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

Holen1bvw

Why would you make it available in Windows and not in Mac? Why would I even do a budget at all if I could not compare it to expenses? Makes no sense. Please resolve this quickly.

pleake47

It would be nice if there was some communication from Quicken on this request!

jacobs

Comparing actual to budget is a long-running shortcoming in Quicken Mac which has been well-documented over the years in this Idea thread. There's no need for a new one.

Why is it available in Quicken Windows and not Quicken Mac? Because the code for the two programs is completely different, and they haven't yet written the code for Quicken Mac since abandoning the original legacy version of Quicken for Mac and embarking on the massive project of re-writing it from scratch using modern Mac tools. (I'm not saying anyone should be satisfied with the absence of this functionality; I'm just explaining why in answer to the question.) The Quicken Mac development team has a list of more than 500 feature requests from user on this site alone, which guarantees that whatever features they do tackle, it won't satisfy everyone because there are so many other features still undone. 

The good news is that the original has now been changed from "Submitted for Consideration" to "Planned". That change is about all the communication we ever get from Quicken on future plans. But this means the good — very good! — news is that the developers understand this request, have agreed that this is a desirable feature, and have it on their development roadmap with time committed for implementation. The bad news: we never know when various features are planned for release; it could be next month or it could be 18 months.

Tom Auer

Happy last day of the year, everyone! I've been reading the history of this thread, as well as the related thread that was referenced above. I'm not seeing any vote counters to add +1, so I'm going to take the liberty of adding a comment.

For today only, unlike the other 364 days each year, my budget window shows the budgeted amounts against my actual spending for the year (less anything I spend later today). Exporting that graph to a .csv file is definitely better than nothing, and is a good prototype for Quicken Mac's first budget report. (If there are any others, please tell me where: I have looked through all the categories, and found none.)

I consider this to be the most-gross feature omission in Quicken, and for the record, I just responded to Quicken's invitation to leave a review on TrustPilot.com, and left a very nice review.

Let's set aside features for a moment, and talk about benefits: an important distinction in sales. One of the purported benefits to using Quicken is that it can enable you to take control of your spending, and to plan spending versus income. Making a budget is a key part of that. Seeing a daily graph showing your spending by category, year-to-date, versus budget, shown in whole months, is a good first step. Budgeting can and should be an iterative process, and spending history should inform future budgets.

Please, and I vote for this as the highest priority in development: Add a printed report, showing actual spending versus budgeted spending, for a user-selected budget, between a user-selected first date and a user-selected ending date. Extra credit: if the user-selected ending date is not the last day of a month, pro-rate the budgeted amount by number of days.

One postscript: jacobs, I appreciate your comments on program development. I was a software applications trainer in my younger days, with my last gig in that business being internal to a pre-IPO software company. One of my takeaways from that experience is how much developers and marketers seem to live in distinct worlds, a bit like the M.C. Escher lithograph showing people walking in three different planes.

a sh

Clearly this an actual vs. budgeted report for Mac IOS is a must-have. I had it on my PC version and have since switched to Mac. While it may be nice to see that this functionality is planned, it does not help me now. I have been using Quicken since 2014 and am seriously considering another option. If Quicken truly wants to support Mac users, it bloody well ought to communicate plans with us.

jacobs

@a sh I agree with you that this is a major omission in Quicken Mac. I can only tell you that marking an Idea thread as "Planned" is typically the only communication they provide about future plans. Of course, I understand why you wish and think they should do more; I'm just telling you that they don't.

There are likely three reasons: (1) Other Quicken Mac users would insist there are other features — including many which exist in Quicken Windows but not yet in Quicken Mac — which should be at the top of their list, and would want management to provide updates on them. (2) The release schedule is fluid because building new features without breaking things in the existing code is often experiences detours and delays, and they don't want to say a feature is coming in February or in Q1 if it might actually not be complete until later in the year. (3) Quicken has competitors for personal finance software, and it doesn't want to tip off the competition to what new features are coming when. 

Carefree

I am now going to stop recommending Quicken to the next generation of our family until this is fixed. How can they look at their history easily, without this feature. For people trying to learn how to budget and adjust this is a critical feature. And that generation has far more Macs and PC's. Quicken you have done a lot of great updates, but it's time to listen to this one and add easy printouts of comparisons to budgets.

For everyone following this, you can get exports that work. Either Summary or Full. I do the copy to clipboard and paste into a blank excel. It gives you totals to compare in Summary for end of year, but of course you can't click through to transaction which makes hunting down the spending difficult.

Tavis

Hey guys, first time posting. How many of you guys would like to see a quarterly view for budgeting? I know I would, however one voice is probably not worth quicken programers working that out….

Quicken Anja

Hello @Tavis,

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

Your idea has been merged into this already active Idea thread regarding a similar request.
Please navigate to Page 1 to review the details of this Idea request.

Thank you!

sdackin

Totally agree. It would provide the finishing touch to an otherwise excellent financial software

PeterSutton

I can't believe that this basic functionaity is not included in Quicken Mac yet. Budget vs Actual for settable dates, and quarterly budget vs actual is a necessity.

sdackin

Couldn’t agree more

DustyP

I am using Quicken for Mac. When you select the Budget tab, you can see only see a single month or a full year. There needs to be an option to select the number of months to view. For example, at the end of March, I want to see a first-quarter budget vs actual report. To create that report I have to export the full year to Excel and manually adjust what is shown. It should be easy to program an option to select the number of months shown with a total column at the end.

Quicken Anja

Hello @DustyP,

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

Your idea has been merged into this already active Idea thread regarding a similar request.
Please navigate to Page 1 to review the details of this Idea request.

Thank you!

