Budget Rollover Report (46 Legacy Votes, +4 Merged Votes)

MJS_JCP

This feature has been repeatedly requested for the Mac version (since at least 2016), and it has reportedly been shown as "Planned" since 2019. But I can't seem to find where on the current Ideas list I can upvote this idea. All the relevant posts on Ideas show as "Merged" (which means I can't upvote them), but I can't see what post they've been merged with. So I'm starting this as a new Idea to give people a place to show their (continuing) interest in having this (CRITICAL!) feature as part of Quicken for Mac.

[Merged Post]

jacobs

There is an existing idea thread

here

. It does not really help to start a new thread for the same feature; it is more impactful to get more votes for the existing idea. (And a moderator will likely merge this thread into that one.) If you haven't voted for that thread, please do so!  

It's frustrating that Idea posts here seem to languish for a long time. The developers have a long, long list of possible and definite future enhancements, and they don't mark one as "Planned" until they actually have it slotted for development time on their roadmap. So ideas remain as "Under Consideration" not necessarily because the developers don't agree it's a worthwhile idea, but because they don't have a time slot and programmer(s) to asking to the task yet. They also often try to group ideas in a related area of the program. There are a number of requests for improvements to the budget portion of the program, and I suspect they'll tackle them together because they probably have to re-write a chunk of the code for the budget. (Even among budget feature wishes, there's a sharp divide among users about what is the most important budget feature: rollover or budget-versus-actual reporting as of a user-specified date.)

I'm not offering excuses on behalf of Quicken, just explaining why features like this can linger on the wishlist for a long time. 

[Merged Post]

rg242

Is there any update to this feature being built?

Flachmom

Can we get an update from a Quicken representative on when the rollover feature will be added to Mac version? This is so frustrating. It's one of the main features I use in budgeting. Quicken? Can you weigh in here?

jacobs

@Flachmom  I'll reply here only because I don't think anyone from Quicken will. They never comment publicly about when a new feature will be released. There are too many variables in their development planning; something they thought would take two weeks end up taking two months, or they need to pull a developer off one project to deal with some more urgent need, so schedules are always changing. Rather than disappoint or anger users when something isn't delivered when they previously said they expected it, they simply don't say. Ever. The only indication we get is when a topic is marked "Planned", meaning it's actually on their development schedule — but that could be for next month or for 18 month from now. 

john8845

I agree with all. Budget reports without rollovers is useless

charlimcghee

What will it take for them to listen??? So annoying!

NGN

Does anyone have a good workaround?

JayBugs

Reposting this from 2 years ago with a 'workaround' that I use. I do this on the last day of each year to generate a starting 'rollover' amount that I then move to the January amount for the next year.:

While I totally agree that budgets are a useless mess without monthly and yearly rollovers, I've found a way that sort of works as a clunky workaround. On the budget screen, the first column shows (if you pick the option) Budget Year-to-Date Totals. The second column of numbers in this section (in red or green) appear to be totaling the spending and the budget for all months and thus are rolling over both over and under spending within the year.

I am then capturing this over or under into a separate spreadsheet for each category and adding the January budget amount to arrive at a January 2021 starting budget.

I think ignore the individual month columns since they don't include rollover and only look at the first Year-to-Date area. This is ever so slightly more useful as I at least know where I am in the yearly budget.

(Note that this does not translate to Quicken Mobile at all so it is a useless workaround for mobile.)

MossOnARock

For anyone reading this, its been 4+ years without any update to this.

If you are trying to use quicken to budget I suggest that you move on; there is still not workaround or fix for this. As others have stated, the budget is useless without rollver (you got 5 k added to a bank account? If you dont budget that into a category, that money disapears from your budget).

It has been marked as "planned" since 2019. I think there is a higher chance of the company going bankrupt before this ever acctually makes it into development. save your time/money for soemthing else.

charlimcghee

Yep, right there with you - a budget without rollover - basically sucks!

JayBugs

Agreed! A budget without rollover is just wiping the slate clean at the end of every month and can quickly lead to being in debt if you over spend months.

Terrible thing for Quicken to be effectively promoting by not having rollover in budgeting. Like having a spreadsheet that makes you add columns of numbers by hand.

Come on Quicken, you can do better!

jacobs

A budget without rollover is just wiping the slate clean at the end of every month

not having rollover in budgeting. Like having a spreadsheet that makes you add columns of numbers by hand.

