature, which is a huge improvement over search in Quicken 2007. So what's important to add here are specific things you could do in Quicken 2007 with Quick Reports which you simply can't do, or can't accomplish easily, in the current Quicken Mac. I doubt they will add something akin to the old Quick Reports but they might add additional search/report capabilities if the developers understand where there are holes in the current product.

For instance, for me, the biggest miss in Quicken Mac is generating a report based on text in the memo field. I can usually find what I want by clicking All Transactions and then using Search, but it's not as easy, and printing a report of a Search is flawed because it includes matching full transactions and not just matching splits — so the total isn't correct.

smayer97

………..

FredB-LA

Quick Report (and some other now lost functionality) was so clear, simple and easy to use that my 90 year old mother could utilize it routinely and effectively. I would be delighted to work with Quicken engineers to identify in detail what is no longer possible or easy. That would require a working copy of Quicken 2007, which is no longer possible on modern-day Macs.

Roy Davis

I desperately need a way to get a report using "memo". I have gone through the discussion of reports and noticed many reference to 2007 Quicken as the "good ol' days". I just upgraded from 2005 where I used memo much like a tag identifier. When I transferred my data with my memo identifiers and tried to get a report, it didn't work because "memo" is not on the list of choices. I can get a list using memo, but a list is not a report. If I want a Cash Flow report on all categories using a memo identifier, I'm stumped. My only option is to add a second tag, and I tried that, but when I asked for a report with the tag, it only gave me a list for the specified time period. I have to do my own calculations from that list. I bought Quicken for that purpose. I need a memo Report search to avoid the confusion of double or triple tags as well as for the ease of sifting information on multiple investment categories, ie. multiple rental properties, tagged as "tax related" and, separately in memos by location so that I can see the cash flow of an individual rental site. PLEASE!!

jacobs

@Roy Davis I agree with the need for Reports to have a Memo field criterion, and encourage you to add your vote and comments in this thread:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7876152/report-based-on-keyword-of-memo-notes-11-merged-votes-q-mac

But until the developers act on this feature request, I wonder if you can get what you need currently. Depending on the specifics of what you need, you may find you can accomplish this via Search in the transaction register rather than a report. Select All Transactions in the left side bar. In the Search box, enter the term you want to search for. This will search for that text in all fields, so it will find the text in the Memo field. You can also enter a date range if you want to limit the scope of transactions. You can sort the results by date or by the Memo field, and then you can select the found transactions and print them in a report. I find this gets the job done for many cases where I need a report which can’t be generated via Reports.

However, this approach is likely not suitable if the Memo text you're searching for appears in Splits; Search returns the entire transaction which contains the text you search for, unlike a Report which returns just the matching spit line.

MNBecky

After reading some of the above posts (thank you jacobs!), I was able to figure out how to find things in the Memo field.

In the side bar: Click on All Transactions

When that is open, click on the bottom right "Columns." Make sure Memo/Notes is chosen.

Choose your Dates, Accounts, and Status.

Go to the Search bar and put in whatever you are looking for.

VOILA!!

Leese

To MNBecky: THANK YOU!!!! I couldn't figure out why my searches weren't working as they used to since switching to the Mac version. Thank you! I'm so happy I saw this. :)