Quicken for Mac 2017 v4.5.4 Released

Quicken Marcus

It was a long and messy launch of 4.5 but I it's now available to everyone except App Store customers.  We'll be releasing that soon.  I'll post updates at the bottom of this post.

This is a huge release for us.  Here are some of the great new features and bug fixes we added.

Loans
First off, I'm excited to report that we've added the most requested customer feature...Loans.  In this first iteration, we focused mostly on fixed rate mortgages. 

 

Some of the features you'll find are:

• More loan providers - You may have noticed this already but we've increased the number of loan providers included in the list of financial institutions you can download from. Now you can even connect Quicken Loans which always seemed crazy that we didn't support it even though it's an entirely different company.
• Auto-Updating Loan Scheduled Transactions - Detailed scheduled transactions that update interest and principal every month based on the customer's loan details and amortization schedule.
• Graphs - Lots of graphs to see when your loan will be paid off and an estimated total interest paid compared to principal.
• Liability Account Conversion - Loans in the past were liability accounts.  We kept this account type so if you want to continue tracking your loans this way you can.  However, you will now be able to convert liability accounts to the loan feature by clicking on the Convert to Loan sheet that appears the first time you go to a liability account or if you click the Convert to Loan button in Account Settings.
• Updated file converters - Both Quicken 2007 and Windows file converters have been updated to import loans from those products.
• And a whole lot more...

Improved Reports
We're building out our custom report feature.  We added Comparison and Summary reports to 2017.  

• New Transaction Reports - We just enhanced this by adding new transaction reports for category, tag, payee, account and time-based.
• Improved uncategorized transaction handling - In the new reports, uncategorized transactions will now be grouped by the sign of the amount. Positive values will be included with the income transactions and negative values will be included with the expenses.

Improved Splits
We subtly changed the way splits work and made them better.

• We got a lot of complaints about splits getting into a mode where it would change the first split line even after you’ve edited it which was clearly frustrating. There are 3 split modes: Total, Refine First Line and Remainder. If the transaction total amount is 0, then Quicken will sum the amount of the splits and update the total. The Refine First Line mode is useful when one basically wants to categorize a few items but the bulk of a purchase is the same. For example, if you typically go to Walmart for groceries but occasionally buy clothes or something else you may want to pull out just those non-standard items and categorize them separately. In this case, you want the first split line to be Groceries and its amount should decrease with each split line added. Quicken goes into this mode if the transaction total is > 0, the first split line is not edited and there are initially only 2 split lines meaning this is a new split. All other times, splits are in remainder mode where a remainder split line is automatically created if the total amount isn't reached.
• We added a new feature to adjust the transaction total to the sum of the current split values. If you increase the amount of an existing split line, a remainder split is created that basically subtracts the amount you just added which can be frustrating. This might happen if you decide to increase the amount of extra principal you pay for a month or adjust a paycheck split transaction to match actual amounts. In this case, most would want the total amount to adjust. We've added a "minus" button to the remainder split line so you can delete it. This will automatically change the transaction total value.

Improved Budgets
Budgets have been reworked. We haven’t added any new features but have made what we have work better especially when trying to create a new budget or creating a future budget.

• Clicking New Budget will now start the budgeting process.
• Quicken now asks you the starting month and year when creating a budget.
• Going to the budget view should default better especially when your budget doesn’t start in January.
• When moving the budget view to a period where there currently isn't a budget defined, Quicken will automatically ask if you would like to create a new budget using the previous budget, historical data from the previous year, or to start from scratch with zero values.
• Fixed an issue when editing a budget that spans into the next year where the year was not displaying for the month of January.

Improved Auto-Backup

• A backup is saved only when a change has been made.
• A progress indicator appears when saving the backup file. Saving the backup can take a few seconds to complete.  In the past the progress indicator wouldn't appear so most didn't realize Quicken was still running while saving the backup.  This makes it much clearer what is happening. 
• Added a new preference that will change the backup behavior. Instead of automatically saving a backup, Quicken will ask every time before saving a backup.

Improved Register Filter Behavior
I'm a big fan of this one.