I do understand the desire for rollover functionality in budgets. But I don't see it being quite as useless as described. 😉 The year-to-date columns show you how your actual income and expenses stand relative to your budget. Or clicking on any cell in the budget shows you where that category stands relatve to budget year-to-date. In either place, the year-to-date difference is the same value a rollover would be adding to the category, right?

It has been marked as "planned" since 2019.

Just for accuracy, the status of this topics has been, and continues to be, "Under Consideration." That means it's been sent to the devleopment team but they do not yet have a specific time slot allocated to it on their schedule. There's no way to know whether the developers haven't yet agreed on the concept, or haven't yet assigned it the time and personnel to implement it. (Or, in some cases, we've seen it turns out they are working on it, but haven't passed the word back to the moderators of this forum to update the status. 🤦) 

My understanding from the prior Quicken Mac product manager is that they have to essentially re-write the entire budget code in order to add the functionality users have asked for (monthly rollover, "everything else" budget line), and the developers apparently decided to work on adding other functionality ahead of such a major project. (I'm not justifying the delay or agreeing with it, just trying to offer some explanation.)

charlimcghee

How surprisingly short-sighted of Quicken Mac that would be. Oh wait, I don't believe it. My understanding is Quicken for Windows has a budget rollover. They have ALWAYS treated Mac users as a lesser market.

jacobs

@charlimcghee said: How surprisingly short-sighted of Quicken Mac that would be.

What are you saying would be short-sighted? I said my understanding is that they needed to re-write much of the budget code in Quicken Mac in order to build additional features users are asking for. If that's what they're working on now, or planning to do, I don't see how that's short-sighted; it just unfortunately has a long timeframe. Nowhere has anyone from Quicken or on this thread said that they are not going to add this functionality. All I was saying is that they haven't gotten to it yet because they feel other features have either been higher priorities or fit into the time available for various members of the development team, or both.

And yes, Quicken Windows has more features than Quicken Mac. And yes, you could say that in a prior era when Quicken was owned by Intuit, Quicken Mac received less development resources and lagged behind in features. (Did they treat Mac users as a lesser market? Sure, the Mac market is smaller than the Windows market, and back 10 or 20 years ago, it was a lot smaller than it is today. If you owned a business that catered to both Mac and Windows users, and Windows users brought in 60% or 70% or 80% of your revenue, wouldn't you give more resources to your Windows product?) But what Intuit did (and didn't do) is ancient history now.

The reality is that Quicken Windows has been evolving since 1991 — 32 years of development — while Quicken Mac is much younger because the original Quicken Mac was killed off after 2007 because it was based on old technologies no longer part of the modern Mac operating system. (Technically work began on a new Quicken Mac in 2006, but a lot of the inital work was scrapped, and a very limited new Quicken Essentials for Mac came to market in 2010. Development stalled for about two years as Intuit reoganized multiple times, eventually bringing the modern Quicken Mac to market in 2014. So the modern Quicken Mac is 8 years old, and has been under development for about 10-12 years, depending how one counts the stops-and-starts period from 2007 through 2014.)

The point here is simply that Quicken Mac doesn't have the three decades of development behind it that Quicken Windows does, and the developers have not yet been able to build all the feature users want. That doesn't mean they don't care about the Mac market; just look at how far the program has advanced over the past 8 years since it first went on sale. Of course, we'd all like the new features to be built and evolve faster, but the market for Quicken Mac doesn't bring in enough revenue for them to drastically expand their development team to make faster progress. All we as users can do to try to influence how they evaluate priorities is to vote on Idea topics to try to push some features forward on their roadmap.

charlimcghee

I said and stand by, that it was short-sighted of the developers NOT to add the budget rollover in the first place. They knew it was - necessary when they developed the Windows version. We (the consumers) have been asking for it for years. I've used Quicken (Windows) Quicken (Mac) and Quickbooks for many, many years and the Mac product is by far the worst. It took them forever to even add a calendar view - back in the day.

jacobs

@charlimcghee I don't disagree it's a desirable feature. I disagree that the developers could have added every feature which users wanted "in the first place." If they had waited until they built all the Quicken Windows features into the new Quicken Mac, it still wouldn't be done, and there'd be no Quicken Mac on the market today!

