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Can Qmac forecast next months payment to Credit Card?

Lakedaisy

I pay the total credit card balance each month. Qwin allows one to set the monthly credit card payment to the amount owed on the credit card. When I look at next months calendar I see the total amount of the credit card being deducted from my checking account. I can't find a way to do the same in Qmac. Is this possible? Thank you.

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jacobs

Yes, Quicken had an excellent product for the Mac for more than 20 years. It didn't have all the features of Quicken Windows, but it was well-equipped and met many users' needs. The problem came in 2006, after Intuit released Quicken Mac 2007. Due to Apple's radical overhaul of the Mac Operating System several years before, some of the core technology used in Quicken Mac 2007 was identified as software which could not run on future versions of macOS. There were no easy work-arounds or ways to re-write a few sections of code. The database itself wasn't suited to move forward; the way Quicken put images on the screen was being phased out, the memory architecture could not be updated, etc. -- and Intuit concluded that Quicken 2007 was a dead-end, and that they had to start over to develop a modern version of Quicken for the Mac.

There's a long and winding path that followed… a first attempt at a new product that never made it out of beta testing… the purchase of Mint and putting the creator of Mint in charge of Quicken development… a second attempt which was rushed to market in 2010 as "Quicken Essentials" (because it was incomplete), which was rejected by many longtime Quicken Mac users because of its limited features… the fast departure of the former head of Mint which left the Mac development effort in limbo… a new management team installed… and finally a new product manager hired in 2012 with a tiny development team to build, on the base of Quicken Essentials, a full-fledged new version of Quicken. That new generation of Quicken Mac came to market in fall 2014 -- so it's been exactly five years from then to the present day.

Many, many features have been added and many holes have been plugged in the past five years -- Quuicken Mac 2019 is a vastly improved product over the original Quicken Mac 2015 -- but Quicken Mac still lacks functionality that good ol' Quicken Mac 2007 had, and that Quicken Windows has. Over those five years, Quicken became independent of Intuit, and had to rewrite a lot of code to move off some of Intuit's servers and services, and it wasn't until after Quicken left Intuit that the Mac development team was significantly enlarged. Development has proceeded more slowly than either the developers or management expected, as it turned out that the code base, developed in several stages over the past decade, is complicated to add onto. Some areas of the program originally developed for Quicken Essentials had to be tossed and completely re-written to build in the added functionality users want and expect.

So yes, you can say that Quicken Mac should be better or more advanced. And many Quicken Mac users -- as well as the developers and management of Quicken -- would agree with you.

But there's just no shortcut to get there, other than to work on one feature after another to continue to add to Quicken Mac's functionality over months and years.

Quicken Windows users who want to switch to Quicken Mac typically fall into one of three camps: (1) Quicken Mac does what they need, and they're happy to have made the switch; (2) Quicken Mac is missing one or more critical features that makes it unsuitable to switch; or (3) Quicken Mac is usable, albeit different, which requires some adaptation and adjustment to the different user interface or workflow. If you fall into #2, then you want to continue to use Quicken Windows. If you fall into #3, you either decide to try it for a while and see if you adjust and you're comfortable enough adapting, or you decide you don't like it enough to be worth switching from Quicken Windows.

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jacobs

I don;'t think so, but I don't use the calendar view, so perhaps someone else will provide a more detailed answer.

But… since you pay the balance in full, can't you simply glance to the left sidebar and see the balance/amount owed for the account at any time? That's what I do if I want a quick view of my upcoming cash flow needs.

Lakedaisy

The Qwin method is much better as one can look at the calendar and see several weeks in advance the amount of cash available for each day. And the amounts vary according to credit card balance.

jacobs

I'm not sure I understand. Why would your cash balance (checking account, prsumably) vary day by day due to credit card charges?

In Quicken Mac, if you create a calendar for just your checking account, you can see your checking balance every day. Over on the left, you can see the accumulated charges on your credit card. So if my checking accont balance on the calendar shows I'm at $10,000 today, and my credit card balance over on the left shows $15,000 today, I can see at a glance that I've got a problem as of now with more money to pay out than I have available. Now, it's not showing the payment out of checking on the date my credit card statement period ends or the due date, but you can see at a glance where you stand. And when your credit card statement ending date passes and you can see the full amount of payment due, you can enter the payment as a transaction in the future, so your balance in the calendar will reflect the drop in funds in the future. It doesn't do this automatically, but it's pretty easy to do manually. If you set up a recurring monthly payment transaction with an estimated/average payment amount, then all you need to do is update the amount each month when your actual balance due become available.

