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Support Tags on Budgets (3 Merged Votes) (Q Mac)

smayer97

I know that Quicken removed support for using tags in budgets in QWin because of some challenges, and so this is also not available in QMac. BUT I believe there is a solution to addressing this that may help this feature be viable.

I presented the same solution (here) in the context of designing a Columnar Report like in QM2007 that was eventually added to Quicken Mac, allowing creating a report based on categories vs tags.

So please add this feature back for budgets.

Adding your VOTE for this feature is not voting for the solution but the feature only. If you like (or dislike) the proposed solution, add your comments below.

If you find this feature helpful, please be sure to click the dark gray arrow in the yellow box below this post to increase the count of this post and therefore its visibility to other users, and to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version. Your VOTE matters!

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Proposed possible solution (refined from original recommendation):

Since transactions can have multiple tags, there is the possibility to get cross-tagging, which would result in double-counting. I believe the options are quite simple to deal with this. Let me present to you my suggestions:

Without having analyzed it completely, I can see only a few solutions to that challenge of designing and developing such a feature:

either the budget carries a warning that any transactions that have more than one tag and appear on the budget will be double counted, (not terribly useful but better than nothing)
or the program goes the extra step to warn the user if it found cross-tagged transactions that are being double-counted but nothing else (again, not great but better than nothing)
or even one step further, for any row where cross-tags are detected, those fields are highlighted (coloured, formatted, etc) to show where the double-counting is taking place; this would give the user a visual cue as to where approximately the cross-tagging exists.
or one step further, the user can be given the option to not display subtotal or total for those lines or columns; again enhancing the visual cue.

Whichever way, I cannot see any program knowing what to do beyond that; it would be up to the user to decide how best to handle that. In some cases, it may be as simple as the user choosing to not display subtotals and/or totals (QM2007 had the functionality to choose your columns, including which subtotals and totals to display in reports; the same could apply to budgets), or the user would have to decide if that cross-tagging makes sense for the transactions involved and clean it up.

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Comments

Theresa McTier

I need to be able to make budgets based on my TAGS as well as certain categories. Currently, the only option I have is to include only certain categories.

EXPLANATION: I manage more than one person's bank account within one Quicken account because all my accounts are linked at my bank and thus download at the same time. Because I transfer funds from one person's account to another, I need these bank accounts to stay in one Quicken account (as opposed to creating more than one Quicken account with separate passwords). I need to be able to make separate budgets within my Quicken account for each person's bank account. I know I could create new categories that include the tag, which would be cumbersome and lengthy (example: Auto & Transport:Auto Payment:Van) but it would be ever so much easier if I could create a budget including certain tags.

John_in_NC

I believe you mean more than one Quicken file, not accounts.

There was a version of of Quicken for Mac that allowed for Tags in budgets. This functionally was removed because it was a use-case nightmare because things were getting double counted because transactions can be both a budgeted category and also a tag.

I don't know the details of your situation, but you might have to rethink how you setup you files, categories, and budgets.

Theresa McTier

John, you're absolutely right. I did mean file instead of accounts. I have several accounts in one file, one joint bank account, one savings account, one credit card account, and one account that I manage for someone who cannot manage his own finances. This is the account for which I need a separate budget.

It would be nice if I could make a separate file, but then I would not be able to transfer funds from one account to another within Quicken.

My issue is that I need a way within this file to separate my funds from this person's funds so I can track his funds better. I guess I'm going to end up making separate categories just for this person. Sigh.

NotACPA

John, you're absolutely right. I did mean file instead of accounts. I have several accounts in one file, one joint bank account, one savings account, one credit card account, and one account that I manage for someone who cannot manage his own finances. This is the account for which I need a separate budget.

It would be nice if I could make a separate file, but then I would not be able to transfer funds from one account to another within Quicken.

My issue is that I need a way within this file to separate my funds from this person's funds so I can track his funds better. I guess I'm going to end up making separate categories just for this person. Sigh.

Since that "account for which you need a separate budget" isn't part of YOUR taxes, and isn't part of YOUR ownership ... it should be in a completely separate file.

The basic principal is that a Q data file should contain all of the info for a single tax entity (one fed tax return) and ONLY the info for that tax entity.

Moving that account to it's own file resolves your Tags issue completely ... and is going to happen sooner that your "budget by tags" request ... which is unlikely.

jsurpless

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Quicken Mac 2019 Budgets & Tags.

It would be really helpful if Budgets could be restricted to certain tags.

I've seen the requests for certain accounts but nothing for tags.

Looking to create a budget for myself, my wife and overall

John_in_NC

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Merging.

