How to set up 2020 file and keeping reports and ending 2019 balance?

Douglashh

I keep a separate quicken file for each year. How do I set up my 2020 file with all the reports and ending balance from my 2019 file? I did this last year but cannot remember how I did it. Thanks.

John_in_NC

There is no automated way to do this.

To do it manually, you will have to duplicate your 2019 file and note all your balances. Then delete out the older transactions and enter Adjustment transactions to make the final balance for each account correct.

jacobs

@Douglashh As John notes, this functionality doesn't exist in Quicken Mac, and I'd encourage you to reconsider why you do it this way.

In the old days for both Mac and Windows, there were issues with databases getting large, bloated, potentially corrupted, and sometimes flat-out hitting a transaction limit -- so they needed a way to haver separate historical files to keep the current file small enough to work well. Quicken Mac is built on a modern-generation database that doesn't have the limits or weaknesses the old databases did. It can handle virtually unlimited number of transactions without getting too slow or becoming prone to corruption. So the developers intentionally didn't build in capability for year-end separation of data, and instead build it so registers and reports can be easily filtered just to show the current or previous year and the click of a button, for when you don't want to see prior data. But you have the advantage of having all your historical data in one place should you need to look back in time. (And you don't have to worry about finding or being able to open a file from many years ago; some people who kept old files discovered too late that when they needed that data, Quicken could no longer open their old files.)

I don't know your reasons for having separate files for each year, but if it's because "that's the way I always did it", you might want to try a newer approach of leaving all your data in one file over time. With proper use of filters, I think most users find they have no need to manually create separate year files. 

Douglashh

In point of fact there is a way to start a new year because I found it, it just takes a couple of minutes. As too John's comments one of the reasons I like annual files is that I keep all my records on an annual basis and it just seems to work better having a separate file for each year. In the beginning it was mostly because I was worried about an unending file with many years data and I suspected that issue was no more but by then I had been doing it for many years and just decided to keep doing annual files which was easy with 2007.

volvogirl

What if you want to look something up like when you bought it or paid it but don't even know the year?  You have to open each file and hunt around.  And when you get a new version you need to remember to open and convert each file.  And other reasons.