Actual vs. Budgeted Reports: customize date range and get comparisons (Q Mac) (7 Legacy Votes)

Quicken Community

Is there any way to create a category report to compare actuals vs. budget with custom dates in Quicken 2018 for Mac. It seems like such a basic report, but it appears there is no way to do it. Please add this simple, yet important functionality.

Micah Dickerson

I'm with David - need this badly. In the meantime, is there a way to set up a custom report (as David asked)?

retha824

I completely agree that this is a BADLY needed feature.  

Micah Dickerson

I completely agree that this is a BADLY needed feature.  

Thanks for the +1 - there's not much point in making a budget if you can't track spending against it. And the provided compare 1-month and 12-month red/green bars (in "Budgets") don't quite cut it. I need a real report for this. At the very least, a YTD view.

[email protected]

Is this idea in the development pipeline? I have been using Quicken since 1990 (Windows) and since I switched over to Mac I am at sea-- no way to figure out how I'm doing in relation to my budgets!!! How can this not be a feature? 

Unknown

I still don't see it.  This is a big oversight.
Please expedite

Unknown

In Q Deluxe is there a way to prepare a report, custom or otherwise, to merely compare 2019 Budget full year to 2018 Actual full year? Seems simple and necessary but I do not see a way to do it. Thanks

klnaylor

When are you guys going to put in a report for comparison of actual v budget.  You have this in the windows version of Quicken.  I have used the windows version for years and the report works great.  I don't understand why you don't have this same option in the Mac version.  I have all my apps on my new Mac book but I still have to use my old windows computer for Quicken simply because you guys won't put in this report.  [rant redacted]

kristatarlit

This is something I require! Very disappointed to see it isn't included on the Mac version. 

darynwest

Hello!  Is there any update on this?  I don't understand why this report is not available!

UKR

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David Carpenter

I would like to be able to see a budget report through the end of a selected month (say Jan-Apr). Unless I happen to remember to do this on the last day of each month, I haven't found a way.

Robert Galley

Total agreement with you David. I had this drafted before I saw your post, but decided to post this anyway.

Quicken Mac Actual / Budgeted Reporting – Variable YTD Report Option

REQUEST:
Provide a means to specify any specific previous month to use as the basis for a YTD Actual / Budgeted Report. This should also accommodate the ability to generate this report for December of the prior year.

BACKGROUND & IMPACT:
As of QMac V5.12.1, Year-to-Date Budget Reporting is only available for the current calendar month. Unless I am missing something, a YTD report for January through August (for example) must be generated by 11:59.19 PM on August 30. After 12:00AM September 1, the Budgeted amount for all categories will contain the whole of September’s budgeted amount, with the Actuals catching up throughout the month of September.

So, as a result, to capture August (and YTD) summary and detailed reporting for research, exporting, and reporting I must generate my August YTD reports on the very last calendar day of August (business day or non-business day) causing:
• The need for me to capture YTD data for reporting BEFORE the month actually ends
• loss of my bank’s nightly processing for the transactions for the last day of the month since bank daily closing typically runs overnight

bobschaefer1949

Can we please have flexible date capability when looking at the MAC budget reports. Also,
The budget reports should be easier to read and work with. Only meaningful report is on the last day of the month.

jacobs

@bobschaefer1949 It would help if you could provide a little more detail about what you'd expect for "flexible date capability." You only enter one budget value for each category for each month, so what would you want/expect Quicken to do with partial months? Apply the budgeted amount proportionally? But since many bills are once a month bills, would you want to see, for example, 12÷31 of your utility bil budget if you ran a report on 12th of the month? How would you want Quicken to handle partial months?

@klnaylor and others who have asked above about a budget versus actual report, perhaps I'm not grasping what you want, as this seems to exist already. (Click Print on the budget screen, select Summary, and the report shows actual YTD vs. budget YTD.) What different data would you want to be able to specify for a report?

(I'm not suggesting additional reporting flexibility isn't needed; I'm just asking users to further explain to the developers what thier expectations or needs are.) 

bobschaefer1949

I would like to be able to specify custom dates for reporting similar to what we had in Quicken for windows. If you do not look at the ytd report on the last day of the month, the report includes the following month. It is very cumbersome looking at monthly budgets.

revmatt70

I keep looking for this every time a new update is released. I'm not sure why this is so difficult - especially since it has been a feature in Quicken for Windows for years. Developers at Quicken, please hear this request!!! Please!!!

Beni

Hello
I found this thread today, Oct 2019...I see the discussion started in April 2018. Very simple and basic ask...Actual vs Budget. I can't believe it is not in. So many features in my deluxe version I don't use. Is there something I don't get ? I just want a report that will compare current year actual to my budget per category. Please help.
Thanks in advance.

jacobs

@revmatt70 I agree with this being a useful feature, and hopefully it will be added at some point.

You wrote: "I'm not sure why this is so difficult...." Just because it doesn't exist in Quicken Mac doesn't mean it's difficult. It may be or it may not be difficult. You also wrote" "especially since it has been a feature in Quicken for Windows for years." This doesn't make it any easier or faster to code for Quicken Mac.

The real issue is that there are dozens and dozens of enhancement requests the developers have received, and many, many features that exist in Quicken Windows that have not yet been implemented in Quicken Mac. They're continually working on adding new/improved functionality, but development progress is often slow because Quicken is a complex mass of code and the development team is rather small. Progress is definitely being made, but the backlog of requests from users will take months and, for some things, years to implement. 