Quicken Essentials allowed Tags in budgets.

It was quite problematic because there were too many use cases where things could get double counted (or ignored) because of the ability to Tag and Categorize. Add in that you can add multiple tags to a transaction made the situation worse. Thus, tags got yanked from budgets.

I kind of missed it because there are times this would be helpful. But, I was aware of the situation. From a programming standpoint, I can see where it had to go.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Quicken Mac 2019 Budgets & Tags.

smayer97

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Moving to merge.

They will run into the same situation with reports and tags. BUT it is an essential feature to create one of the most requested report types: columnar reports with categories vs tags (and other columns too).
See: Columnar report (with selectable choices for rows and columns)
(of course this type of report, and budget, was much easier when there was only one Class, aka Tags, possible per transaction...trade-offs :-\ )

SO, they will have to tackle this issue. That said, 2 years ago I have even proposed a few solutions as a guide to solving this problem. I agree it is a challenging one but my approach is NOT to try to solve all the confilicts but rather simply highlight when and possibly where there are conflicts (i.e. double counting) and let the user deal with it.

See my post here:
https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/in-quicken-2007-i-can-create-custom-reports-with...

The same approach can be applied to budgets.

I have been meaning to bring this back up with Marcus for him to keep in mind as a general approach to dealing with this issue, because they will have to.

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

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Merging.

unknown

How about warning the user of a "duplicate tag" when created initially. Second tag could be "Tag..2"; tag 3 could be "Tag...3". Similar to creating sub accounts.

smayer97

How about warning the user of a "duplicate tag" when created initially. Second tag could be "Tag..2"; tag 3 could be "Tag...3". Similar to creating sub accounts.

How would Quicken identify a "duplicate" tag?

NickHanson

Maybe this has been suggested before and I just can't find it, but It would be awesome to be able to keep transactions out of a budget if they have a certain tag.

For example, my wife and I went on a vacation, which we saved up for and used our debit account to pay for everything. If I change all the transactions to the "vacation" category, then I can keep them out of the monthly budget, however, then I can not categorize our spending on the vacation.

If I tag all of the transactions with a "vacation" tag, then I can make a report, however, the transactions affect our budget.

If there is already a way to work around this, let me know, however, if not, then I think this would be a simple but helpful tool to add.

(Also, and I'll make another thread for this, but it would be nice to be able to turn on an automatic tag for a period of time. Set the dates for the length of a vacation or business trip and automatically tag/categorize everything that is spent for a certain account)

NickHanson

Also, I'm using Qmac-Subscription

Chris Harris

Yes Quicken, please do add this back. It would make excluding certain transactions from a budget so much simpler. For example, when the transaction is covered by savings goal, etc. I don't want it to show up in the budget. Right now, the only way I know of to do this is to have duplicate categories (ex. "Category" & "Category - exclude)"

Cohen Adair

> @NickHanson said:
> Maybe this has been suggested before and I just can't find it, but It would be awesome to be able to keep transactions out of a budget if they have a certain tag.
>
> For example, my wife and I went on a vacation, which we saved up for and used our debit account to pay for everything. If I change all the transactions to the "vacation" category, then I can keep them out of the monthly budget, however, then I can not categorize our spending on the vacation.
>
> If I tag all of the transactions with a "vacation" tag, then I can make a report, however, the transactions affect our budget.
>
> If there is already a way to work around this, let me know, however, if not, then I think this would be a simple but helpful tool to add.
>
> (Also, and I'll make another thread for this, but it would be nice to be able to turn on an automatic tag for a period of time. Set the dates for the length of a vacation or business trip and automatically tag/categorize everything that is spent for a certain account)

I essentially do the same thing, but with "unnecessary spending" each month. I use a tag for myself and a tag for my wife. It would be great for budgets to a spending limit on any given tag. Up until now, I've been using a Google spreadsheet to track our unnecessary spending.

probablyjd

I would also like to see this feature. My use case is exactly the same as Cohen's - my wife and I each get some unrestricted "fun money" which can be used on anything we individually want (meaning it can be in any category) but we'd like to be able to budget how much we spend each month.

I've read the comments going back a few years on this and understand that this feature was removed because it caused "double counting," but I don't really understand why that's a problem unless you NEED all your budgets to be mutually exclusive (I don't). Seems like a simple warning that budgeting based on tags could lead to double counting would be enough. Or maybe even a separate budget section for tags that is independent of the category-based budgets? I see plenty of possible solutions, but maybe this just isn't a feature that is important enough to go through the effort.

