Biweekly Budgeting (17 merged votes)

Unknown · March 2018

Not exactly what I meant. My wife and I get paid on opposite Fridays. If I want to see a report for a weekly budget; Track a weekly income vs expenses; or view the balance trend in our checking account in the calendar. They all start on Sunday and end on Saturday. I would like to have a way to set a preference to change that so they all start on Friday and end on Thursday. That way the weekly reports make more sense.

Mshiggins – Yes, I use reminders. I use
them quite often. They work great for upcoming known income and expenses. However,
they are a little hard to use on the unknown ones like coffee shops, restaurants,
groceries etc.

Unknown · July 2018

Does anyone know how to create a weekly budget in Quicken 2016 Deluxe? I can only select monthly or yearly.

UKR · July 2018

No, sorry. A weekly budget hasn't been invented yet.

mshiggins · July 2018

Why are you wanting a weekly budget? Are you paid weekly?

Unknown · July 2018

Why are you wanting a weekly budget? Are you paid weekly?

I have never understood the request for a weekly budget or another other timeframe that lines up with someone's paycheck.

Their bills are certainly not going to nicely all line up with their paychecks.

That is in fact why you setup a budget, to plan the flow of your money so that it lasts long enough to pay those bills that might be monthly or bi-yearly or yearly...

And on a much more practical level.
Right now with just 12 months of columns in the annual budget screen to have all the details you usually have to scroll unless you have a screen with tiny fonts.

Can you imagine what 52 columns of data would be like?

Can you imagining trying to set all those columns correctly?

Unknown · July 2018

I'm paid weekly. I pay my mortgage weekly. I pay my car weekly too.
My investments too. It's really easier to have 52 colums in my situation.

it can be practical to select a budget : half-year, quarter, month, bi-weekly or weekly.

mshiggins · July 2018

Why are you wanting a weekly budget? Are you paid weekly?

I would imagine you would be able to view a smaller number columns. 13 would give you a quarter's worth.

Unknown · July 2018

I get paid Bi Weekly and have all my loans on automatic withdrawn every two weeks. Car, personal loan, mortgage ect. The only bills that are paid monthly are Utilities, and CC. I have tried other programs that offer bi weekly budgets, but they are lacking in many respects to Quicken in other areas. Leaving me to do my budget and planing on an excel spread sheet. Then manipulating reports to verify where I was able to stay on budget and were I went off. Our dealing with the other programs short comings. It would not be hard for Quicken to add bi-weekly budget periods giving me the flexibility to align my with each budget each pay check. Over the years I have contacted Quicken and made this suggestion. The response is the same " great idea we will look into that for future releases" Years have passed and still not included with new releases. Still on 17 and will not upgrade until Bi Weekly is available.

Unknown · July 2018

I just talked to support. Flexible budgeting is not on the road map. They suggested I use the following link to provide feedback. https://www.research.net/r/QuickenFeedback

Unknown · July 2018

I just talked to support. Flexible budgeting is not on the road map. They suggested I use the following link to provide feedback. https://www.research.net/r/QuickenFeedback

That is a link to a very old survey. I doubt putting in a comment in there is any more effective than commenting/voting up the same idea on this forum. In fact I would think it would be better to do it here, provided you can actually get enough people to vote on the feature at all.

I notice that the survey doesn't even have a selection for budget, you (and others) would have to write it in a comment, which to me makes it even more unlikely it would get any attention.

On a personal level I have mixed feelings about your request, for the simple fact that the budget is already very complicated, and already is known to have several bugs in it that they have not fixed in years.

Making it more complicated than what it already is, doesn't sound very good for the people that are using as it is now.

On the other hand I don't really "budget", so I can actual live with it not working at all.

elvismouse · July 2019

I have Quicken 2015 and would like to upgrade BUT there is a limitation in the budget period in the 2015 version. The budget period seems to be fixed at 'monthly', 'weekly', etc. I need the period to be customized. I need to set my budget period to what I want. Does version 2019 have that capability?

GeoffG · July 2019

The budgeting options available are the same for subscription as they are for Q2015.

pl6400 · July 2019

So my employer pays me every two weeks which works out to 26 pay checks a year. When setting up a budget, Quicken does not allow you to adjust your "monthly" dates. For example my July paydays are Friday 7/5 and Friday 7/19. When checking my budget I am showing I am over in entertainment expenses because we went out to dinner July 4th even though my budget period is starting 7/5 (payday). Is there a work around for this since you can not customize budget dates, it is only monthly, quarterly, etc??? Is there a bi-weekly option to set up certain budgets? For example if I want to budget entertainment expenses every pay period (bi-weekly) rather than monthly? Hopefully someone can help or Quicken can switch up budges to make it more flexible for budget ranges outside of a strict month time frame.

