Reliability and export-ability of Savings Goals and Budgets

EmKay

I've been a Quicken user for decades. I used to do all my budgeting and savings goals tracking in Quicken (Quicken is where I first got the idea to HAVE savings goals!). Somewhere along the line, though, Intuit's Quicken REALLY messed up my data and my Savings (Profanity-Removed) so I came up with my own Excel way of tracking both goals and budget amounts.

Now that's feeling like a lot of work, though, and I'm considering coming back to Quicken to do these, again. I'd like to hear from others about the reliability and stability of both Savings Goals and Budgeting in Quicken -- especially if you use it a LOT, and your situations are a little intricate.

Thanks.

Tom Young

Savings Goals only arrived on the scene in 2013 so that's a fairly new concept in Quicken.   Although not styled as "Accounts", Savings Goals effectively operate as Accounts, with some special provisions for having "transfers" show up in the actual "from" Account(s) for some purposes, like reconciliations.  I haven't really used Savings Goals much at all but because transfers from/to Accounts to/from Savings Goals effectively follow Quicken's base concept - double entry accounting - I wouldn't think there would be much chance of messing those up, outside of the somewhat schizophrenic concept of "sometimes transfers are in the Saving Goal and sometimes they're not."

I also haven't used Quicken's budgeting process since the year after I had to upgrade to Q2013 because of changes in Quicken's methodology in this area, but before that I used the budgeting process extensively and found it pretty reliable.  You might have more success eliciting helpful comments to your post, particularly with respect to budgeting, by elaborating on what intricacies you face. 

EmKay

Thanks for the response, Tom. I don't remember much about why I stopped using both features -- again, it was a long time ago. (Are you sure Goals have only been around since 2013?? I used them for some time before quitting, and it looks like I started using excel for this in 2013. Anyway...)

I started plugging numbers in for both budgeting and savings today, as I do my monthly process. The first thing that brought to mind my previous trouble was trying to allocate funds in a brokerage account to a savings goal. If I remember correctly, it was difficult to reconcile an investment account once you started using goals, with it. Remembering that, I rolled back the savings goals I restarted today. I'm just too nervous to abandon my Excel method, and I sure don't want to maintain both of them. I'll wait and see if I get any more feedback.

UKR

How many Savings Goals do you have / have you ever had?

How many transactions total do you have in your Savings Goal accounts?

I remember prior posts about problems with Savings Goals when used frequently over a long time, but I don't think I've ever seen a resolution (or I missed it).

If you haven't rebooted Windows since you installed the latest software update, please do so now and then try Quicken again.

Still not working?

Let's try some "Troubleshooting 101" to ensure the Quicken software is installed and updated properly and that your data file is in good working order.
Please perform all the steps in this document:
Troubleshooting 101 - Fixing Software Installation and Data File Problems

If that still doesn't resolve the issue, I'd say it's time to call Quicken Support on the phone and request help.  Let them do a screen share session with you to review the situation on your computer, to determine the nature of the problem and to figure out how to fix it.

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EmKay

I *do* have over 30 goals and, when I was having the problems, probably approaching hundreds of transactions. Every month, there is at least one transaction per goal.

I think you misunderstood though -- I'm not having the problems now. I'm wondering if the features became more stable, over time, or if they've been kind of ignored and remain the same.

UKR

I'm not sure if anything has changed in the Savings Goals area, except perhaps occasional reports of corruption / problems with the balances.

Maybe somebody else will chime in here. I don't have enough in depth experience with using Savings Goals.