Year end copy for Quicken for Mac (64 Legacy Votes + 23 Merged Votes)

Quicken_Natalie

Hello @TeeQue,

Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Community!

I went ahead and merged your post with an ongoing Idea for this same feature request. Our developer's review Idea threads to get an idea of what people would like Quicken to offer.

Be sure to add your vote by clicking on the gray triangle right above the current vote count, located in the blue box at the beginning of this thread:

Thank you,

Quicken Natalie

Michael Manna

I absolutely agree that Quicken for Mac needs a Year End File control. I have been a Quicken user from the beginning and have been a Quicken for Mac user since 2013. This is too long to wait.

jacobs

@Michael Manna @TeeQue  Welcome to the ongoing discussion of this issue. You should definitely vote for it if you find that the way Quicken Mac currently works is problematic for your needs. I'd just encourage you to think about (and express in follow up posts if you want) why you feel you need this functionality. 

Some users ask for it because "that's the way it's always been" -- but the developers don't consider that a compelling reason to build a feature. There are lots of reasons why both legacy Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows had year-end purge functionality, largely related to problems with databases that became too large and sometimes corrupted over time. But those old database cores are very different from the modern SQL database that Quicken uses, a database that's resistant to corruption and is mostly unaffected by the amount of data it contains.

And Quicken is built on the idea of having your financial history in one place, rather than scattered across multiple old files which may or may not even be able to be read by the current software. (We periodically see stories on this site of users who split off their data many years ago, and now that they need to access something, discover their data files can no longer be read by the current software.) If you're getting more data on your reports or register screens than you want to see, it's easy to set filters to limit the data to the past year or two or three.

The developers have previously market this feature request as "not planned", but if  enough people vote for it, it might eventually help change their minds. But providing a use case for it -- a reason you want/need it beyond "it always used to be there" -- will go even farther in lobbying the developers to consider building such functionality.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello All 

 This Idea seems to have fallen stagnant and due to the Age of the request and lack of User Votes/Comments, will be archived within the next 7 business days.

 If you would like to see this Idea kept alive and considered for possible future implementation in Quicken, be sure to Add your Vote and a comment explaining how this Idea would be beneficial for you.

More information, including steps to vote and how to submit your own Ideas for future product features/improvements, is also available here.

 Thank you,

 Quicken Community Support Team

smayer97

Still a nice idea....

cas

Your most loyal customers have huge data files — 20 plus years. They are really unwieldy at this size.

smayer97

This is also a Windows feature parity request...

jacobs

@Quicken_Tyka I would note that this feature request is similar to another request for "Year end copy" functionality similar to Quicken Windows and legacy Quicken Mac 2007:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7361161/year-end-copy-for-quicken-for-mac-64-legacy-votes/p1

That thread has 83 votes but is marked as "not planned". And the thread was closed,  was closed, so people end up posting here if they want some version of archiving/year-end copying of their Quicken file. Archiving this thread will just force people to start yet another thread, since there are ongoing regular requests for some version of this functionality.

smayer97

BTW, QWin has BOTH Year-End copy AND Archiving functionality... SO these are 2 related but different solutions...

I also point out that there is ANOTHER idea thread similar to the Year-End copy...

Add "Save a Copy" feature (similar to "Year End Copy").

It also has another 38 votes. It was intentionally not merged with the Year End Copy idea because they are slightly different approaches. The Save A Copy approach is what was used in QM2007, similar but different than the Year-End copy in QWin.

So all THREE Ideas should be maintained. As jacobs points out, this is a request that keeps coming up in one form or another... These are popular topics/idea requests.

CowboyNav

*Add option to Archive up to a specified Date.
- I really don't need all my 20+ years of Quicken data but choose not to Archive and reduce my file size because I regularly use time comparison reports or look for transactions in the last 5 years or so (i.e. when did I buy that?)
- By allowing a user to do a normal Archive (saving the investment info) but setting a specific date to archive data beyond a specific date (i.e. 3, 5, or 10 years) would allow the user to still use time comparison reports and transaction history look backs while keeping their data file from ever growing.

300 Guy

Please add a method to make separate files for each year. I have been doing this for years so my accountant can see each year of my farm business and not have the chance to have stuff in it from another year. Adding the "Make A Copy" like was in the 2007 version is exactly what I need! I have been doing this for over 20 years of using Quicken and do not want to filter out stuff and then have an income tax report be incorrect because there was items added from the previous year. I enter EVERYTHING manually and do not need all the fancy bells and whistles of downloading. I tried that once and spent more time editing all the items then if I had just entered them myself. So PLEASE add the option to create separate years!!!!

