Feature Request: Ability to organize reports in folders (7 merged votes)

tacarey

Feature Request: Ability to organize reports in folders

[email protected]

The more reports I create, the more I really, really wish this was a thing. It would be so nice to be able to make a 2019 folder, for example, to organize reports specific to that year, etc.

Banjo47

New MAC version 5.16.0 is great! You have made it easy and powerful to create custom reports and now the Reports menu has gotten long and unwieldy. You have put subfolders in for comparison, crosstab, and Other Reports, so now give us the ability to create our own named report menu subfolders to organize our custom reports.

smayer97

Better yet, make it open a separate window to manage custom reports...having about 80 of them makes it unwieldy even in a separate sub-menu.

jacobs

The Quicken Mac product manager said in another thread: "Reports are in a transition period in this release so the long menu is only temporary.  We'll be moving to a new and improved design to access reports in the near future." 

Jeff Leisenring

It would be great to have a report heading for archival reports. I like to create custom yearly reports by category and have not found a way to save them anywhere other than in My Reports. How about a methodology to have an historic report heading and the ability to save custom reports in it?

Thanks

[email protected]

Yes please!

Gaylen

I would like to suggest that Reports be structured to allow reports to be placed in Folders such as Cruises, Taxes, Utilities, specific years. I have over 50 reports that I would like to be able to organize for easier storage and access.

NotACPA

Are you talking about report templates, or the actual reports where a date range, etc has been selected.

If the latter, why not just print them to PDF files, and use Windows folders?

Also have you taken a look at REPORTS, EasyAnswers in Q?

UKR

@Gaylen ,

which flavor of Quicken do you use? Quicken for Windows or Mac?

You posted this question to the "Community Improvement Suggestions" category, which is apparently not what you're after.
Please let us know what it should be so that a moderator can recategorize your question and we can give you correct answers.

Gaylen

My profile shows a Mac Subscription. I've looked everywhere for a place to make a suggestion for improving Quicken and this was the closest I could find. Any suggestions?

Gaylen

> @NotACPA said:
> Are you talking about report templates, or the actual reports where a date range, etc has been selected.If the latter, why not just print them to PDF files, and use Windows folders?Also have you taken a look at REPORTS, EasyAnswers in Q?

I'm referring to saved reports maintained for records and backup. It wouldn't be very efficient to manually paste them in outside folders, if if they are moved, it would be impossible to verify, crosscheck, or change a transaction in the report or the original transaction.. Can't find any reference to EasyAnswers in Q.

Quicken Anja

Hello @Gaylen,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community and post your Idea request.

Ideas are reviewed by our Development and Product teams to see what features people would like to have available in the future. This way other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea by clicking the up arrow (see below).

Please, be sure to add your own vote as well.

NotACPA

"I'm referring to saved reports maintained for records and backup. It wouldn't be very efficient to manually paste them in outside folders, "

You don't need to manually paste them into outside folders ... just direct each report to the outside folder when producing it.

ALSO, anything saved in Q, including transaction receipts that are attached to Q transactions, can ONLY be viewed when Q is open. There is no external viewer for these items.

So, are you willing to open Q everytime that you want to see what you spent on groceries last month ... and a stored PDF can tell you all the same things.

And, lastly, both stored attachments and stored reports cause incredible file bloat in Q ... and degrade the products performance.  Are you willing to put up with that?

jacobs

Gaylen said:

My profile shows a Mac Subscription. I've looked everywhere for a place to make a suggestion for improving Quicken and this was the closest I could find. Any suggestions?

A moderator has moved your post to a Mac-specific category. In the future, if you click on Categories and view the list, look for:
    Quicken for Mac
     |—>  Product Ideas - Quicken for Mac
              |—>  appropriate category for area of improvement, such as
                       Reports or Investments or Display/UI

Gaylen said:

I'm referring to saved reports maintained for records and backup. It wouldn't be very efficient to manually paste them in outside folders, if if they are moved, it would be impossible to verify, crosscheck, or change a transaction in the report or the original transaction.

I'm still confused about what you are seeking. For records, you would want an unchanging, permanent version out a report you ran in Quicken, saved as a PDF file. This would be external to Quicken. But if you want to be able to change a transaction int he report, then you'd want to have saved report settings in Quicken, such that you could re-run the report on demand, and get an updated version if you've changed any of the underlying data. I'm guessing this is what you're seeking, right?

The developers in the past year revamped the Reports are of Quicken Mac, so any saved reports you create will be in the My Reports area. And you are correct that there is no way to create any hierarchy, like folders, there -- so it's a reasonable request for a future feature. That said, I think with a bit of focus on how you name your custom reports you can do a lot of organization even in the single list view of My Reports.

