Filtering data on reports

GP

I've been using various versions of Quicken since 1990, and through Q2007 was able to generate financial reports that could be sorted by Memo, Month, Quarter, etc., as well as by Account and Category. This was an invaluable feature: I'm a landlord, and I could enter a tenant's name into the Memo section and then generate reports selecting the name to look at payments, sorted by month, over a period of several years.

Is there any way to accomplish this on Q2017 for Mac? It's hard to believe that this is actually less powerful software than was available for my Mac Classic in 1990. Suggestions?

RickO

Kind of depends on what you mean by "sort". First, make sure you are using one of the reports found under "New Report". Using those reports, you can add the Memo column and sort by it (after customizing the report to filter Payees, Categories, etc).

In your example of various tenants, I would instead of using the Memo field, put the Tenants in as Tags. Then you can generate a report grouped and/or filtered by Tag.

Finally, in QM2019, you can generate a summary report that has, for example, tags across the top and categories down the side.

jacobs

There have been some improvements to reports between Quicken 2017 and Quicken 2019, including the ability to select which columns do and don't appear in reports, and the order and relative width of the columns.

And yes, the next-generation Quicken has been getting re-developed from scratch over the past 5+ years, but it's replacing the legacy Quicken Mac software which was developed over many years -- so in some areas, the new Quicken is less capable than the old Quicken. Month by month, the developers are adding functionality, so we all hope we'll eventually be at a point where we have nearly all the functionality of Quicken 2007 -- but we're not there yet. For some users, this is not an issue at all; for some users, it's an inconvenience that can be worked around; for some users, it makes Quicken 2019 still not a suitable replacement for Quicken 2007.

smayer97

The best way to know if it can work for you is to try it. There is a 30-day money back guarantee.

Just be prepared for some adjustments. The latest report update that @ricko mentions looks promising but the report editor/formatter is still crude compared to QM2007 so you will have to judge for yourself if it is adequate for your needs.

GP

Thanks for the comments. I was hoping to hear I was just doing something wrong, but it sounds like Q2017 just isn't as versatile as the earlier versions. I'll experiment with the tags as RickO suggests, and possibly upgrade to Q2019 if it looks like there are substantial improvements in this area. 

jacobs

GP said:

I'm a landlord, and I could enter a tenant's name into the Memo section and then generate reports selecting the name to look at payments, sorted by month, over a period of several years. Is there any way to accomplish this on Q2017 for Mac? 

Let's go back to your original question for a minute...

If you enter your tenant name in the Memo/Notes field, you can simply use the Search box to search for the tenant name. Then set a date range to only look at transactions in the time period you want. Click on the Date heading to sort in date order. Print the register if you need it printed. If that's what you're saying you need, it's certainly easy to do in Quicken 2017.

The key here is taking advantage of Search in Quicken 2017. In Quicken 2007, we're used to generating Reports, but in Quicken 2017, Search is often the best way to find what you want.