For now our workaround is to create separate "fun money" category groups with subcategories that are duplicates, which isn't particularly elegant but works fine.

RichS88

Come on guys - this cannot be hard to program. All this would do is hide transactions that have tags associated with them. Please post when you will include this feature 'enhancement'. You should feel the pain that customers have who pay the $60 annual subscription fee which is supposed to drive continuous improvement but then have to export tag filtered reports to excel just to perform budget activities on selected entries. Don't you want us to stay in your software as the one stop shop??? Do you want us to have to keep using Excel to augment this difficiency? Thank you - I've been a customer since 1992 so please consider this a valid criticism from a 31 year loyal customer.

Jim_Harman

Try Reports > Spending > Current Budget.

Click on the gear at the top right to customize the report.

On the Tags tab, select Clear all then check the Not Tagged box.

Does that do what you want? If not please explain what you would like to see.

Pat Claud

That helps, but would be ideal to have the same ability for budget itself ie what is in the budget screen matches report

RichS88

Hi Jim - thanks for the suggestion- this is what I'm doing now - but its an unnecessary workaround. I'd like the ability to fo this right in the budget section. I am having to create reports which, interestingly, allows for you to filter out tags and then export them to Excel for my needs. I just checked and when you click on "Edit" from within the budget itself you can only filter out unwanted categories or accounts. Why no button for tag filtering? For those of us who have used tags since the beginning, not having this feature in the budget tab is hard to understand. Quicken team - when will you add this to Quicken for MAC? You have gotten so much right, made so many good strides. Please let me know when this is on the roadmap and when it will show up for GA. Thank you!

jacobs

@RichS88 said: Come on guys - this cannot be hard to program. All this would do is hide transactions that have tags associated with them.

It may or may not be hard to program; the complexity of the Quicken database makes it pretty difficult for us users to assess what will take a lot of time and what won't. But that's somewhat besides the point, because even if it turns out to be relatively easy to implement, the problem is that there are hundreds of worthy feature requests users have asked the developers for — so it's not just a matter of ease, but of priority. While this functionality is important to you, many other users think many other things are more urgent priorities, and that's what the developers have to constantly sift through to determine what gets worked on and what waits.

I'd also note that the predecessor program upon which the current Quicken Mac was built (Quicken Essentials for Mac) did allow Tags in budgets. I never used that program, but those who did have explained that it turned out to be problematic due to cases where transactions could get double counted or ignored because of the ability to filter on both Tags and Categories. Additionally, because transactions can have multiple Tags, writing a user interface and coding the logic to get users very specifically the Tags they did or did not want included made things tricky. (For instance, if a Transaction has Tag A and Tag B, and you could specify in your budget that you wanted transactions with Tag A and wanted to exclude transactions with Tag B, which of those rules should prevail? You'd likely need a user interface to allow you to rank rules in order, or do and/or/not combinations — complexity which doesn't yet exist elsewhere in Quicken searches and reports. for those reasons, Tags were removed from budgets in Quicken Essentials, and haven't yet returned.

And that all said, let me note that a Quicken moderator has now merged your Idea thread into this existing one seeking the same functionality. This helps keep the requests organized and maximize voting. You should go to the first page of this Idea thread and add your vote in the yellow box under the first post. You can also add additional comments. (More comments keeps the Idea at the top of people's feeds, so it may attract more attention.) I'd note that only 12 people have voted for this Idea over the past 4+ years, so it needs to gain more votes and traction for it to be forwarded to the developers.

RichS88

Great answer - can't ask more team that - thank you! I don't want to come off as whining. Been using your product since the early 90's. Probably going on my 30th year. I'll never switch - the MAC version is AWESOME.

Cohen Adair

I'm wondering if there's been any internal discussion around this topic. This feature is the one thing keeping Quicken from being perfect for me.

If the Quicken team has no intention of implementing such a feature, I'd like to know. Better than keeping my hopes up. :)

jacobs

@Cohen Adair This feature request thread is five years old, yet it has only garnered 17 votes from users. Idea topics need to reach at least 30 votes to be officially sent to the development team for consideration. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not on their radar, as they have a number of improvements planned for the budget section of the program. But without more votes for this functionality, we’re not likely to get a “Not Planned” status, either.

Cohen Adair

Ah okay, fair enough. Thanks, @jacobs!

