Quicken for Mac v5.12 Released

Quicken Marcus

Glennmacc, thank you for such a detailed and fair assessment.  I'll need to do a little more research on your points and bug but as a whole, I agree with everything you mentioned and thank you for the very specific bug reporting.  When the issues are actionable and easy for us to reproduce, it means it's also easy for us to fix.

On your point about memorized transactions being easy, I thought the same of renaming rules which turned out to be pretty complicated.  Just to get a little wonky on renaming rules, there were a number of things we had to do. 1) We had to replace what we currently do which is to remember the last payee change you made for every payee changed and to automatically generate rules based on this so renaming would continue to work as you expect. 2) When you make a change, we have to automatically create a rule that makes sense for the statement payee received and what you change it to and we need to block certain words that could cause lots of wrong transactions to get renamed such as "Check" or "ATM" which are too generic to create rules for. 3) We have to detect if a rule was used to rename your transaction and then ask if you mean to change the rule or want to create a new rule. 4) When you merge Payees we have to detect this and then ask you if you also want to merge rules and we have to do handle rule conflicts. 5) We used to provide the ability to auto-update other transactions with the new payee name and we wanted to continue to support this which required extra care to not accidentally rename transactions you didn't expect. 6) We sync rules to the Quicken Cloud so that mobile and web can use the same rules. 7) And finally, we have to build all the UX to support this like the list of rules, edit rules, review transactions, and a screen to ask if you want to edit, merge, or create a new rule.  Of course, none of this worked perfectly when completed so there's been a lot of fixes to get everything to work right. I expect memorized transactions to be equally complicated.  Also, just to call out that just because some feature doesn't appear in the next release doesn't mean we aren't working on it.  Like i said, we started renaming rules in November of last year but we released 5.9, 5.9.1, 5.9.2, 5.10.0, 5.10.1, 5.11.0, 5.11.1, and 5.11.2 after that date.

I also wanted to thank you for your detailed explanation and use cases for a  customizable home page and reconciliation report.  These are very helpful and we do hear a fair number of people requesting the same thing.  Out of those 2, I think the reconciliation feature is probably a higher priority for customers that reconcile but that's probably because the home page isn't used by many people because it's not great.

Anyway, thanks again for adding your input to the community and for keeping an open mind while making the switch to the subscription product.

Concordman

Regarding the renaming rules , the key in my case has been to determine if the downloaded name is quicken trying to do its thing or the card company. So b4 selecting name provided by Quicken make sure what you observe in the register is not directly from the CCRD downloads.

Concordman

Also wanted to volunteer that the addition of the Security symbols is  very nice; definitely helps register appearance if you don't have a "huugh" screen , also nice for searching .

glennmacc

smayer97:

CORRECTION: These have been implemented.
* Add investment income on budgets
* Investment Dividends in Budgets

Dividends are implemented, but Capital Gains are not, at least not reinvested Capital Gains. See my note above. The automatic category assignment for reinvested capital gains does not allow them to be included in the budget. If you create 2 transactions for your capital gains (a capital gains income and a buy of the security), I think it will work, but that doubles the required effort and for me personally, I do not want to go back through lots of old data to make this change. I'm hoping this will be fixed so I don't have to.

jonbud39

"You can also always go to your Quicken account and download it" Thats what I did and no luck. But I finally found 5.11.2 in one of backup folders. What happened, when I downloaded 5.12 on my 2016 MacBook Pro it went thru ok but when I opened 2018 MacBook Pro to download 5.12, I got an empty folder message.

jacobs

@jonbud39 You can always safely just move the application from one Mac to another if you're in a circumstance like you described. 

mark303

Can anyone post the release notes for the new version? I'd like to understand the changes before I update.

Also, are there any improvements to the multi-currency aspects of the product. In particular, I wish there was a way to see a combined net worth (balance sheet) statement and category statements as opposed to seeing them by currency.

jacobs

@mark The post by product manager Marcus at the start of this thread are essentially the release notes written in fuller sentences, but I've included the actual release notes below. Release notes can always be found here, but that page has not yet been updated to include the 5.12 release notes. 

