Actual vs. Budgeted Reports: customize date range and get comparisons (Q Mac) (13 Legacy Votes)

mfsadler

I'm sure I used to be able to do this on a Mac. It's unbelievable that it would be removed from the program. I'm stunned.

jacobs

@mfsadler  Nothing has been removed. The legacy Quicken Mac (2007) was developed for two decades and reached a dead end where its underlying technology couldn't be updated for the modern Mac operating system. The modern Quicken Mac, starting with the first release in 2015, was re-created from the ground up. Quicken 2015 was missing a lot of functionality compared to its predecessor. (The original release didn't even have annual budgeting!) Over the past 5 years, the developers have been working to add functionality that users have been asking for. It's a slow process because (a) the program's code is complex, (b) lots of users have asked for lots of features, (c) certain parts of Quicken Mac functionality (such as budgets) need to work with Quicken web and Quicken mobile, which also work with Quicken Windows, so development efforts have to be coordinated among different teams, and (d) the Quicken Mac development team is pretty small. But progress is clearly being made.

In the budget area, there were a number of features that users have had on the wishlist for a long time. The product manager indicated more than a year ago that a lot of the program's budget code would require major re-writing to implement the features users wanted. The first of those changes -- the ability to select which accounts are incorporated in a budget -- was finally released last month. That paves the way for the next big wishlist item -- the ability to selectively include transfers in budgets, to allow for budgeting loan payments and savings -- which they've recently stated is coming in the next release. Two other popular budget feature requests are budget rollovers from month to month, and more robust reporting. We don't yet have any indication what features are coming next, but it's logical to think these are on the roadmap for development.

mfsadler

@jacobs From this user's perspective, it was there and now it's not. It "appears" as if removed. I'm not aware of what's happening in the shop; it would be nice however to be reassured that they're working on it. I haven't heard that from Quicken. To me --and many other users (including those who haven't found this discussion group)-- a flexible budget report is sadly lacking. And I don't want to print one, I want to view one and be able to fix little problems. I want to look at a first quarter report sometime in April and today, for some reason of my own, I want to look at (not print) the first half of the year's budget report. It would seem to be a simple request of a financial program -- much simpler than budgeting loan payments and savings. You can see our frustration.

jacobs

@mfsadler  Please don't misunderstand my post above. I'm not arguing against the desire/need for better budget reporting; I understand it entirely, and support it. I'm also not making excuses for or defending Quicken management; the process of re-creating Quicken Mac has been long and painful. You said you were "stunned" by the lack of budget reporting, and I was only trying to explain how we got here.

Quicken for Mac as longtime users knew it basically came to an end in 2006. Some small things were done along the way that enabled it to keep running up until last year's macOS upgrade, but Quicken for Mac was basically at a dead-end until Intuit, and later the now-independent Quicken Inc. decided to re-write it and create a new generation Quicken Mac. There were lots of delays, wrong turns, and mistakes along the way, especially from 2007 through about 2013. But we're slowly and surely getting to the point of having many of the features in that legacy program again, some implemented better, some worse, but closer to having all the capabilities of the old (and some we never had before).

As for their choice of priorities, every Quicken user seems to feel something different should have been the top priority for the developers! Over the past several years, they have been chipping away at a lot of them, but plenty still remain. For instance, as strongly as you feel about the need for budget reports, other users are crying for investment reports. Both can be done to some degree now, and both can be exported, but robust, configurable reports in both areas are still on the wish list. Re-writing the code for the budgets portion of the program is now clearly underway, so one can hope that budget reports will be tackled in the not-too-distant future. 

mfsadler

@jacobs From this user's perspective, it was there and now it's not. It "appears" as if removed. I'm not aware of what's happening in the shop; it would be nice however to be reassured that they're working on it. I haven't heard that from Quicken. To me --and many other users (including those who haven't found this discussion group)-- a flexible budget report is sadly lacking. And I don't want to print one, I want to view one and be able to fix little problems. I want to look at a first quarter report sometime in April and today, for some reason of my own, I want to look at (not print) the first half of the year's budget report. It would seem to be a simple request of a financial program -- much simpler than budgeting loan payments and savings. You can see our frustration.

jacobs

@mfsadler  You just re-posted your identical comment from yesterday, to which I had responded to try to provide perspective and clarify where I was coming from. I don't know if you did so intentionally or not. 