The original modern Quicken Mac, Quicken 2015, didn't even have annual budgeting. That was added in Quicken 2016. Loans didn't exist initially. They were added. Reports were very limited. They have been replaced with a new reports engine which is more powerful and configurable. There were no QuickFill rules or Renaming rules. They were added. Reports and Budgets couldn't include transfers; that was added. And the list goes on and on…

We all use different features in Quicken, and we don't all have the same top priorities for what the developers should add to the program. There are more than 500 feature requests listed in the Product Ideas section of this community website alone. To you, budget rollover is a no-brainer feature which should have been built years ago. But to a user who can't properly track a security which splits into separate companies/acquires another company … or to a user who has stock options/restricted stock grants which can't be properly tracked in Quicken… or to a user who invests in cryptocurrency which can't be tracked accurately in Quicken Mac… or to a user who can't generate reports using memo field text or reconciled status as a report criterion… or to any number of other users who have any number of other issues which are, to them, top priorities — there are many, many things we users collectively feel are "no-brainer" features we think the developers should do. Now. Or yesterday. Many of these existed in Quicken Windows or existed in the legacy Quicken Mac 2007.

My only point here is that it was impossible for the developers to build all the features they wanted to build, all the features they knew users asked for, all the features which existed in the predecessor Quicken products "in the first place." All they could do is do some things in the first place. And then add some more things in the second place. And then keep adding more things over time. We've seen that progress over the 8 years since modern Quicken Mac launched — and we can all agree the progress is slower than we'd like. And we can all agree there are features we desperately hope the developers add next month or later this year. (Heck, when it comes to budgeting, if you ask me, I feel the first priority should be adding the seemingly-simple ability to display and print an actual-versus-budget year-to-date report as of the en dof the last month or quarter. What good is a budget without that?!) The reality is they will continue to tackle things a few at a time, and that it will take years of ongoing work to whittle down the large list of user feature requests.

charlimcghee

They don't however, have a problem in their billing department, I've noticed. I hope you have any kind of day that you choose.

MossOnARock

@jacobs
I appreciate your responses, but I just want to bring attention to a few things. First, I actually appreciate you pointing out the "The year-to-date column." It had never clicked with me to use this column this way. So much of budgeting anymore is a willingness to step aside from the concrete way "I have allays done it."
That being said, the year to date column may not work for everyone's financial situation. For example, when I was a student receiving bulk student loans I would get 6 months of living expenses deposited into my account at once. It would have been nice to just roll over unused amounts in the budget so that I could plan my expenses. The "Year to date column" does not allow me to "plan" for months that I do not have income and easily could result in over spending (even if I stayed in my budget).
I dont think quicken has a valid excuse for ignoring this critical feature of a budget (literally EVERY other competitor offers it). I have read you post several times about Quicken needing to "re-write" the budget code for rollover. Im not a programmer, nor do I know quicken back end, but I do enough coding to know that it is likely not NEARLY as complicated as you were led to believe. They probably just bundled the feature into a project plan that has been back-shelfed for 5+ years.

comotion

I am a Mac user, and have been using Quicken for Mac literally since the beginning. I don't want to, however, unless rollover budgeting comes relatively soon I will have to look for other solutions. I sincerely don't want to do that.

Quicken Anja

Hello @comotion,

Your idea has been merged into this already active Idea thread regarding the same request which is currently marked as Under Consideration.

You can review the details on Page 1 of this thread.

Thank you!

jacobs

@comotion I think it's unlikely that you will see this feature "relatively soon." My understanding from comments shared by the previous Quicken Mac product manager is the the entire budget section of the program needs to be re-written to add significant new feature such as budget rollover and "everything else" which users have asked for. It seems not to have been a top priority of the developers simply because they already had a large number of other high priorities, and because re-writing the budget would be a major, time-consuming task which would put a lot of other work on hold for months. My guess is that this functionality will be added eventually, but I'm doubtful it will come soon.

Monty88

PLEASE create a ROLLOVER for MAC and ill be sold for LIFE!!!

Jon

A what?

Chris_QPW

I believe this is a request for the rollover feature in the budget.

Quicken Anja

Hello @Monty88,

Your idea has been merged into this already active Idea thread regarding the same request.

Thank you!

charlimcghee

Some one posted in 11/23 that adding a Rollover to Quicken for Mac "Wouldn't happen SOON". I, myself have been asking for this feature for over 5 years!!!

jacobs

It doesn't necessarily matter what "someone" posted (and I'm apparently the "someone" who posted it! 😂) We're just fellow users here, and although we may have some clues and insights, none of us know exactly what the development team is doing. (The Quicken moderators also don't have detailed insight into what is expected to be delivered when.)