To answer your other question: There are no significant changes noted regarding multi-currency functionality in this release; one bug fix is noted.

Version 5.12.0 (August)

5.12 is a really big release with lots of new and improved features.

Set renaming rules for better transaction payee names

• NEW Renaming a payee will automatically create a rule so that you won't have to rename it in the future.
• NEW Go beyond the basics and specify detailed rules for payee renaming precision.
• NEW You can now define Payees that you don’t want renamed. The Payee name will stay as is when it comes from the bank.
• NEW Sync renaming rules so that mobile and web transactions are downloaded just like they are on Mac.
• NEW With the push of a button, rename existing transactions and correct past payee naming mistakes.
• NEW View, add, modify, or delete Renaming Rules in the new Payees and Rules window.

Redesigned scheduled transactions for simplified use and control

• NEW Rebuilt scheduled transactions to simplify setting up bills and income transactions.
• NEW Edit the date and amount of an upcoming scheduled transaction without changing all future transactions. This is ideal for updating credit card payments or other bills that change from month to month without impacting the default amount you like to use for projected balances and cash flow.
• NEW Have Quicken automatically enter a scheduled transaction on the due date or a specified number of days prior to the due date.
• NEW Use the new convenient scheduled transaction toolbar to mark as paid, skip, or edit.
• NEW Added New Income button to create an income scheduled transaction.

New report tools make tweaking reports a snap

• NEW Quickly customize and make ad-hoc changes to reports using the new report toolbar where you can set the type, row, column, and time interval.
• NEW Duplicate a report to make minor tweaks. 
• NEW Quickly create a transaction, summary, or comparison report from the menus. You'll also be able to customize and select the time frame, accounts, categories, tags, and payees before creating the new report.
• NEW Rename reports by clicking on the report name.
• FIXED Fixed an issue where multiple total lines would appear when switching currencies.

More investment improvements

• NEW Added a new Average Cost Per Share column to the Portfolio view.
• NEW In the investment transaction register, added the Investment Amount column so you can see the value of reinvested dividends. Also added the symbol column for easier transaction review and clarity.
• FIXED Fixed an issue where Quicken wasn't recognizing the tax-free flag on a security.
• FIXED Fixed an issue where dividend transactions were being duplicated. This would occur when the dividend was reinvested on the next day and turned into a Reinvested Dividend and the original dividend wasn't getting properly deleted.

Other new features and fixes

• NEW Added a new Adjust Account Balance feature. Tell Quicken what the account balance should be on a certain date and Quicken will add an adjustment balance for you. Define the adjustment transaction as a "Live" balance adjustment meaning that the adjustment amount changes if any transactions are added prior to the adjustment date.
• NEW Creating a manual account now includes the ability to add an opening balance.
• NEW Added the ⌘+0 key command to reset the register text size to the default.
• NEW Quicken now displays a What's New carousel when launching the upgraded app for the first time to highlight new features. Also added menu items for What's New and Release Notes under Help.
• FIXED Fixed a calendar issue where past due scheduled transactions weren't being included in balance calculations.
• FIXED Fixed an issue when exporting to QXF where the Add Shares date is used for the acquisition date.

Gilles99

Impossible to choose some columns on a MBA 13"

I have a MBA 13"
If I want to add columns or remove one
I right click the column title bar
which bring a drop down menu showing which are shown or not and we can click to add or remove the click for the ones we want to remove

I cannot see the bottom items, with a MBA 13" as no scrolling is possible and the list goes beyond the screen at the bottom
see image attached

jacobs

@Gilles99 Try moving your Quicken window down to it touches the bottom of your screen, or hiding your Dock.

I'm puzzled, because when I make my Quicken window (on a larger Mac) the smallest it can be, the pop-up Columns menu is the same height as the Quicken window -- so I'm not sure it isn't fitting on your screen. I can't tell from your screenshot: is your Quicken window is filling the full height of the screen, minus the Dock?

Gilles99

@jacobs
I find a way by using the Quicken Menu --View--Columns..