• We’ve changed the behavior for the filter bar in the register. Now the Reset Filter button won't appear until one is in a filtered state. Also, a giant red X has been added to the button which should make it more obvious when one is in a filtered state. The issue is that many times customers didn't realize they were in a filtered state and thought they had lost transactions which can be scary.  Now it's pretty obvious when one is in a filtered state.

And we fixed lots and lots of bugs.

• We added blue dots to the sidebar representing newly downloaded transactions a few releases ago and continue to improve the way they work. We added a preference to mark reconciled transactions as reviewed. Fixed an issue with Web Connect accounts. They will now work as connected accounts. Also, fixed a number of transaction count issues that would occur when transactions were automatically matched.
• Fixed the transaction download count in the Account Status window for Quicken Connect accounts. Previously auto-matched transactions weren't being counted.
• Fixed a long standing issue where exporting the tax report to CSV didn't include the schedule D items.
• Fixed a crash and hang that would occur when importing Quicken 2007 and Windows files.
• Improved the reliability of online bill pay transactions by adding a number of checks that will make sure payment information meets certain criteria before attempting to process the transaction.  Also fixed an issue a Quicken Bill Pay issue that would occur when linking to a Financial Institution that supported both Direct Connect and Quicken Connect connection types. 
• Fixed an issue where old download and sync error messages continued to appear in Quicken even after they were resolved.
• Fixed an issue where cost basis values didn't appear in the realized gain view.
• Fixed an issue where dragging a transaction within the register would result in the amount changing if it had a complex split with transfers.
• Fixed an issue where accounts hidden from reports were also excluded from transfer and account register field pop-up lists.
• Fixed an issue where the Intuit ID didn't appear in the About Box after signing in as a different user.
• Fixed an issue where customizing the report will auto-collapse all of the rows.
• Fixed an issue where renaming a category or action to the same name as another item caused the UI to be unresponsive.
• Fixed a crash if a payee account number matches the phone number that had been paid by multiple users.
• Fixed an issue if you had a problem logging in, it would display a dialog to re-enter your credentials.
• Fixed a budget sync issue.

Lots of great new enhancements and increased stability but this much change could lead to some issues so please let us know if you encounter problems in this forum post once you get the update.  Please don't call support if you check for updates and it's not available yet. Like I said, we release in small spurts and may make fixes in between releases before we allow everyone to download it.  We've already updated the app once to version 4.5.1 after we started seeing a couple of people crashing in the new loan feature using 4.5. It will take time for us to get this new release to everyone.  Thanks for your patience.  If you do get the release, again, please report the issue here so we can find it quickly.

Thanks,
Quicken Mac Team

UPDATES

• 5/17 - 4.5.4 Released
• 5/25 - 4.5.5 Released
• 5/26 - Removed 4.5.5 from release because we discovered all 4.5.x releases have a potential issue where transactions in a bad state where a single split line doesn't equal the transaction will have their transaction total changed to match the single split line amount changing account balances.
• 6/1 - 4.5.6 released which fixes the above issue and a few other things.
• 6/9 - Released on App Store.
• 6/15 - Released 4.5.7 to App Store.  Fixes the file open issue.
• 6/16 - Released 4.5.8 to retail/download customers.  Has all known file open issue fixes.  The difference between 4.5.7 and 4.5.8 is a crash fix that we saw people running into which usually manifested itself when people opened a minimized Quicken file while using 2 monitors.

Unknown

I like the new loan features, but with 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100), it seems I can no longer Reconcile my loan accounts.  Is this expected?

Unknown

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

Unknown

Hi Marcus, I was wondering if I should expect any response to my detailed post in the prior thread regarding new difficulties accessing Quicken data off an AFP server?

Unknown

I installed the latest update, and was horrified to see that the program rewrote some reconciled transactions as different amounts! Specifically, recurring transactions that had changed their amounts in 2017 were recorded as the 2016 amounts, even for bank transactions that had cleared correctly. There did not seem to be any way to fix these numbers, so I had to back out and restore my previous Quicken version and data file. 

Unknown

I updated to Version 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100) and connected with First Republic to connect mortgage loan and equity line accounts.  Both accounts get grouped into Credit Cards.  These should be in property & debt.

Unknown

Thank you for fixing the loan issue... that was a much needed upgrade.  I just transitioned to Quicken Mac after more than 10 years on the Windows version, so it was very frustrating to not have that feature.