Scott8

I totally agree with adding this feature - I have been using Quicken for 17 years as well and loved that feature in the Windows Version. It needs to be added to the Mac version ASAP

jacobs

@300 Guy I understand your request, and it's good to add your use-case explanation to this long-running thread of users asking for it. The developers don't typically act on general requests to "make it like Quicken 2007", but providing detail of how you used it/wish to use it helps them understand why users ask for specific features.

That said, it's all worth noting the developers have previously reviewed this request and said they're not planning to do it.

And so my follow-up question to you is whether you have tried, in the current Quicken Mac, limiting the reports you give you your accountant to the past year by setting the date on each report to Last Year? You won't have to do any more filtering than that; just a single click on each report, one time, to set the date range. The resulting reports will not contain data from prior years and won't be incorrect. (I, like you, enter my data manually and don't download. That's a whole separate issue, but it doesn't affect this one.)

I know you've done it one way for 20+ years, and none of us (myself included) welcome change in things which have worked just fine in the past! I'm only suggesting that in this case, based on what you've described as your desire to give your accountant data just from one year, I think if you'd try doing so in the current Quicken Mac, you'll find you can easily do so. You can print your reports for last year, or click a button to export them to a .csv file which your accountant can easily open in Excel. 

@Scott8  I'm not arguing again you here, just noting that saying you want it to work like a feature which was created a long time ago, because of database limitations which no longer exist, won't go far in convincing the developers to re-think why they have said they don't plan to add this functionality. If you can add a description of why you find this feature necessary, that can help make the case for the developers. Can you explain why filtering your transactions and reports by the date filters -- which the developers seem to believe should enable users do what they need to do with their data -- does not work for you? Specific "use cases", as the developers term them, can often help them understand how people use the software and why a particular feature or change is needed.

wsthomson

I like to keep annual files and not in perpetuity files. Once a year, I copy the file outside of Quicken (a simple menu copy file via Finder), rename it, and go through the hassle of deleting all cleared transactions. Intuit should make a function that allows for removing data from outdated tax years - that functionality was drummed into me when I was at General Motors years ago. There absolutely should be a way to clear out old transactions, in both Quicken and QuickBooks (I use both.) Open tax years only. Period.

jacobs

@wsthomson  Just an aside to mention that Intuit isn't involved with Quicken. While it was once the parent company, Quicken (the company and product) has been independent of Intuit for the past five years. Intuit continues to develop and sell Quickbooks, but other than the first 5 letters of both products' names being the same, they're completely separate.

For business accounting, I agree completely that years need to be rolled over annually, and every business accounting software package I've used has done so. For personal finance software like Quicken, though, I find it extremely helpful to have all my financial history in one place, and not to have to open a dozen files to find out when I bought something. Also, if you have a different file for each year, every time they update something in the database format, you need to open all your historical files to update them to the current format; some people don't, and then find a decade later that the current program can't open all their old data files.

To be clear, I have no objection to Quicken adding year end copy functionality. I just know all user feature requests are competing against each other for the limited resource of programming time to develop new features, and I guess I just haven't understood why people feel this is needed -- other than being comfortable having done so for years in other versions of the program. I find the date filters quick and effective at viewing only current (or past) year data when that's all I want to see. But that's me, and I understand we all use Quicken quite differently. That's why I recommended above that users who really want this feature explain how the current Quicken limits them or causes problems for them. Not for my benefit, of course -- I'm just a fellow -- user but to lay out a case for the developers why this is a needed feature. 

ttravaille

Also a 20+ year Q vet. The year end copy is NOT about file size. It's about de-cluttering many "closed, hidden" accounts and associated categories and tags.

robfish1

how do i do an end of year backup and start a new year

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Unable to reconcile account. Can I start anew being its a new year.

Quicken Anja

Hello @robfish1,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community with your question.

As of right now, Quicken for Mac, unfortunately, does not have this feature available. Therefore, I'd like to refer you to this active Idea post regarding this topic instead.

If you would like to see this feature be added in the future, you can go ahead and add your vote to it. Our Development and Product teams frequently use our idea posts in order to improve Quicken and implement new features requested by customers. 

I hope this helps!

300 Guy

I want the option to start a new file each year. it was so easy in the old 2007 version, why not do it here. My accountant does not want to filter all the stuff of YEARS when he does my taxes. Why can't this be added???????

300 Guy

I agrreeeeeeee!!! If over 100 people would like this option, then why not add it into the new update!!!! My accountant does not want to to sort through several years of stuff to do my farm taxes!!!!!!! Why is this not considered to be added??? Or are the programing people just stubborn???? By the way I have tried to vote for this and I do. not see any vote for this any place!!!!!!!

jacobs

To vote, go to the top of this thread. Just under the first post is a blue box. Under the counter number, there's a gray triangle. Click it to register your vote.