Quicken should make it that the drop down menu is scrollable, meaning as we go down, it moves things up ( not necessarely a scroll bar per se )

Thanks for your suggestion

Gilles99

@RickO

Yes I found this, useful, at least it is workable

Thanks

Gilles99

> @jacobs said:
> is your Quicken window is filling the full height of the screen, minus the Dock?

Yes it is filling the full height, I do not hide the dock, so minus the dock

Quicken Marcus

smayer97 said:

@Quicken Marcus
although renaming rules and memorized transactions do go hand in hand, it is not clear from your statements on this subject if auto-categorization is being factored in. Not sure how you have QMac handling this now, but this could be a totally separate process. That is what I believe @jacobs is trying to bring to your attention... there does not seem to be clear language about the problems with auto-categorization so it is unclear if these are (or were) addressed.

Payee renaming rules imply only dealing with renaming payees, memorized transactions only imply saving and reusing saved payees and related transaction data (categorization, splits, memos, amount). Renaming rules ought to work well with newly downloaded data and memorized transactions ought to work well with manually entered data. Neither of these directly suggest anything about auto-categorization of newly downloaded data. It may be implied but it is not explicitly clear.

Please clarify.

When I talk about memorized transactions I'm referring to both the functionality to auto-fill fields of the transaction based on memorized sets of information including the category for downloaded transactions and to present these sets of information when creating new manual transactions.  For example, you can define 3 sets of information (memorized transactions) for Amazon:
1) Category = Electronics & Software, Tag = Personal
2) Category = Electronics & Software (Business), Tag = Business and
3) Category = Office Supplies (Business), Tag = Business

When we download Amazon, we'll use an algorithm to pick one of these groups and most likely I think we will pick the last one used but we could also pick the one used most often.  If we get it wrong the user will be able to click on an arrow to display all 3 options to pick from to quickly fill in the category and other important information.  

We will use memorized transactions to define categories for downloaded transactions based on renamed payees overriding any generic auto-categorization done via our aggregation service.  Does that make sense?

Shing

> @Quicken Marcus said:
> (Quote)
> Gilles99, thanks for letting me know.  It's OK.  Our Care team will also give customers 5.12 if asked.  We're still paused because we want to fix the issue Randy hit with loan lengths changing and we'll also opportunistically fix some crashing issues that are low risk to fix.  We'll probably start rolling out again on Monday.


Hopefully the team is also correcting a similar issue with loan payment schedules I reported during testing.

lemme14

I am excited for the update, but it seems there is a cashflow bug. After I updated, I noticed that my projected balance for my checking account drops substantially around the first of the year (Jan 2020). After some investigation, it appears that our two bi-weekly paychecks skip the first deposit in the new year. So it basically goes from December 20 to January 17, skipping January 3. I tried changing manually to another interval and then changing back but it still has the same error.

smayer97

Quicken Marcus said:

smayer97 said:

@Quicken Marcus
although renaming rules and memorized transactions do go hand in hand, it is not clear from your statements on this subject if auto-categorization is being factored in. Not sure how you have QMac handling this now, but this could be a totally separate process. That is what I believe @jacobs is trying to bring to your attention... there does not seem to be clear language about the problems with auto-categorization so it is unclear if these are (or were) addressed.

Payee renaming rules imply only dealing with renaming payees, memorized transactions only imply saving and reusing saved payees and related transaction data (categorization, splits, memos, amount). Renaming rules ought to work well with newly downloaded data and memorized transactions ought to work well with manually entered data. Neither of these directly suggest anything about auto-categorization of newly downloaded data. It may be implied but it is not explicitly clear.

Please clarify.

When I talk about memorized transactions I'm referring to both the functionality to auto-fill fields of the transaction based on memorized sets of information including the category for downloaded transactions and to present these sets of information when creating new manual transactions.  For example, you can define 3 sets of information (memorized transactions) for Amazon:
1) Category = Electronics & Software, Tag = Personal
2) Category = Electronics & Software (Business), Tag = Business and
3) Category = Office Supplies (Business), Tag = Business

When we download Amazon, we'll use an algorithm to pick one of these groups and most likely I think we will pick the last one used but we could also pick the one used most often.  If we get it wrong the user will be able to click on an arrow to display all 3 options to pick from to quickly fill in the category and other important information.  