One way would be to start every report name with a year, if you want to save a report with a specific year's date range and other parameters. So "2020 Net Worth", "2019 Investment Income", "2017 Spending", etc. That would group all the reports for each year together, and if you ever want to delete ones that are old enough you no longer need them, they're all together to do so. Alternatively, you could group reports by subject, using a naming convention such as "Spending: Amex: 2020", "Income: Investments: Retirement accounts: 2019", "Spending: Utilities" -- or whatever makes sense to you. Basically, use whatever naming schedule you would use if you could create folders. Even if you have 50 reports, I think you'll find it easy to pick the one you want out of the list quite easily if you use a consistent naming scheme like one of these approaches.

georgia1026

Yes! Please add the ability to use folders to organize reports. I have to say I am pretty disappointed in Quicken for Mac. There are so many features that are not available compared to Quicken for PC.

jacobs

This Idea seems to be a subset of a broader idea to allow users to create their own folders to organize their reports.

There seem to be two Idea threads for the same thing:

Feature Request: Ability to organize reports in folders

Folders for My Reports

I think those two Ideas can possibly be merged, and this one could be merged into the combined Idea.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @jaco

Thank you for the response and for locating the related Ideas. All the 3 ideas have been merged into one idea and the vote count updated.

This idea will not be archived. For anyone visiting this Idea, please visit the top of the post and add a vote.



Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

oldngrmpy1

This could be used as a sort of 'back-up" also

WinM

PLEASE !!! Make it possible to save reports to a folder with a custom title! For example, I want to save 2020 reports to a folder that says "2020 Reports." I've just migrated to Mac from an older Windows version where I could create a customized report and, for example, label it "2015 - Reports by Category." It seems bizarre not to have this functionality in Quicken for Mac.

garysmith87

You're correct.  There is no "folder" option within Quicken Mac.

However, if you preface any saved report with 2021, you can pretty much create your own hierarchy of reports within the Quicken reports screen.  

Thus, 2021 Net Worth Report, 2021 Tax Schedule Report and 2021 Income Expense YTD Report can all appear together in the My Reports folder as the grouping will lump each "2021" prefix one after the other in alphabetical order.  Any report created and modified can be saved using SAVE AS...and the 2021 added to the beginning of the changed report (say from 2020 to 2021 after changing the date range).  

It's not nearly as elegant as having a separate folder, as you suggested, but it does serve a specific purpose.

You can also sort the report list by clicking on the report list headers.  So if I click on the OPENED header, I can sort the reports by when they were last opened.  

Personally, I'm not sure I would ever use such a hierarchy in Quicken Mac.  The newest report engine is so simple to use that changing any date range for a saved report is so easy I don't even need to save reports from previous years.  Really, it's just a few clicks to see my current Income/Expense report and change the date range to 2015...or any other year.  Do I really need to clutter up my Reports screen with an Income/Expense report for EVERY year since I started using Quicken?  No, not really.  

And finally, if you're actually saving reports from previous years...those reports obviously don't get changed as their data is already fixed.  So, an Income Expense report from 2015 will never change.  That book's been closed, so to speak. 

For those past reports, why not just create folders on your Mac, labelled perhaps Quicken Reports 2015?  Then "print" the report, but use the Save as PDF option in the print dialogue, and then save the report to that specific folder.

Sure, the report won't actually be in Quicken Mac and you can't change any of the parameters of the report, but I'm doubtful that a report with 2015 data will be useful for anything aside from reference.  So...does it really matter where it resides?  In Quicken or in it's own folder on your Mac?  

I don't disagree with your request.  I'm just showing their are alternative workarounds that may accomplish what you're trying to do.  

Horsefeathers

Sorry but I'm with WinM. I need to keep reports for a couple of years anyway (and no they need to be editable so the export suggestion doesn't work), and I have a lot, so using the year prefix method is clugey at best, and doesn't work well when your list is really long. It is such a simple thing, so I'm not sure why this hasn't made it to the feature request list yet.

jacobs

Horsefeathers said:

It is such a simple thing, so I'm not sure why this hasn't made it to the feature request list yet.

(a) It's probably not such a simple thing. People think many things are simple which turn out not to be.

(b) It has made it to the feature request list! That's what this thread is about: a request for this feature. If it attracts a significant number of votes, it will get passed to the developers for consideration. They have to evacuate each idea not only to determine that it's a worthwhile idea, but how to prioritize it among hundreds of other feature requests submitted by users. They often give preference to things which Quicken Mac cannot currently do, as opposed to something like this which would make an existing feature/functionality work more easily. 

Bottom line: people who want this feature need to add your vote in the yellow box at the top of this thread.

mcdbill

As an enhancement to Quicken for Mac, could you add the ability to have sub folders under My Reports

Quicken Anja

Hello @mcdbill,

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

I went ahead and merged your Idea to this active Idea thread regarding this topic.

Ideas are reviewed by our Development and Product teams to see what features people would like to have available in the future. Please, be sure to add your own vote as well by clicking the up arrow (see example below).

Thank you!