RichS88

Hi - can someone with technical expertise tell me why this is so hard to do? I have literally been waiting for this feature for years. I am tired of exporting my Quicken reports to spreadsheets so I can do my budgets there. Quicken is supposed to save you time. I think this is dumb that you need 30 votes. How about a paying customer for 30 years who asks for this simple feature? My vote alone should count as 30. I suppose most don't vote because they don't know this is your policy to get features on the roadmap. Can you at least scope what it would take to get this done? From a "tee-shirt" size perspective for the tech team, surly this would be small. Why not make the budget feature robust with maximum amount of filtering flexibility? I keep getting updates all the time and its features I never use or care about. I am hoping that one of these updates will add this in.

Cohen Adair

Hey @RichS88. I'm in a similar situation to you. I use spreadsheets for my budgets because Quicken doesn't have a budget-by-tag feature. I've considered moving away from Quicken many times because of this, but there's no alternative that offers the other features I use + budget-by-tags, so I very much want this feature.

I'm not a Quicken employee, but I have been a software developer for 10 years. I'll preface this by saying I am obviously not familiar with the Quicken codebase, but from a technical standpoint, implementing a very basic "budget-by-tag" feature should be easy. Simply filtering a collection of transactions by any given tag is trivial. That's basic functionality, though. Adding complete filtering to budgeting may be more complicated and there are no doubt edge cases to consider.

It would really surprise me if there were any technical reasons why this feature can't be done. Almost certainly, it just hasn't gained enough traction to be prioritized by the product team.

What I'd like to see more of is the Quicken team reaching out to users via in-app polls about what features they'd use the most. I've been using quicken for many years and have seen only one such poll. Only then are you going to get an accurate representation of what users actually want to see, since only a very small number of users monitor and participate in this forum. I do feel if a feature like this were to be added to an in-app poll, we'd see a lot of interest.

Sadly, if this feature hasn't been done by now, I can't imagine it ever will. That's just how these things work in the development world, especially for enterprise-level apps.

jacobs

I think this is dumb that you need 30 votes. How about a paying customer for 30 years who asks for this simple feature? My vote alone should count as 30.

@RichS88 So you feel that out of perhaps a few hundred thousand Quicken Mac users, your one voice should outweigh everyone else? This feature request, which has garnered 16 votes here over the past nearly 7 years should be a higher priority than other which have hundreds of votes? C'mon…

I understand that this is your top priority/need from Quicken, and I'm in no way diminishing that. I'm only saying that many longtime users have flooded Quicken with hundreds of feature requests, of which they can only complete a small percentage each year. The Quicken Mac development team and executives decide what to tackle based on a large number of criteria, including such things as: how strongly is it requested here in the community forum, how often does their Quicken Support team raise it as a problem/pain point in user support interactions, how many users is this likely to help, how complicated a development task is it and how long would it take to implement, what other code updates are needed to stay ahead of Apple's macOS upgrades, what company-wide cross-platform initiatives (such as a new bill pay system or new security protocols for connectivity) do they need to implement, etc.

Can you at least scope what it would take to get this done? From a "tee-shirt" size perspective for the tech team, surly this would be small.

The have assessed what is involved in making at least a dozen frequently-requested budget features, and the work involved is the opposite of small. The former Quicken Mac product manager discussed this several years ago, explaining that the budget code in Quicken Mac is very complex, and adding requested new functionality would likely entail a major or complete re-write of the budget code section of the program. That's likely the reason none of the requested budget features has yet been implemented; they are either working on or scheduled to work on a major revamp of this part off the program.

I keep getting updates all the time and its features I never use or care about. I am hoping that one of these updates will add this in.

And this is the problem with a complex program, a large user base, a large list of requested features, and a small development team: no matter what new feature they implement, some people will be pleased and many others will find the newest feature of little or no use. We all use Quicken differently and have different top priorities. For you it's budget; for someone else, it's investment functionality and reporting, or planning tools, or something else. This past year and longer, a lot of development time has gone into building and then adding functionality to business features — something that some users have wanted for decades but many of us will never use. So I'm right there with you, awaiting with interest each new release and hoping it contains one or more of the features I would personally find most valuable — but I understand there are many user-requested features which will benefit some but not me.

What I'd like to see more of is the Quicken team reaching out to users via in-app polls about what features they'd use the most.

@Cohen Adair Last year, there were several posts on this forum asking users who wanted to offer input to the developers about budget functionality to sign up for interview or to take a poll. They don't do this often, but they do do it periodically. (Those users who participate in beta testing get asked periodically to take surveys, or comment on their most-desired features.) Hopefully, the input the developers requested and got regarding budgets went into efforts to design changes/replacement of the existing budget features, and will result in implementation of those features coming sooner rather than later. But of course, we never know.

ispoton2

Add Tags to Budget so you can selected it out of the budget. An example is 'Non-Recurring' expenses. I may not want to filter out an entire category.