We will use memorized transactions to define categories for downloaded transactions based on renamed payees overriding any generic auto-categorization done via our aggregation service.  Does that make sense?

Thanks Marcus for clarifying...that description is more explicit. The key is confirming that memorized transactions are used when auto-categorizing.

The problem is that this is not explicit in the Release Notes, so it was unclear if that is what is actually being done. It apparently was being done before it broke many many months ago. So, taking your description at face-value suggests that this has been corrected. It will be nice if it works as designed. 

If we get it wrong the user will be able to click on an arrow to display all 3 options to pick from to quickly fill in the category and other important information.

This will be a nice feature too to deal with corrections. Is there any attempt to remember the last option used from these 3?

Also, none of this is included in the Release Notes above. Could these be added in?

jacobs

smayer97 said:

Also, none of this is included in the Release Notes above. Could these be added in?

I think you are reading this wrong; Marcus is discussing future functionality which has not yet been released.

schnuddel

I attempted the 5.12.1 Update and "[t]he accounts in this file are corrupt (invalid typeName values) and cannot be repaired." Restoring automatic backups from today and last week generate the same error. I re-installed the prior version and restored the pre-update backup successfully. What must I do before trying again?

Quicken Marcus

schnuddel said:

I attempted the 5.12.1 Update and "[t]he accounts in this file are corrupt (invalid typeName values) and cannot be repaired." Restoring automatic backups from today and last week generate the same error. I re-installed the prior version and restored the pre-update backup successfully. What must I do before trying again?

I'll reach out to you directly.  We'll work together to figure out what is going on.

Quicken Marcus

lemme14 said:

I am excited for the update, but it seems there is a cashflow bug. After I updated, I noticed that my projected balance for my checking account drops substantially around the first of the year (Jan 2020). After some investigation, it appears that our two bi-weekly paychecks skip the first deposit in the new year. So it basically goes from December 20 to January 17, skipping January 3. I tried changing manually to another interval and then changing back but it still has the same error.

Let me reach out to you directly.  We did overhaul scheduled transactions so you might have uncovered an issue.  Thanks for reporting this issue.

Quicken Marcus

Shing said:

> @Quicken Marcus said:
> (Quote)
> Gilles99, thanks for letting me know.  It's OK.  Our Care team will also give customers 5.12 if asked.  We're still paused because we want to fix the issue Randy hit with loan lengths changing and we'll also opportunistically fix some crashing issues that are low risk to fix.  We'll probably start rolling out again on Monday.


Hopefully the team is also correcting a similar issue with loan payment schedules I reported during testing.

Yes, we think we fixed the loan payment schedule issue but let us know what you find.  We still see issues like it's not refreshing with every change but we'll continue working on it through 5.13.

Quicken Marcus

jacobs said:

smayer97 said:

Also, none of this is included in the Release Notes above. Could these be added in?

I think you are reading this wrong; Marcus is discussing future functionality which has not yet been released.

smayer97, you asked about memorized transactions.  5.12 doesn't have any memorized transaction functionality other than what was there in 5.11.  The full feature is indeed future stuff. 5.12 has the renaming rule feature. 

Also, I wasn't aware that auto-fill based on the last transaction was broken.  

smayer97

Quicken Marcus said:

jacobs said:

smayer97 said:

Also, none of this is included in the Release Notes above. Could these be added in?

I think you are reading this wrong; Marcus is discussing future functionality which has not yet been released.

smayer97, you asked about memorized transactions.  5.12 doesn't have any memorized transaction functionality other than what was there in 5.11.  The full feature is indeed future stuff. 5.12 has the renaming rule feature. 

Also, I wasn't aware that auto-fill based on the last transaction was broken.  

You're right. I was not reading this as FUTURE functionality... I do not see this in the description... So if I am understanding this now, auto-categorization issues are not addressed in the 5.12 release? I think I am more confused as to what is being delivered in 5.12 vs what is not.