This Idea is still marked as "Under Consideration". If it was on the development team's plan for work in the next few months, it should be marked as "Planned" — and it's not. That's part of the reason for me saying in November that it's not likely to be delivered soon. BUT I want to share at least a glimmer of hope. Late last year, the developers marked several other budget feature requests as "Planned", all at the same time. As I wrote above in my "not soon" comment, my understanding has been that they haven't tackled any budget-related requests over the past several years because any changes to the budget code would require an extensive re-writing of parts of the budget code. So now that several budget ideas are marked as "Planned", it appears the development team is finally planning to undertake the work to re-engineer the budget code to implement those features. And while this Idea thread isn't marked as "Planned", I think there's at least a reasonable chance that rollover functionality could be among the wave of feature changes to get implemented as they revamp the budget code.

charlimcghee

I don't honestly know if you are "the someone". The bottom line is this should have been a feature from the beginning. They have it in their Windows addition. I understand that it is a "problem" for them… but it is their problem and I have no interest whatsoever in hearing about their problems - I (and a heck of a lot of others) pay for this program. We have been requesting the rollover feature for YEARS.

jacobs

@charlimcghee said: The bottom line is this should have been a feature from the beginning. They have it in their Windows addition. I understand that it is a "problem" for them… but it is their problem and I have no interest whatsoever in hearing about their problems - I (and a heck of a lot of others) pay for this program. We have been requesting the rollover feature for YEARS.

@charlimcghee I understand your frustration, truly. But what you think should have happened was simply impossible. Quicken Mac was re-created completely from scratch, first with an aborted effort in the late 2000s, then with a stunted version in the early 2010s, and finally with what is now Quicken classic Mac starting in late 2014. In the early days, when Quicken was owned by Intuit, development was stopped and started several times as management changes took place, and when they finally committed to moving forward with Quicken Mac around 2012, there were two or three programmers on the project. Things got better, especially after Quicken became independent of Intuit in 2016 — but even with added resources and commitment, there were only about half a dozen programmers.

So all the features you and hundreds of thousands of other Quicken Mac users wanted need to be designed, programmed and tested by a small team of people, and so new features came more slowly than anyone (including the folks at Quicken) would have liked. You say "this should have been a feature from the beginning", but I can assure you I can find dozens of posts from other users on other features which they also felt "should have been a feature from the beginning". But Quicken didn't have the time/people/money to build all the features people wanted "at the beginning." Keep in mind that Quicken Windows has been developed over 3+ decades, and the legacy Quicken for Mac which ended with Quicken 2007 also had more than two decades of development behind it. It takes a long time to build all the complex features in a feature-rich program like Quicken — and the more that gets built, the trickier it becomes to add more features without breaking something in the existing code. Bottom line: development is slow, and every feature can't be first.

As for what the priorities are, or should have been, we could discuss that for days. 😂 As someone who's hung out on this forum since modern Quicken Mac came out nearly a decade ago, I can tell you that we Quicken users want lots of different features and functionality, and we absolutely do not agree on which ones are the top priority. To you, it's budget rollover. To me, just within the budget area, I personally have a higher priority: an actual versus budget report for the date range I specify. To other users, it's investment reports, or mergers and acquisitions of stocks, or being able to hide categories, or lifetime/retirement planner, or user-created charts and graphs, or reordering the sidebar, or stock options, or multi-currency support, or savings goals, or… you get the idea! There are a lot of feature requests, and many of them very worthwhile, desirable, and needed.

The good thing is that the developers year over year are adding features users are asking for. And there are a lot of longstanding requests which were recently marked as "Planned" and will therefore hopefully emerge sometime in 2024. The bad news is that, just as was the case from the start, it can't all happen at once.

So while you can say you don't want to hear about their problems and just want it done Now, if not yesterday, I understand… but I also understand why it isn't now, and hasn't been, possible to deliver all the big features the user community wants. It's like saying "I think cars should be able to fly, and I've been asking for that for years" — but that doesn't make it feasible. I'm being a bit facetious, of course, but hopefully you get my point. 😉 Perhaps if Quicken suddenly got another million users, the revenue would allow them to add programming staff, but the reality is that to stay in business for the long haul, they have to work with what their revenues allow, and the result of that is slower development than users would like. I'm personally just glad to see the ongoing commitment to adding to and improving the product; it gives me hope it will be around for a while and will continue to get better. You may see me as an apologist for Quicken's shortcomings, but I just try to be pragmatic about what's possible.