SuperM

Not much more to add to this topic other than it's extremely disappointing to see that Quicken is not adding what appears to be a very simple enhancement to a product we all pay good money for. Please quicken, please prioritize this enhancement in the next update instead of rolling out other enhancements that nobody cares about.

sdackin

couldn’t agree more

splordon

It is a travesty that Quicken for Mac does not have a savings goal, budgeting function similar to the PC version. Using the budgeting function currently is useless. As previously stated, it is only functional for one second a month. I'm trying to find a work around. I would be grateful if anyone has any thoughts. Thank you.

jacobs

If you haven't discovered it, this feature request has now been changed to a "Planned" status by the developers. That means they have not only agreed to do it, but allowed time for it on their development schedule. We don't know exactly when, of course, but it is coming.

TeamWilliams

It's 2023…and this feature still isn't available????? I find this extremely disappointing. This should be such an EASY add from the developers. Quicken…are you guys listening? :/

TeamWilliams

Hello Quicken team! We the people need a report where we can compare what was budgeted vs what was actually spent/earned in every category. With all respect, this should be a VERY EASY report to add to the arsenal of reports available. It would be a HUGE win if you guys could provide a report that allows users to compare any time period of their budget to their actuals. Do you need me to be a consultant for you guys? :) C'mon…we need this report. Please and thanks! :)

jacobs

@TeamWilliams This long-standing feature request has finally been marked as “Planned” by the developers. It’s apparently not as easy to add as we might assume, and I agree it’s crazy that this is still missing from Quicken Mac — but at least we now know they’re committed to adding this (and some other requested budget features). I expect we’ll finally see this sometime in 2024.

jacobs

There is an existing Idea thread for this. It is marked as Planned, so it is coming (but we don't know when).

Do you need me to be a consultant for you guys? :) C'mon…we need this report.

There is no shortage of good ideas for enhancements to Quicken Mac. In fact, there are several hundred Idea posts on this forum. The issue is not that the developers need a consultant or don't understand, but that there are a handful of them, and they can only address so many features requests over the course of a year. When you compare Quicken Mac today with 3 or 5 or 7 years ago, it's impressive how much progress the developers have made. When you look at the wishlist of features users have, it can definitely be frustrating not to have the one or few that you consider most important be the ones that the developers have addressed yet. Hopefully the ones you want will be among those they tackle in the months ahead — like this one.

Quicken Anja

Hello @TeamWilliams,

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

Thank you!

TeamWilliams

Hello Anja,

Thanks for the feedback. It is at least comforting to know that this request is something on your radar. :)

BillyKeith

I have been a quicken user since the 80's!! And was a window's user for most of those years. However, switched to Mac about 15 years ago. Really crazy that the budgeting feature in Quicken for Mac is so bad. It is absolutely worthless. Why they continue to add updates to the program and not get this done is beyond me. This is a BASIC must have for a personal financial software. Really silly

Chris_QPW

@BillyKeith said:

"This is a BASIC must have for a personal financial software. Really silly"

Now why don't you go to all the other Quicken Mac idea threads and post the same?

I'm pretty sure that everyone on those threads would say the same about that given feature request.

The truth is that Quicken Windows feature set was built up over 40 years, and when it was decided to totally rewrite Quicken Mac, they basically committed to doing that all again. And throw in a bit of Intuit dropping the effort from time to time, starting with an understaffed development department (until they sold it off and Quicken Inc increased the staff), Apple changing the APIs and such a couple of times, …

DA1

I was able to create this report in a 2017 version of Quicken for Mac. Please add this functionality to the current version, it is sorely needed.

jacobs

@DA1 There is no budget report in Quicken 2017 which is not in the current Quicken Mac.

In fact, printing a report in Quicken 2017 prints all 12 months of budget, actual and difference — even if we're only in January. But in current Quicken Mac, you can print the Full Budget or Summary Budget, so it's actually better than it used to be. Just not good enough.

On the budget screen, make sure you have the 2-column-wide actual vs budget gray column visible. If your second column is January, click the "«" icon to have it show the actual vs budget column. Then, if it is showing 2024 January to December, click the "v" icon to display a pop-up menu, and select Budget Year-to-Date Totals. With that column showing, you can then do Print > Print Summary Budget. So today, January 9, you could print the actual YTD (Jan 1-9) versus budget YTD (January).

What you cannot do that most people want to do is print a budget vs actual report for a prior month or range of months. For instance, on February 5, you've finished entering all your January income and expenses and you want to compare your budget to actual for January. You can't. Budget versus actually will be through February — and that's actual through February 5 versus budget for all of February — which isn't useful or accurate. That's the functionality we're waiting for, and because the developers marked this as "Planned" last year, we'll hopefully finally get it this year.

kyle_1252002

I came here to post about this, and was surprised to see how old this idea post is.

I've found a workaround that might be helpful for everyone. The "Budget YTD Totals" option seems to run off of your computer's date/time setting. So, to see March's YTD actual vs budget on April 3rd, I set my computer's date to March 31st. This lops off the April budget amounts to show a true YTD actual vs budget for March.

Thought others might find it useful until (if ever) Quicken fixes this!

newcastlelinda

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20427496#Comment_20427496

Hello @kyle_1252002

I wandered out here to see what the status was … after so many years of waiting. Your suggestion is brilliant, but also gave me a great Laugh Out Loud moment for my otherwise dull morning. The idea that we the users would actually Change our computer Date/Time in order to get this feature to work shows how seriously we want this report.

@jacobs … good to see you still out here … I hope you enjoy reading this 'workaround' as much as I did.

Here's to all the faithful Quicken for Mac users who persevere in spite of these obstacles.