Program Change Suggestion - Update Bill Reminder

Greg Semple

What I'd like to see in a future release is the Memo field in the Bill Reminder included the Reminder viewed in the Bills & Income tab. It use to be there but now it is not with all the updates. 

I do 100% of all the updates to Quicken Deluxe. But I'm no spring chicken and I'm trying to get my wife to share the duties so she update our accounts in the event I am unable or unavailable to do it. 

The things that I include in the memo field are notes on how the charge gets applied to the account, e.g. automatically charged to a credit card or checking account.  Notes to say how to pay the bill when it becomes due, e.g. go to biller website and setup for payment or Balance is paid off by biller every month. 

Currently the only way you can see the memo is if you select the reminder, and click the option "Edit this instance and all future instances." That's a little awkward and takes more steps. 

This change should apply to both manual and online billers. And somehow, you need to allow us to edit the original online biller because there is no way to get to that Edit view (Edit this instance and all future instances) that I'm aware of, after you've linked the bill. 

Here are some mocked up examples. 
The first example is a bill reminder which is used to record to charge into my account. The second example is a bill reminder when the credit card is due and how to pay it. 

And yes, I do have online reminders that do give me what is due and when it is due. Some bills are not that way, e.g. life insurance premiums, health care premiums, etc. Plus, I chose to pay some at there site and not use the Quicken Pay feature. 

Let me know if you have any questions. 

UKR

Sounds like a good idea to me, so I just voted for it.

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drew2u

Glad this is under consideration!

I agree this would be an EXTREMELY useful update. It's just a "display" update to the view of these bills, so hopefully it's easy to implement and test.

The benefits to users would be significant, for the reasons showing in the original post, but also because information is key to managing money and that's what Quicken is about. Seeing the reminders without the memo is almost like looking at them out of context - you only have part of the picture.

I can think of a very specific scenario where this impacted me: I have multiple accounts with specific company, with different payments due for most, but two of them are identical. When I'd see the reminders I wouldn't know which was which because the memo wasn't there. (I did come up with my own work-around: I modified the Payee name to include notes between curly braces, which is how you tell Quicken not to print that portion on a check. Example:

SomePayeeHere {policy 1 ac#12345}
SomePayeeHere {policy 2 ac#98765}

But... that's sloppy looking and just repeats what I have in the memo. Having the memo carried into the reminders is a much more graceful solution!

BRETTB

Thanks for the work around. It will help a lot.

I would like to see the ability to add add'l columns like the registers so one can sort, group, filter them if one has a lot of reminders.

Scooterlam

Nice visuals to help Quicken and users quickly understand the idea.  Simple and useful idea. 

Perhaps the "method of payment" in the reminder card you show can be changed from a generic "payment" (or deposit) tag to the actual account the bill is paid or income received?



As a work-around, you can also see the memo detail, et al,  by pressing "Enter" in the reminder cards you showed in your illustrations - for "Stack View", "Biller Name" and "Due Date" filter selections.

Archy25

I agree that this would be good for online bills. But there is something similar (a bit) for manual bills too.
It would be helpful if the method of payment could be identified when the entry is posted into a checking or savings account. That is, if the payment method were something other than a check number (such as "Auto" or "XFER" or "Zelle" or "SocSec", identities which one might have added to User Defined NUM List items) that would be fill into the register as the "Check #" when entered from the Bill and Income Reminders -- either manually or automatically.

vivman1107

This would be so helpful if added. I use "Subscribe and Save" at Amazon and have 20 or so items that have varying schedules. I have each item set up as a manual bill with the description of the item stored in the "Memo" field. You can imagine how much fun it is to change an item that I'm not ordering on a particular month. Greg has it spot on that this should be in the app.

Scooterlam

@Greg Semple et al.

FYI...In the latest version (R26.15),   Quicken has implemented the memo field in the bill reminder pane as requested in the idea.   Perhaps the change to "Payment Method" is next? 



I believe R26.15 is still in staged release.  But, you can find it and install it here:  https://www.quicken.com/support/update-and-patch-20182019-release-quicken-windows-subscription-product.  

James J

I'd also love to see the associated website display in the bills/reminders stack view. That way, as I go through these and pay them, I can click on the website I see right there in the reminder.