Alan7

Yet another Quicken for the Mac release with "new and improved reports", but still no basic month and YTD Actual vs budget capability. What is wrong here Quicken folks?

jacobs

@Alan7  "Quicken folks" -- namely the Mac product development team -- never reply to threads about missing features to indicate what new features are coming or when. This forum consists of fellow users and a few Quicken moderators, and none of us are privy to the development roadmap.

There have been a lot of user requests to improve the budget portion of the program, and the Mac product manager long ago acknowledged the need to address them, but he noted a lot of code would need to be re-written and that it would take considerable time. Now, there's cause for some optimism. The last release added the capability to specify which accounts are used in a budget, a feature many users had asked for. The upcoming September release will add the capability to selectively include transfers in a budget, allowing for things like loan payments and savings goals to be included in budgeting -- the number one user request in the area of budgeting. There are additional budget requests they haven't gotten to yet. One is rollovers -- moving unused budget or budget deficits to the following month -- and that feature has been marked as "Planned" on this site, so we can expect to see it at some unknown future date. I would think that better reporting -- or at least the ability to specify a range of months in budget vs. actual reports -- would be one of the next budget enhancements to follow as they continue improving the budget aspects fo Quicken Mac.

Alan7

Thank you. I recently and reluctantly stopped running Quicken for the Mac 2007 in parallel just to get this report. I have created an Excel template which allows me to copy the budget report information and create a page for each month with actual and budget for the month and YTD. A bit cumbersome and complicated by the fact that the budget report does not include investment gains and losses. (another carp!)

tim.rohrer

I just upvoted this.

I agree that this capability is long overdue. Although I can look at budgets for the month, that only works if financial information is made available in a timely manner. Since Apple Card/Goldman Sachs doesn't, we have to track on a quarterly basis.

We really need Quicken to step up and provide reports that let us compare spending against a budget.

TimC

I will be leaving the Quicken Family if this isn't addressed soon. I've been a Quicken user since version 1 in early '80s. Without the ability to do a Budget Report the product is essentially useless!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello all,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to add your feedback and your votes.

This idea has been reviewed by our Development team and it has been provided that this feature is already available in Quicken for Mac.

The Actual vs Budgeted report is available by selecting the Budget Tab and is the main budget screen.

It may be of interest to know that it has been officially planned to add the ability to change the date range in the budget.

To follow along and be notified of any changes or updates please visit the link above and either bookmark the conversation or leave a comment.

If you have not done so already, I would also consider taking a moment to add your vote to the Idea thread available here.

Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka

jacobs

Quicken_Tyka said:

This idea has been reviewed by our Development team and it has been provided that this feature is already available in Quicken for Mac... It may be of interest to know that it has been officially planned to add the ability to change the date range in the budget.

@Quicken_Tyka The date is the key thing, because without being able to specify an "as of" date, the current actual-versus-budget report is accurate only on the last day of each month, assuming all transactions are entered as of that date. Saying that this feature already exists really misstates the reality of the situation, and the reason users keep asking for a usable actual-versus-budget report.

The original request -- the first post in this thread -- was to "create a category report to compare actuals vs. budget with custom dates in Quicken for Mac." Marking this Idea as "already offered" is incorrect. This feature does not yet exist. It could be changed to "Planned", but it just doesn't exist yet.

mrvd

I agree 100% with Jacobs. I have been waiting for this feature forever and although I signed up for a Quicken for Mac Subscription, continue to use Quicken 2007. Unfortunately Quicken 2007 no longer works on the newest Mac OS so still using OSX 10.14 and waiting, waiting, waiting...

Beni

[Removed-Rant]

tkabdou

@Quicken_Tyka where exactly is this Actual vs. Budgeted report on the screen? How do you print it and why isn't it a Report under the Reports menu? You referred to it as a report so shouldn't this be under the Reports menu?