Alternatively, you could create a calendar which includes your checking account AND your credit card account. This would make the daily balance in the calendar show the net of checking balance minus credit card balance.

Lakedaisy

"So if my checking accont balance on the calendar shows I'm at $10,000 today, and my credit card balance over on the left shows $15,000 today, I can see at a glance that I've got a problem as of now with more money to pay out than I have available."

This is exactly what Qwin does, but I don't have to guess at the difference between the credit card balance and cash on hand. The correct amount remaining in the checking account shows on the calendar.

jacobs

So would my suggestion above work for your need: create a calendar which includes your checking account AND your credit card account (and not other accounts). This would make the daily balance in the calendar show the net of checking balance minus credit card balance.

Lakedaisy

Hi jacobs. Yes it would. But it's a mess as the calendar fills with all the charges. I had tried this a couple years ago. Problem is I make a lot of charges on my credit card (rather than using cash or a check) to get cash back. So every month MC and Visa pay me to use the card. Been doing this for about 15 years. Because of this, each day of the calendar fills with the charges. Not pretty. The way Qwin does it is the cash balance minus the credit card balance is the only number shown. There have been improvements to Qmac since Quicken was bought out. Was hoping this was an improvement I had missed or couldn't find. Maybe someone from Quicken will read this and add it to Qmac.

jacobs

@Lakedaisy Quicken Mac can easily do what you want. If you don't want the calendar cluttered with individual transactions, just click on the little down arrow at the far right of the calendar screen to toggle off Show Transactions.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/ue/7eccd5idqw5g.png

In Customize, if you set the accounts to be only your checking account and your credit card account, now the calendar will do what you say you want: show only the daily net balance of your checking account minus your credit card account.

Lakedaisy

Thanks jacobs. I know that. But that won't work as I use Show Transactions to check incoming/outgoing deposits/withdrawals in the checking account.

jacobs

So you want a calendar that shows all your transacitons in your checking account, shows none of your transactions in your credit card account, and shows the net balance of your checking account minus your credit card charges. Well, I can't think of a way to create that.

I'd suggest you might want to make different calendars for the diffent puposes: one could show your checking account transacitons and balances, while a second could show just the runnig balance of checking minus credit card. It takes one click to switch between calendars.

Lakedaisy

Thank you jacobs. I'll continue to use the calendar in Qwin. Maybe at some day the programmers will improve Qmac to be aligned with the robustness of Qwin.

jacobs

Lakedaisy said:

Thank you jacobs. I'll continue to use the calendar in Qwin. Maybe at some day the programmers will improve Qmac to be aligned with the robustness of Qwin.

I think they work on that every day.

But there are so many big features and moderate features and fine points and nuances over 30+ years of development for Quicken Windows, it's just unlikely all the details will become equivalent anytime soon.

Right now, there are many bigger holes to fill than an issue like this one, which can be worked around as I've described with a single click. As I've said above, I'm not diminishing or putting down your request, I'm just trying to be realistic about what issues the developers are likely to tackle over the next year or so. Yours is the first request I've heard for a specific feature like this, while there are probably many dozens of ideas which have more than 100 requests on this site. Unless they are doing other work on program changes to the calendar and happen to decide to fit this in while they're in the area -- which does happen from time to time -- I'd guess this would fall pretty far down on the list of current priorities for Quicken Mac development.

Lakedaisy

Believe Quicken has been working on Qmac for about 15 years right? Maybe more. Don't really remember for sure. I started with Quicken DOS in the 80's

Inelegant work arounds shouldn't be necessary for a Premium product.

jacobs

Lakedaisy

Wow jacobs. What a great overview of the years. I had forgotten some of what you outline and there's some I didn't know. Did you work for Quicken back in the early 2000's? I tried the older Qmac's but there was never anything I liked. I've been running the new Quicken 2018/2019 for 2 years (in the background while still running and trusting Qwin.) Just updated to another 2 year subscription.

Guess I'd call myself #3. Since I've been retired for over 10 years, I really only use Quicken for checking and Stocks and Options. Qwin2018/2019 can't handle Options correctly. I reported the problems several times. Qmac still can't handle buy/sell of Options correctly.

I'm assuming Quicken's Mac user base was never large enough for them to devote serious resources to it. Looks like this may have changed with the new owners. Though not really sure since I have reported the errors in handling Options several times over the past 2 years and nothing has been corrected.

I would agree that the current version of Qmac is so much better than anything Quicken has offered before.