Along those same lines, is it possible to budget transfers for other asset accounts?  For example, I like my budget to reflect cash transfers in my 401K, HSA, 529s, etc.  It really throws off my budget each month that I can't see those cash transfers to the various deferred accounts.

smayer97

Brad C said:

Thank you for fixing the loan issue... that was a much needed upgrade.  I just transitioned to Quicken Mac after more than 10 years on the Windows version, so it was very frustrating to not have that feature.

Along those same lines, is it possible to budget transfers for other asset accounts?  For example, I like my budget to reflect cash transfers in my 401K, HSA, 529s, etc.  It really throws off my budget each month that I can't see those cash transfers to the various deferred accounts.

Not currently possible. You can add your VOTE to Add Ability to Include or Exclude Transfers on Budgets.

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.

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the List of Requests Related to Budgets. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. 

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

jacobs

John Pane said:

Hi Marcus, I was wondering if I should expect any response to my detailed post in the prior thread regarding new difficulties accessing Quicken data off an AFP server?

John, as I think was pointed out in the previous thread, running your data file on a server has never been supported. It may have worked fine for you, and you are indeed lucky, but it's important to understand that it's not recommended or supported. And because of that, I would not expect the Quicken developers to spend time trying to replicate any such issues. I know that may be frustrating for you, but I'm just trying to provide as straightforward an answer as possible based on what they've previously said.

Unknown

John Pane said:

Hi Marcus, I was wondering if I should expect any response to my detailed post in the prior thread regarding new difficulties accessing Quicken data off an AFP server?

@jacobs the point was made and acknowledged in the prior thread -- no need to repeat it here.

I was talking to @Quicken Marcus, who said, "We haven't changed anything in regards to accessing a Quicken file from a remote server and don't have any plans on blocking this setup" then asked some questions. I provided a detailed answer and have been closely monitoring these threads in case more information is requested. My purpose in posting here is to keep the issue open to the extent Marcus is willing to do so.

JSH56

Great update. Like the new loan capability. 

HOWEVER, I am now getting Loan Sync Errors on Principal and Interest. I think it is due to the fact that the loan payment calculated by Quicken is different than my actual loan payments. How can this be remedied? (I tried to add principal, but in one case, the calculated loan payment is too high)

Unknown

Brad C said:

Thank you for fixing the loan issue... that was a much needed upgrade.  I just transitioned to Quicken Mac after more than 10 years on the Windows version, so it was very frustrating to not have that feature.

Along those same lines, is it possible to budget transfers for other asset accounts?  For example, I like my budget to reflect cash transfers in my 401K, HSA, 529s, etc.  It really throws off my budget each month that I can't see those cash transfers to the various deferred accounts.

Couldn't agree more with this - we have to be able to include the outbound half of the loan payments in budgets...OR...tell budgets which accounts to include and not include.

Quicken Marcus

km-nm said:

I like the new loan features, but with 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100), it seems I can no longer Reconcile my loan accounts.  Is this expected?

Yes, we turned reconcile off for loans because we felt most people reconciled their checking account where they make their mortgage payments and not the loan itself.   Do you reconcile your actual loan account?

Quicken Marcus

Jim Jones said:

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

Great points.  We realize that one of the biggest holes in the product is the reporting capabilities.  We continue to work on it.  It would be great to see if others agree with you that this specific area is a top feature we should work on.  Possibly write it as a separate suggestion and let people vote it up.

Quicken Marcus

John Pane said:

Hi Marcus, I was wondering if I should expect any response to my detailed post in the prior thread regarding new difficulties accessing Quicken data off an AFP server?

John, I'll take a look.  Your issue is going to take more time to digest.  I have no clue why you would see different behavior in this version. Like I said, we didn't change anything in this area.  Possibly Apple changed something or heightened their security in the OS which is now preventing your situation from working but I'll read through it in more depth. 

Quicken Marcus

Pamela Dellal said:

I installed the latest update, and was horrified to see that the program rewrote some reconciled transactions as different amounts! Specifically, recurring transactions that had changed their amounts in 2017 were recorded as the 2016 amounts, even for bank transactions that had cleared correctly. There did not seem to be any way to fix these numbers, so I had to back out and restore my previous Quicken version and data file. 