The developers are not (generally) stubborn. They are, however, inundated with multiple hundreds of request for features. Many users think their top priority should be the developers' top priority. In several threads just today, people said their feature request is "simple", "obvious" or "essential." But the reality is that Quicken is a complex program and adding features often takes considerable time. If you compare Quicken Mac today to where it was five years ago, the progress is apparent and significant -- but it's not nearly as fast as users would wish.

For your accountant, it's easy to print or export transactions for just the current year. I understand you have a desire to see the program work differently. But since it doesn't -- at least for now -- if you try using the program the way the developers intend, while you may not be satisfied, you should be able to get what you need for your accountants.

oldngrmpy1

This dovetails nicely with a new post I just made about trying to add a request in Custom Dates for transactions for the last 5 years.

300 Guy

I don't know why with this many people wanting such an update that it has not been done years ago. Like the other people have stated, the file gets TOO big to work with.
Plus the fact that I have NEVER been able to find a VOTE button any place on these posts. Maybe that is why the vote count is ZERO. I have been asking for this for 5 years now and it is still an issue here by LOTS of other people. So stop procrastinating and just DO it and make a lot of people happy!!!!!!

smayer97

Vote button is ALWAYS on the page 1 of the voting thread under the first post.

Click the little grey triangle under the VOTE count at the top of page 1 in the blue banner, so your vote will 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 (it may take a moment for your vote to register).

(If the triangle is black, your vote has already been counted.)

Your VOTES matter!

smayer97

For now, I'll cross reference another similar but not exactly identical idea threads to this one... a more versatile too:

Add "Save a Copy" feature (similar to "Year End Copy")

and a different take is:

Suggestion for Archive Function.

jacobs

So to vote for this feature, click here and then click the little gray arrow in the blue box under the first post. (You can only vote once. Make sure the vote count goes up by one; if you previously voted for an idea, the little arrow is black, and clicking on it will remove your vote.)

There is a different Idea thread for a similar request which is currently marked as "Under Consideration"; click here to view and add your vote to that thread.

@300 Guy As to why a particular idea hasn't been implemented, there can be many reasons. First, even with 86 votes for this idea, that doesn't necessarily indicate to the product development teams that a large number of people are clamoring for this. They also take into account metrics from their support teams, who interact with tens of thousands of Quicken users. Next, an idea may be difficult or resource-intensive to implement, and they may feel there are higher priorities which will impact more users.

But in this case, I suspect there's a different reason: in the early years of the new generation of Quicken Mac, users asked for a lot of features from Quicken 2007 -- not because they were absolutely necessary but because they were used to doing things in a certain way. This was one of them. Many people asked for this mainly because they were used to doing it in legacy Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows. But they were in that habit because of limitations with the old databases of those products, limitations not present in a modern SQL database used by Quicken Mac. So I actually agreed with the idea that they probably didn't need to re-create an old feature people really wouldn't need with the capabilities of the modern database. But over time, I’ve seen a lot of people put forth interesting and valid reasons for wanting this functionality. People have divorced and no longer want the clutter of financial information about aspects of their former life; people have retired and want to rid themselves of categories and accounts no longer relevant; people used Quicken previously and either stopped for awhile or had accounts so out of whack they are unreconcilable, and they’d like a clean restart without starting from a completely blank data file (e.g retaining categories, rules, reports, settings or other things which would be lost starting from scratch); etc. So hopefully if the product development teams revisit this idea and look at the reasons people are citing for wanting this feature, they'll see it differently than they did several years ago.

rbtaylorva

It has been many many years using Quick for Mac and in the past it did have the Year-End-Copy capability and was later removed. I would like to vote to have this capability added back into the product. The Windows version has always had this feature and not sure why the Mac version does not have this capability. Please let me know where I can vote to have this adding into a future release

jacobs

@rbtaylorva  Your comment has been moved by a moderator into the existing Idea thread for this functionality. To add your vote for a Year-End copy feature, go to the first page of this topic and click on the little arrow in the yellow box under the first post.

Additionally, the help persuade the developers, can you add a comment about why this feature is something you want. They're not too interested in implementing features to simply check a box of things which used to be in other versions of Quicken; but they are interested in how this feature would help (or the absence of this feature hurts) your use of Quicken. 

marty3450

This is an EXCELLENT idea. I have a file that is over 25 years old. I have to repair it after being corrupted numerous times, the last time when I called quicken support they just left me hanging saying the file is too big. The idea of multiple archive files is very cumbersome and impossible if ever you wanted to run reports from years spanning multiple archives.

Love this idea, it has my core for sure!!