Sherlock · July 2019

In my opinion, you're confusing your day-to-day spending with your budget. Quicken's budget feature provides for an annual budget allocated monthly and budget reports that may be viewed in intervals from a week to a year. We can compare our actual spending with our budgeted amounts but that is only a view applied against our budget. Here's an example, suppose I plan to net $12000 a year. That would average to be $1000 a month. To a budget, it does not matter exactly which day we're paid - only that we're paid. We could actually be paid in one lump some at the beginning of the year or at the end of the year or at multiple times during the year. Now, practically, it does matter when we're paid because we have debts to pay but when the debts are due may not coincide with when we're paid or even when we incurred the expenses. This is where using reminders and projected balances help because we need to plan to have sufficient funds in specific accounts at specific times to meet our obligations. Going back to the example, the budget is more about planning how I allocate the $12000 - what I'm spending - than on precisely when I actually pay. If I look at the budget and see that it says I am over spending on the budgeted dining category for the month and I'm underspending on the grocery category, I eat out less and at home more. But, note, I use a credit card to pay for most dining and grocery purchases and that debt will be paid later.

pl6400 · July 2019

Thanks for response however I feel that Quicken should expand the budget portion of the program to allow you to be able to drill down and really monitor spending on a bi-weekly basis or whatever perimeters the user likes. The ability to use custom dates would be beneficial.

Bob_L · July 2019

pl6400 said:

When checking my budget I am showing I am over in entertainment expenses because we went out to dinner July 4th even though my budget period is starting 7/5 (payday).

If you budget monthly being “over” depends on what the budgeted amount for entertainment was, not what your pay has been.

There is also the option to roll budget differences forward to the next month if, for example, you have used average estimates without regard to which month the expenditures will take place.

Snowman · July 2019

pl6400 said:

"Thanks for response however I feel that Quicken should expand the budget portion of the program to allow you to be able to drill down and really monitor spending on a bi-weekly basis or whatever perimeters the user likes. The ability to use custom dates would be beneficial."

Budgeting is done on a monthly, quarterly and an annual basis. The only matter to decide is if your budget year coincides with a calendar, and if not you can set Quicken to the other "Budget Year". What you want is impracticable. You would drive yourself crazy trying to make a bi-weekly budget work because the start and end dates of that bi-weekly budget period will always be different and you will have the same "issues" that you have with a month budget.

It make take some practice but a monthly budget should work just fine for you.

Quicken_Tyka · November 2019

(Removed Archival Message)

mshiggins · November 2019

@Quicken_Tyka this suggestion is asking for a user-selectable budget period, something more flexible than the current monthly or annual periods.

Can this suggestion be combined with other requests for a user-selectable budget period rather than archiving it?

mshiggins · November 2019

sca1178 · December 2019

Having a custom start date for me would really be nice. I get paid once/month (the 25th) and pay all my bills due on that same date. If I could start a budget period on the 25th then I can do all of my reporting from the 25th. If I can budget on the 25th, prioritize my bills on the 25th, I can then gain a better handle on how to budget the remainder of my income from the 25th. There are not many apps out there that allow a custom start date for a budget, but I found 2 recently that I will be investigating.

tallandcurlyjr · January 2020

There should be an option for a Weekly and/or Bi-weekly budget as well. People like me, who work hourly and get paid weekly would definitely benefit from that, I think.

srichard3817 · January 2020

> @Snowman said:
> pl6400 said:
> "Thanks for response however I feel that Quicken should expand the budget
> portion of the program to allow you to be able to drill down and really
> monitor spending on a bi-weekly basis or whatever perimeters the user
> likes. The ability to use custom dates would be beneficial."
> Budgeting is done on a monthly, quarterly and an annual basis. The only matter to decide is if your budget year coincides with a calendar, and if not you can set Quicken to the other "Budget Year". What you want is impracticable. You would drive yourself crazy trying to make a bi-weekly budget work because the start and end dates of that bi-weekly budget period will always be different and you will have the same "issues" that you have with a month budget.
> It make take some practice but a monthly budget should work just fine for you.