We changed the scheduled transaction code in support of Loans so something could have impacted other areas of the product.  Thanks for reporting this.  Anyone else seeing this issue? I'll try to reproduce this and will let you know if I can make it happen.  I may have more questions for you.

Unknown

John Pane said:

Hi Marcus, I was wondering if I should expect any response to my detailed post in the prior thread regarding new difficulties accessing Quicken data off an AFP server?

Thank you Marcus, I appreciate your attention to this. As a note, once I revert back to Quicken 4.4.3 I have no problems resuming my longstanding workflow. So it does not seem to have been something changed by Apple.

Quicken Marcus

Eran Pilovsky said:

I updated to Version 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100) and connected with First Republic to connect mortgage loan and equity line accounts.  Both accounts get grouped into Credit Cards.  These should be in property & debt.

Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) accounts are always grouped with Credit Cards because they act like credit cards.  The mortgage should have turned into a loan but it depends on what the bank/account aggregator tells us.  Quicken doesn't actually choose the type of account.  I'll contact you via email and possibly you can share your HTTP log with us.  That will tell us the account type that was sent.

smayer97

km-nm said:

I like the new loan features, but with 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100), it seems I can no longer Reconcile my loan accounts.  Is this expected?

Loan, or liability accounts, in QM2007 are not reconciled, per se, but I do reconcile them against the banks statements and often require to make minor adjustments to the account due to differences in interest calculations. This is simply entered as an adjustment. So QM2007 allows entering adjustments, which marks all transactions to that point reconciled.

I would expect the same thing in QM2017. No need to do the same type of reconciliation as a bank or credit card, in my experience.

Unknown

Pamela Dellal said:

I installed the latest update, and was horrified to see that the program rewrote some reconciled transactions as different amounts! Specifically, recurring transactions that had changed their amounts in 2017 were recorded as the 2016 amounts, even for bank transactions that had cleared correctly. There did not seem to be any way to fix these numbers, so I had to back out and restore my previous Quicken version and data file. 

This did not happen in a loan account, but in my Checking account. The affected transactions, as I stated, had been different amounts in 2016 but were recreated as new recurring transactions in 2017.

Quicken Marcus

Brad C said:

Thank you for fixing the loan issue... that was a much needed upgrade.  I just transitioned to Quicken Mac after more than 10 years on the Windows version, so it was very frustrating to not have that feature.

Along those same lines, is it possible to budget transfers for other asset accounts?  For example, I like my budget to reflect cash transfers in my 401K, HSA, 529s, etc.  It really throws off my budget each month that I can't see those cash transfers to the various deferred accounts.

Yup, being able to budget transfers or select accounts to budget is at the top of the list for things we want to add but please also vote for the feature as suggested by smayer97.

smayer97

Jim Jones said:

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

@Quicken Marcus

It would be great to see if others agree with you that this specific area is a top feature we should work on. 

Which one? @Jim Jones mentioned several features...many of which are already listed in the IDEAs section.

Quicken Marcus

Can you describe the loan sync errors more?  Where are you seeing this error and what error are you getting?  Do you use mobile? I don't think it has anything to do with the payment being different because we don't actually communicate that back to your bank so that wouldn't be the cause.  Also, can you tell me what type of loan you are setting up where the payment is off.  Is it an auto loan?  Many auto loans use something called Daily Simple Interest which is a different calculation than mortgages and so these won't work very well in the current loan feature.  To change the payment, just click on the pencil next the payment amount and change it to your payment.  Quicken will apply the difference as extra principal for you.

Quicken Marcus

JSH56 said:

Great update. Like the new loan capability. 

HOWEVER, I am now getting Loan Sync Errors on Principal and Interest. I think it is due to the fact that the loan payment calculated by Quicken is different than my actual loan payments. How can this be remedied? (I tried to add principal, but in one case, the calculated loan payment is too high)

Oops.  I lost what I wrote previously.  I'll try to rewrite this.  I wanted to learn more about the errors.  Where are you seeing them?  Is there an error code associated with it.  Also, I don't think the payment amount would impact sync since we don't send that information back to the banks.  

In regards to the loan amount being wrong,  I was wondering if this is an auto loan.  Auto loans use something called Daily Simple Interest and our current amortization calculations don't handle this today.  With that said, you can alter the payment amount by clicking the pencil icon next to the payment and we'll adjust your principal.