These Idea posts on this forum are one of a number of factors the developers take into account in developing their roadmap for future product development. This idea has, as of my writing this, only 6 votes. The more votes it attracts over time, the more likely it will be for it to be on the developers' radar. Then, it may depend on whether it's and easy thing to implement or something more complicated, or what other issues there are involving the same part of the program. For instance, we know that one of the top-ranked user requests it to allow budgeting for selected fund transfers (e.g. loan payments, savings). If they have to re-write a large chunk of code in the budget section of the program to make that change -- which the product manager has said they are going to do -- they may put other changes to budget functionality on hold until they open up this area of the program for changes. Developers are, understandably, reluctant to invest time to make changes in an area of the program which they may need to throw out and re-write in the near future to implement other changes.

Again, I think this change would be helpful and hope they implement it; I only wanted to try to provide some context and explanation about why something like this that seems pretty simply may end up taking a long time to get implemented.

Ronald Kent

The only time I can see an accurate YTD budget vs actual status in Quicken for Mac 2019 is on the last day of the month. The next day it includes that next month in the report. Surely I should be able to look at YTD through, say, September at any time in October.

johnjstoltenberg

I have the same issue. On Oct 2 the YTD Budget includes the entire month of Oct budgeted expenses which makes the YTD budget only accurate on the last day of the month

Ronald Kent

Seems like it should be a relatively simple fix. I'm still running QfM 2007 in parallel with this largely because of budget issues like this.

jacobs

@Ronald Kent @johnjstoltenberg  Now that this post has been merged with an existing thread on the same topic, please lease be sure to VOTE for this functionality by going to the top of this page, finding the blue box under the first post, and clicking the little gray arrow under the vote counter to make sure it goes up by one.

As for it being a "relatively simple fix", I explained in this post above why things that seem like simple changes sometimes aren't, or sometimes are but are blocked by other planned work. 

mrothen828

This is the most critical feature of Quicken 2007. I've tried this and others like [removed] and [removed] and they don't do it as well. I'm sticking with Quicken 2007 despite being 12 years old. I'm aware the upgrade to Catalina will kill the 32 bit Apps, and that is the only thing preventing me. To know exactly where you are at any given moment is one of the best features. Not sure why it's so hard to make this happen.

jacobs

As I indicated earlier, the issue is not necessary whether "it's so hard to make this happen" but that the developers are swamped with things different users consider "the most critical feature." For some, that's the ability to count transfers (such as loan payments) in their budget. For some, it's fixing and providing more options for transaction auto-categorization. For some, it's full multi-currency support. For some, it's investment reports. For some, it's the ability to re-reconcile past months. And the list goes on… So often it's a mix of assessing the technical complexity of a feature as well as prioritizing which features will impact the largest number of users.

Not that it's a total indication of who would appreciate this feature, but I'd note that this Idea topic has 10 votes as I'm writing this, while some of the ones I mentioned above have 200 and 300+ votes. The more people who vote for this, the better the chances for it to be on the developers' radar and move up the priority list. I think they'll get to all of these, and many other fine ideas, over time; it's just a question of which ones come sooner and which come later.

walajim

Add my name as this is a TOP PRIORITY for me. Who using a checkbook program like this does not need budget vs actuals? Please move this up the list.

walajim

I do not see how to vote. Can anyone advise how to do that?

jacobs

walajim said:

I do not see how to vote. Can anyone advise how to do that?

Go to the top of the post. There is a blue box underneath the original post. In that box, there's a vote count. And under that, there's a small gray triangle pointing to the vote count -- click the triangle and you'll see the vote count go up by one (and the triangle subtlety changes from gray to black). 

Alan7

I have been using Quicken for the Mac for many years, most lately running 2007 parallel with the subscription version. Now 2007 (still the gold standard, in my opinion) will NOT run with newer versions of iOS, we REALLY need the Quicken folks to work on decent budget reports as suggested above. Also, quick math would be a great help.

michaelweinberg

I just wanted to add a comment supporting the request in this thread. As things stand now, in Quicken for the Mac by budget reports are only accurate for one second per month. If I look at my YTD budget report one second before midnight on the last day of a month, the report is accurate. If I look at it one second after midnight, it it wildly inaccurate. For example, say I have budgeted $100/month for electricity expenses and further assume through August I have paid $100 each month for electricity. One second before the end of August my YTD budget report shows I am right on budget (with $800 budgeted and $800 spent). Two second later it shows I am way under budget with $900 budgeted and $800 spent. I'd very much like to be able to launch Quicken on September 1 or 2 or 5 or 8 to see how my budget stands for Jan 1 through August 31 (or any other month end) by specifying in the report customization the beginning and ending date for the YTD report. (In this case, I'd specify that I want to see a report for Jan 1 though August 30). I can, of course, manually look at each line item on my budget report and, in my head, subtract out the current month's budgeted amount, but (i) I shouldn't have to do that and (ii) it's not as easy to do this with 50 expense categories and monthly budget mounts like $1,245 as it is to do for one expense category with a nice number like $100. Please, please, please ask someone to spend the couple of hours it should take to add this functionality to Quicken. This is important (a) given the marketing Quicken employs that emphasizes the product's budgeting prowess and (b) because it would make me happy ;-). (By the way, I'm a HUGE believer in Quicken, frequently praising it in various financial facebook groups. AND, I think Quicken for MAC has shown HUGE improvement since Quicken was sold by Intuit.)

Calgarymoose

This is an important enhancement, disappointed it is still not there