If I click on the 1-Month button, I see the budgeted and actuals for the month I select; however:

1. I do not see a print button
2. If I press Command-P to print, the formatting is terrible with bizarre page breaks (lots of wasted space/paper)
3. If I spent money on a category that was not budgeted (say unexpected Travel) then that item does not show up on that screen. Worse yet, the summary at the bottom of the report includes these (un-budgeted) dollars thus making the detail section above not match the summary at the bottom. A useful report should show all the spend for the selected period with the budget amount (zero if it wasn't budgeted) -- this way, we can clearly see the whole picture.

I've been tracking budgets manually in Excel for years because Quicken didn't have it but with so many Quicken updates, I figured this must have been added to the Reports menu by now. So many Comparison reports yet none of them are comparing Budget vs. Actual which renders the Budget functionality almost useless. If this product (Quicken) was just introduced to the market then I would understand; but...

jacobs

@tkabdou  Not all reports in Quicken Mac are under the Reports menu. Strange, but true. For instance, there are no reports on the Reports menu for investments. But if you're looking at one or multiple investment accounts, you can generate many reports from the Portfolio screens. Similarly, printing the budget is on the main budget screen, not in the reports menu. 

There are a lot of user requests for improvements to budgets, and reports are at the top of that list. The number one budget request is the ability to set a date range for actual-versus-budget. Currently, you can only print year-to-date, which is only really useful if you run it on the last day of each month. The developers have marked this request as being planned for a future release.

There are a number of user requests regarding what to do about spending that varies from the budget. Some users want all unbudgeted expenses to be included in a catch-all line or section. (Here is that Idea thread you can add your vote to if you wish.) Some want over- or under-budget income and spending be able to be rolled forward to future months. (This idea is marked by the developers as "Planned" for a future release.)

On the 12-month budget, there are Print and Export buttons on the upper right. If the printed format isn't helpful to you, you can download it and tweak the formatting in Excel or Numbers.

The 1-month budget screen is a carry-over from the predecessor Quicken Essentials program. It has not been updated since full-year budgeting was added, and so it lacks any of the niceties of user customization you might expect, including any control over the format of printing or the ability to export it for clean-up. You're basically stuck with it until the developers get around to revamping the functionality of the 1-month budget screen.

newcastlelinda

With the most recent improvements on Budgets (Transfers), I am reviewing my notes from quite a few years ago to see what has finally been fixed and what still needs to be added.

1) as many above have said, we need to select the date for our actuals versus budget. in my 20+ years using previous versions of QMac, I always looked at This year ending last day of last month. I cannot do that now.

2) When I create a budget for the year, I select and budget the categories I think will be used. An expense may arise in a different un-budgeted category. The Budget report should show not just the Budgeted categories, but also Any Other Non-Zero category for the date range selected. For example, this year I did not budget for any wedding gifts, but now I have an wedding gift expense and I want to see it in the Budget Report. In QMac2007, this was an option in the budget report, one could select whether to report on 'only budgeted categories' or 'budgeted and non-zero categories' or 'all categories'.

3) Not just budget reports, but in all reports, when I subtotal by categories I want the choice to NOT subtotal by Tags. I want to have a choice to ignore tags in some reports and give me just the total per categories and sub categories.

Thank you for reading,
Linda John,
Quicken Mac user since 1994
yes I have 26+ years of data in my Quicken data file.

beach4

Do we have any new information on this? Budgeting is what quicken is all about but if you are unable to run comparison reports its somewhat difficult to see where your budget is??? Whats the timeline to get this in place for the Mac version???

cgagnon2014

Hello,
Is it possible to customize a report to compare categories and the budget for that month?

jacobs

@beach4  Quicken never announces when a new or enhanced feature will be released. In this case, we do have a commitment that they plan to implement this funcitonality, which is great news, but we don't know when.

beach4

Thank you for the feedback. I have been a Quicken user for some time but have only switched to Mac in the past year. Not being able to run true comparison report is somewhat disappointing. We really need to be able to run the full gambit of budget reports. Year to date is available but not monthly budget versus actual. Strange they provided one but not the other??