Quicken Marcus

km-nm said:

I like the new loan features, but with 4.5.4 (Build 45.17432.100), it seems I can no longer Reconcile my loan accounts.  Is this expected?

Thanks for that feedback.

Quicken Marcus

Jim Jones said:

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

Good point, it would be better to simply vote up the features he would like to see us implement  in the ideas section.

Quicken Marcus

Pamela Dellal said:

I installed the latest update, and was horrified to see that the program rewrote some reconciled transactions as different amounts! Specifically, recurring transactions that had changed their amounts in 2017 were recorded as the 2016 amounts, even for bank transactions that had cleared correctly. There did not seem to be any way to fix these numbers, so I had to back out and restore my previous Quicken version and data file. 

Understood.  Scheduled transactions in a checking account were changed so that if you edit them, they also update the loan details.  When we change something it could impact other things which is why I brought up loans.

As I try to re-create your situation, I think I need more information.   I'm having a hard time understanding what is being changed.  Is it future scheduled transactions or old transactions that have already been paid.  It would be great if you could provide an example of what you saw.  For example, in 4.4 I had a transactions dated 5/1/2016 for AT&T and it had a value of $100.  I opened this up in 4.5 and now the value is $150.  Or I had a scheduled transaction for AT&T that was set for $100 and the next payment was set for 6/1/2017.  When I opened this up in 4.5, the new scheduled transaction was set to $150.  A screenshot would be great too?  To recreate these things, we need a lot of specific details. 

smayer97

Jim Jones said:

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

To direct you on this, you can add your VOTE to:

• 
  Export to spreadsheet or CSV ASCII file (this includes the memo field)
• 
  Ability to Choose to Show/Hide Columns That Appear in Reports.
  

(BTW, showing check # on a summary report does not make sense, unless you mean showing it on the detailed view of the so-called summary report.)

First, click on each underlined link above to go there, then click VOTE at the top of THAT page, so your will vote count for THAT feature and increase its visibility to the developers.

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the List of Requests for Report Related Features. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. 

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

David Argust

Marcus,

I had posted this in the prior thread, but did not get any response.  Is this something unique to me?

==============================================

I was just notified to download the latest release of Quicken for Mac.  I performed the download and am now on release 4.5.4

In my previous use I go to the All Transactions view with the filter set to "Not Reviewed" to see my not reviewed transactions.   In this new release this filter does not seem to work as I now continue to see all transactions both reviewed and not reviewed.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Jim3

David Argust said:

Marcus,

I had posted this in the prior thread, but did not get any response.  Is this something unique to me?

==============================================

I was just notified to download the latest release of Quicken for Mac.  I performed the download and am now on release 4.5.4

In my previous use I go to the All Transactions view with the filter set to "Not Reviewed" to see my not reviewed transactions.   In this new release this filter does not seem to work as I now continue to see all transactions both reviewed and not reviewed.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

I just tried it on my Mac with Q17 v4.5.4 on one of my Investing->Brokerage accounts which had some downloaded transactions that are still not reviewed. When I filter to show "not reviewed" I see all items with a blue dot (reviewed) and the diagonal bar(?) image (flagged for review) in the reviewed column, but all items that are blank in that column disappear. If I change the status for one of these to Reviewed it immediately disappears. So it works as one would expect. I also tried this on a non-brokerage account (Cash) and flagged some items for review and the filtered worked the same way.

Jim3

Jim Jones said:

A significant bug has still not been fixed that has been reported long ago. When "Show Memo/Notes" is set in a Category Summary report that memo/notes column does not get included in the exported data with the Export CSV button.

Also disappointed that users still cannot choose to show other columns in a Category Summary report (like Check#), change column order and widths, and export to CSV all that is shown. But I'd be happy if the exported CSV included ALL unseen columns since we can use a spreadsheet app to delete what is unnecessary and reorder/resize columns to create a desired report.

the voting mechanism is pretty cumbersome and only now am I finally figuring out some of its intricacies. In the past I clicked on the wrong link and missed all of the report-specific individual requests that were aggregated. The take away here is that for every vote anything gets, it is the tip of the iceberg of others who never found their way to the individual page in which they could vote.