Is it just me or is better wordsmithing needed?

It is not auto-FILL that is broken but auto-CATEGORIZATION of downloaded transactions that users have been complaining about in this forum for MANY months. It used to work fine but not lately (for quite some time).

moski

The upgrade went just fine for me this morning, at least as far as I can tell. I haven't really tried to use any of the new features yet but the old ones still seem to work. My question is about the "Investment Amount" column added to Investing transactions. I can't figure out what that's for. What does "so you can see the value of a Reinvested Dividend" mean? To me it's always been pretty clear what the value is, because I can see how many shares were purchased and what the cost was. What am I missing?

ann

I have Quicken for Mac 5.11.2 and would like to download and install 5.12.1. The notice states that there is a file migration from 5.11 to 5.12. I use three different Quicken files. I assume that the installation software will update the Quicken file that I have open when I launch the update. How do I update my other two files?

Thank you!

Tom Bonner

One of my main complaints with Quicken Mac has been the awkwardness of scheduling investment income (dividends from stocks and interest from bonds ) so that I can anticipate projected balances in investment accounts. The improvements to scheduled transactions in 5.12.1 has certainly helped but there are still some awkward points. In investment accounts the only transaction type that can be scheduled is payment/deposit which, after marking as paid, I edit the Type to Dividend Income or Interest Income. The problem is that the Payee field changes to a Security field and erases the Payee entry. I solve this by entering the Payee/security name in the memo field which gets retained so that I can copy and paste into the Security field. This does require creating a Payee that matches the Security name when setting up the transaction as there are distinct Payee and Security lists even though the column heading in the transaction view is Security/Payee. Since essentially all securities are Payees, it would be nice if they were automatically included in the Payee list or at least had a check box in the setup page to include in Payee list. Also nice if the security field didn't erase the payee entry if there was an entry that matches the security list.

In setting up a scheduled transaction I can now set the category to Dividend Income or Interest Income although for some strange reason the was no Dividend Income category in the the category chooser list and I had to create one the first time I set up a transaction in the new version. Even then it didn't appear in the Recently Used section of the chooser after editing a number of scheduled transactions to change category from Uncategorized to Dividend or Interest Income. I notice that there is a new Category, Interest Income Tax-Free, also not in the chooser list, and that when I marked a transaction as paid and change Type to Interest Income that it automatically changes the category to Interest Income Tax-Free where appropriate. A nice new feature.

Editing a scheduled investment transaction is substantially improved as the Frequency no longer reverts to Monthly when set to quarterly or semiannually.

mrhargro

Was so excited b/c I thought this release had auto categorizing based on previous behavior, but no. I actually never have issues with the payee name.

There are recategorization that I basically have to do every day, and wish i didn't. E.g. I've created a Category for Amazon, b/c unfortunately I spend a lot of money there. Anything with Payee gets that Amazon category, but I have to do that every day. Wish I could do what you did with the Payee to that categorization.

Hoping this release is an iteration in that direction.

Quicken Marcus

moski said:

The upgrade went just fine for me this morning, at least as far as I can tell. I haven't really tried to use any of the new features yet but the old ones still seem to work. My question is about the "Investment Amount" column added to Investing transactions. I can't figure out what that's for. What does "so you can see the value of a Reinvested Dividend" mean? To me it's always been pretty clear what the value is, because I can see how many shares were purchased and what the cost was. What am I missing?

In the register when looking at Reinvested Dividend transactions the amount is always 0 because there is a dividend received and then shares are purchased which results in no change from a cash perspective.  Customers who are focused on dividends wanted the ability to see what dividend amount they received in the register. The Investment Amount column will display the dollar amount for the dividend.  It's a really nice way to look at your dividends coming in and making sure they are the amounts you expect.

James Sapp

When trying to show additional columns on Investment Account, clicking on the show Columns doesn't work. It flashes something in less than a blink of an eye and disappears. The show Columns works for Banking, Property, Debt type accounts but not Investment type accounts. I have version 5.12.1 and am using MacOX 10.14.6. This feature worked in 5.11.2.