jacobs

@beach4  It's often hard to know what the developers were thinking when they developed certain features. They did create a budget versus actual report, but they apparently didn't realize that making the YTD always go to the current month means that the comparison is off by a month for most users almost all the time. (It's potentially accurate only on the last day of each month -- and only if you have all your transactions for the month entered on that day.) They seem to now understand the shortcoming and have a plan to allow users to specify the date range (or at a minimum, the "as of" date for budget versus actual); we just don't know when they'l get that enhancement implemented. In the past few months, they've been working on adding budget features -- first being able to selectively choose which accounts to include in a budget, and more recently being able to include selected transfers in budget -- so hopefuly this will be the next budget enhancement to follow.

beach4

Great information, thank you for the updates!!

LarryC103

I have been using Quicken for Windows for years and one of the best features for me was the budget v. actual report that was one click. When I purchased my MAC last year and had to convert to Quicken for MAC (which was a nightmare but thankfully Apple was there to help me), I was unable to run the budget report as I was used too. I thought it was just my ineptitude until I found this community and realize I am not alone.
I have been using John C in NC's fix for months but I had figured it out on my own. It is ok for now but I really wish Quicken would make this fix on the MAC version. I read Quicken's response and frankly I am unimpressed with their inability to make a fix that seems so basic and obvious.

John Zikias

I agree we need a budget versus actual with a user defined date range

cathymm

New to this thread ... is there a way to export/download budget and actuals to create your own custom budget reports? I'm still using QMac 2007 because I don't want to give up the budget reports capability. It's looking like we'll never get that functionality with current versions of quicken for mac and at some point I'm going have to upgrade my operating system.

jacobs

@cathymm  Yes, you can export your budget from Quicken Mac to a .csv file to open in Excel or Numbers. The export creates three columns per month (actual, budgeted, difference), with the income and expense categories in your budget as rows. (There's also a summary export with just three columns of YTD results, but since you can't specify an as-of date, it's always though the current month -- e.g. November currently -- which makes it pretty useless except at the very end of each month.) You can also export to your clipboard to skip the cvs file and just paste into a spreadsheet if you prefer.

I actually think there's some cause for optimism that we might finally see the "as-of" date added to budget reports & exports, because the developers have been working on adding requested budget features that required a lot of under-the-hood recording of budgets. Over the past few releases, we've seen the ability to select accounts to include in a budget, and most recently, the ability to selectively include transfers in budgets. There are still several more highly-requested budget features (such as monthly roll-overs) on the list users are waiting for, but I'd guess that a user-defined date range might materialize one of these months.

jzimbelman

Hello, I just signed up for the subscription on Mac, moving over from Quicken 2010 for Windows. Like the look. But I must say that, 30 months after Micah and Retha's and the other dozen comments on a request for a report that compares budget to actuals, this problem still persists. It has been an option in Quicken windows for 15 years. And unfortunately its absence is a deal breaker for anyone who does budgeting. People are paid monthly, pay bills monthly, and plan their money lives monthly (or on some other time frame of their choosing). So any report comparison that can't give budget to actuals at the very least to the end of the current month (or for other periods of time of the budgeters choosing) is not providing one of the three or four major report options that any self-respecting budget software needs to cover. Telling me if I am on budget to the current date in the middle of the month is pretty worthless-- noone paces their spending or income out in 30 equal increments every month! And, no, its not fair to ask anyone who buys and uses your software to restrict their budgeting reconciliation to the last day of every month so that the software can just on that day give them helpful information (that's like selling a dead watch for $50/year so correct time can be told only twice a day). Its craaaaazy not to just add custom dates to this comparison routine as you do on many other programs. Please let me know if this can be fixed now, or I will have to send back my quicken subscription. And I hope you see my point: If its not clear just go run the report in Q for W 2010. And how do I vote? I think it voting were easy and possible you would see the dozens of people who are asking, asking, and have been asking for this for three or four years. Please tell me why the code can't be written for this. I just don't get it.

jzimbelman

And I am a member, with a username and password in your system. jz