Custom dates for the budget would be very useful to me. Yes, my bills are monthly, but I use recurring transactions to account for them. I don't get paid bi=weekly, I get paid on the 7th and the 22nd each month. So for instance, a bill that is paid on the 12th would be entered into my register on the 7th. This way I can account for the fact that that money is already spoken for. I have an allowance for example for Groceries. The amount that I allocate is either for the period day 7 thru 21, or day 22 thru day 6 of the next month. I realize that I can "make do" with the current setup, but it would be really nice if the budget dates matched the days i get paid.

annewaldron · January 2020

I absolutely agree with the desire to set custom periods for a budget. I get paid on the 15th and last day of every month, however the paycheck from the last day covers the first through 14th expenses. My current budget view in Quicken makes the last half of the month look like a red-alarm mess because half of the month's income looks like its not there.

imdcareys · February 2020

Individuals are not bound by accounting and/or reporting standards for budgeting. Contrary to the opinions of some, individual budgeting is done based on personal preference, and a person should be free to perform the task in the way it makes most sense to them.

I personally budget on a semi-monthly basis and sum the categories and transfers in Excel - to work around the fact that Quicken doesn't allow for it. If the feature for variable period budgets is not implemented, at least provide a way for importing a budget into Quicken from a file of some sort - TXT, CSV, XLSX, etc. Short of even that, it would be very nice to be able to copy a column of numbers from a file and paste the whole column into the Quicken Budget screen all at once.

lucindrea · October 2020

I know this is an old thread , but who the [removed] gets paid monthly?!!! .. i have never understood why "budgeting" software treated everyone like they get paid monthly .. bi-weekly is the norm , i get paid twice a month (the last day and the 15th) and thats a bit unusual but not unheard of - the biggest issue with that is of course every piece of software thinks it's every 2 weeks and of course it tells me at the beginning of the month that i have X number of bills , even if i paid them the day before so it ALLAYS looks like i haven't paid anything.

lucindrea · October 2020

it's a banking thing - bankers [removed - disruptive] get paid monthly or even quarterly - so of course all software that is meant to help us normal people is never designed for us to use ... changing the monthly budget dates - not an option , creating a bi-weekly or bi-monthly budget - not an option .. creating monthly budgets so it always looks like we owe bills and never credited for that check we get on the last day of the previous month - yep , that we can do.

Chris_QPW · October 2020

@lucindrea You ask who gets paid monthly. Well here is a question for you. Who's bills lines up exactly with their paychecks?

No matter what time frame is used for your budget it is never going to line up exactly with your bills. There is always a mismatch between one's pay and ones bills. That is why it is a budget. As in a budget lets you determine what pay your are going to get an a given period of time vs the amount of expenses in that amount of time. The period of time is almost arbitrary. But a month is a good compromise for most people, especially since a lot of bills are monthly.

Chris_QPW · October 2020

For what it is worth I realized that one could actually do this in the current budget report (not the view).

If you set the custom dates to start on the day of your paycheck and then set the interval to two weeks, you should get what you want.

BukCha$er · October 30

This biweekly budget question has been on ongoing discussion for years and I have tried several work arounds with limited success. I have requested a biweekly feature by chatting to Quicken support and suggest others do the same by entering a feature request in the community feature link. I get paid every 2 weeks so I ended up using 2 accounts - 1 for regular monthly bills and another for 'discretionary' spending such as groceries, gas, entertainment, … I was able to create an income / expense report for my discretionary account and pick custom dates to reflect my pay cycle (paid every other Thursday) but with the options within Quicken I had to do a separate report for each pay cycle as when I tried to extend the report to 3 months and pick the biweekly reporting option the default week in quicken is from Sunday to Saturday which does not match my pay cycle. So I entered 2 feature requests:

Add flexibility within income / expense reports to allow flexibility on which day the week starts. This would give me some visibility on current and past months on how I am tracking income vs expenses and help me manage the current pay period so as not to run out of money. Hoping this is fairly easy to implement by Quicken and will allow me to set-up a single report for multiple pay cycles.
Allow for a true biweekly budget cycle. Here again it should allow the option to locally change the start day of the week (for me it's Thursdays but for others they could get paid on another day). This might be more complex but I think can be contained 'locally' with a specific option for a biweekly budget without affecting the other budget option currently available.

Not sure how complicated these requests are to implement but I am damn sure that if I am the only person requesting it will not get prioritized. So fellow Quickenites, if this is something you need then please add your voice/vote to the existing Idea Request here (for Quicken Classic): https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7863659/biweekly-budgeting-17-merged-votes#latest

Biweekly Budgeting (17 merged votes)

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