Including or Excluding Transfers in Budgets in Quicken for Mac?

HQ

At least 15 months ago, Product Manager, Marcus, communicated that the ability to "Include or Exclude Transfers in Budgets" was a "top" priority for Quicken for Mac. He also qualified that saying it could be "many" months away. I guess the meanings of top priority and many months are important. To me, it's been many, many months and still no capability. Can anyone share whether this capability is still a priority?

jacobs

He has indicated that there were a lot of steps in the process, and the addition of transfers in reports over the past several releases this year was the first visible step in this process; they needed to have that done before they could make the changes to the budget portion of the program. He has also indicated that they have to re-write a substantial amount of code in the budget section of the program to make this and other requested budget functionality changes (particularly budget rollovers). There have been hints that this work is underway, but no statement about when users can expect to see these changes -- but they rarely comment on when new features will appear. 

HQ

Thanks for your response, Jacops. Still, very disappointing that after so long (actually years now) this capability has not been addressed by Quicken for Mac.

Is there a tutorial anywhere that explains how the addition of transfers affects reports? Or, is it possible for you to give a brief explanation of how the recent transfer changes affect reports?

jacobs

I suggest reading this post from the product manager when version 5.13 was first released last fall. He explains the added report capabilities.

J_H

Sorry to kick a dead horse, but the absence of transfers in budgets just boggles the mind. The point of a budget is to manage where your money is going. Believe me, there is nothing I would love more than if my mortgage payment, retirement contributions, car payments, college savings, etc. weren't a meaningful part of my overall spending picture (I can dream...) But, I make a budget so I can see where I expect my money to go over the course of the year, what months might present problems for cashflow, and whether I face the prospect of being in the red or the black for the year. All of those things are impacted my those monthly transfers. It seems that parts of the Quicken Mac toolset are wildly unsophisticated relative to

J_H

the rest of the toolset.

(OK, looks like I also need to put in a forum feature request to allow users to edit their posts - lol.)

jacobs

@J_H  You gain the "privilege" of being able to edit your own posts after you've posted a few times here and earned the "points" to do so (I believe this exists to thwart scammers who used to create dummy accounts to try to scam users).

As I noted above, the developers have pledged to develop this functionality, and they are making progress towards delivering it. Everyone -- users and developers -- agrees that Quicken needs to allow users to budget for transfers. I don't think posting the desire for it will make it happen any sooner.

bob928

It’s more work but would this help? I’ve added what I call offset accounts to track things differently. For example I have a mtg pmt offset account. In the split for my mtg pmt I add a debit for the full mtg pmt and a credit to the offset account. This allows me to track my full mtg pmt as a cash flow as well as the amounts that go to principle and interest.

HQ

To Quicken Product Management: Is "including" or "excluding" transfer capability for Budgeting still a priority enhancement?

Robert Silvey

Please! The new version 5.17.2 still doesn't have it, and it's been promised to be imminent for two years.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @HQ

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question.

The ability to include or exclude transfers in the budget is planned, however, there currently is no ETA.

To be notified of any changes or updates, I would follow the existing Idea thread available here.

To follow a conversation, please bookmark the gold star in the top right-hand corner.

Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka