Quicken for Mac v5.16 Released

Quicken Marcus

Today we've started the rollout of the v5.16 release.

Reports
5.16 brings a bunch of new standard reports. We took the top reports that people created and added them as standard reports for everyone.  These new standard reports work a little differently than the ones in the past.  Changes will not be automatically saved. This means when you try to customize a standard report, a new report is automatically created for you with the changes you've made and then you can decide to save it for future reference or discard it. When you launch the standard report again, it continues to be the exact same report as you expect, untouched and unaltered.



We've also enhanced the way Printing and Export works. Now reports will Print and Export as they look on the screen.  If you've collapsed or expanded categories, this will be reflected in the printed or exported copy. 

Also, many customers don't realize there are special Quicken print options in the Mac Print dialog that allow you to fit a report or budget to a page or multiple pages to help you save paper.  Make sure to select Show Details to see these options.

QuickFill Improvements
5.16 continues to improve QuickFill.  There are new preference options to define the default behavior for automatically saving Renaming Rules and QuickFill rules when editing transactions.


We've also added a Lock feature so you can make sure a QuickFill rule isn't accidentally overwritten while editing a transaction. This can be found in the QuickFill editing screen.

Finally, you can quickly create a QuickFIll rule based on an existing transaction by selecting ⌘Y. This brings up the QuickFill rule screen with all of the items from your transaction auto-filled in their respective fields.

New Bill Pay Improvements
A power user feature to speed bill pay entry and setup is to add a keyword in the check # field to designate that a transaction is a type of bill pay.  We've made a number of enhancements around this feature. First, there is now a menu that pops down to show you the check and bill pay options. 

Hopefully, this introduces this power user feature to more people.  Second, we've added Quick Pay and Check Pay, our new bill pay feature for Premier and above customers, as options for the Check # field. Third, selecting one of the bill pay options means the payee list will initially show bill pay payees for that particular bill pay method.  This should save time when paying bills.

There are also stability improvements throughout the product.  Please use this forum post if you run into any issues. We'll have people monitoring this post to answer questions or hop on any burning problems that arise.

UPDATE

• 5/15 - Initial roll out to a subset of customers.  If you don't get the update screen but really want to give 5.16 a try, just select Check for Updates under the Quicken menu and you'll be able to download v5.16.
• 5/21 - 5.16.1 has been released to all customers.

Rick2022

It appears that this version updates the database. Is this the part of the DB that houses the data? Did the data file change such that one can't easily convert back?

jacobs

Yes. As the Quicken Mac feature set continues to expand, most of the major updates do make some changes to the database. Moving backward in such cases requires restoring the older version of the application (which the installer puts in your Trash) as well as a backup/older copy of your data file (Quicken makes a backup as part of the installation, so there's always one available after an update).

Rick2022

Thanks for this info. I've moved it out of the trash to a different folder for safekeeping for now and found the backup in the Automatic Backup folder. The data file has Pre-Update in the name.

[Deleted User]

The list for reports is too long
Reports under "Popular" and "Summary" should be nested in folders, that we can open when needed; as it is for "Comparaison" "Crosstabs" and "Other reports"
On a MacBook Air that long deafult report list does not fit the screen

and we do not need those reports to be constantly available to our view

RickO

Gilles said:

The list for reports is too long

I agree. At the very least, Summary could be collapsed to a sub-menu.

BlueWavesDesign

PLEASE change the default setting for the “auto-fill” of categories from checked (DOES auto-fill whether it's right or NOT) to OPTION

Since this “upgrade” feature I have had so many categories inadvertently changed from the regular category to some errant once-off. It is really annoying.

“Save quick-fill rule for this payee with category” should NOT be default. It should be an OPTION.

smayer97

BlueWavesDesign said:

PLEASE change the default setting for the “auto-fill” of categories from checked (DOES auto-fill whether it's right or NOT) to OPTION

Since this “upgrade” feature I have had so many categories inadvertently changed from the regular category to some errant once-off. It is really annoying.

“Save quick-fill rule for this payee with category” should NOT be default. It should be an OPTION.

I would go one step further... also implement the option like in QM2007, if you hold the OPTION key and press ENTER, the QuickFill behaviour is reversed for that one entry. So if the default is to update QuickFill rule, OPTION-ENTER does NOT update the QuickFill rule for that one entry.

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Quicken for Mac v5.15 Released.

jacobs

BlueWavesDesign said:

PLEASE change the default setting for the “auto-fill” of categories from checked (DOES auto-fill whether it's right or NOT) to OPTION

Since this “upgrade” feature I have had so many categories inadvertently changed from the regular category to some errant once-off. It is really annoying.

“Save quick-fill rule for this payee with category” should NOT be default. It should be an OPTION.

@[email protected] You know that one of the features of this latest update was that this is a setting you can change on your own, right? Simply go to Preferences, click on the Register tab and select whether you want QuickFill rules to be automatically on or off when creating a transaction. (For me, the default after upgrading was set to OFF, which is what you're asking for.) And when entering a transaction, you can override whichever way you have the default set by clicking in the pop-up blue box above the category field

You may want to review and editor or delete renaming rules for Payees which were created under the previous version.

[email protected]

Gilles said:

The list for reports is too long

I agree as well. I think the Summary reports could be put in their own subfolder so only the Popular reports are always showing when viewing the list of Reports.

In addition, I would really love to be able to organize my own custom reports into folders. I have a lot of them and the list is really difficult to manage. Please consider adding the ability to organize custom reports into subfolders.

caram

> @jacobs said: You know that one of the features of this latest update was that this is a setting you can change on your own, right?

Is there a clear write-up somewhere of how QuickFill behaves in 5.16? QuickFill has changed a lot since the previous versions and I have gotten confused and am not quite sure any longer which options are best for me. A tutorial with examples would be great if Quicken or the community would be willing to put one forward.

Incidentally, I am still hanging to QM 5.13 until the dust settles and categories and rules no longer change under my feet as it still seems to happen to some people even with 5.16.

Could this be the reason I am not seeing 5.16 even when I press "Check for updates..."? Or is this still a limited release?

RickO

AFAIK, it's still limited release. But you are supposed to be able to trigger the update manually by using Check for Updates. However, you may not see 5.16 until you've already updated to 5.15, so it may be a two step process for you.

Here are the 5.16 release notes: https://www.quicken.com/support/subscription-release-quicken-mac-release-notes

Here are the intro tutorials related to QuickFill from 5.16:

glennmacc

FWIW, I've had a smooth transition to 5.16 from 5.15.3. The new options for Rule Preferences and Quick Fill seem pretty flexible to me and give me all of the options that I need (at least so far).

I have not used the new pay features, but once I set up Quick Pay or Check Pay, I am guessing that the register options will be a big help too.

The reporting is better, but I agree that I'd like to see the options nested, though it is not a big thing right now for me. I have 72 custom reports so I don't even see the list of standard reports when I open the reports tab. I will not likely ever use the new reports since I have so many custom reports already set up, but for someone just starting to develop custom reports, it seems like a big step forward.

One question on reports, does this mean that the old reports engine is completely gone? It seems like all of the new reports templates are based on the "new" engine and that the old ones have been completely eliminated. Is this true? Just curious really. It would certainly reduce confusion about report formatting, etc. Edit: I see some of the old reports in "Other Reports". These do not seem to be editable, so I am guessing that these still use the old report engine. Am I right?

Glenn

RickO

does this mean that the old reports engine is completely gone?

No, the reports circled in red below still use the old reporting engine:

Quicken Marcus

Reports are in a transition period in this release so the long menu is only temporary.  We'll be moving to a new and improved design to access reports in the near future.  Also, the way reports work will be more consistent in terms of whether they are automatically saved or you're asked to save. We conducted a survey of customers and found that most people had very few custom reports so we decided to keep the long menu but we clearly understand that this isn't ideal for those of you with lots of custom reports. glennmacc, 72 custom reports.  Wow, that's incredible.  The new report design should make this a lot better.

In terms of the classic reports, we continue to include all of them but have deprioritized a bunch of them to try to get people to use the reports based on the new engine. Since the old reports saved customization, we didn't want to completely replace them and have customers lose those customized reports.  Also, we continue to add report infrastructure so we can fully replace more of the existing classic reports.

Finally, we have fixed a number of crashing bugs that cropped up for customers who run Quicken on macOS 10.11 and 10.12. Continuing to support these 5 and 4-year-old OS releases are costly.  We will stop fixing macOS 10.11 and 10.12 only issues in the next couple of months. Please upgrade to a newer macOS if you can.

We will be shipping a new 5.16.1 release to all customers hopefully today.

  

caram

Thanks @RickO. I wasn't obvious to me before the upgrade what the difference was between Rename Rules (the only ones visible in 5.13) and QuickFill rules (visibles only from 5.14). Now I understand.

It was an easy upgrade from 5.13 to 5.16. No need to go through 5.15 first.

Now playing around...

caram

@marcus, I noticed a couple of issues with QuickFill rules:

Best matches: Duplicate entries
Enter a new transaction, start typing the first few letters of an existing payee, the Best Matches popup appears, some entries are presented twice: the ones for which both a Payee and a QuickFill rule exists it seems. Is this really the intended behavior? It makes transaction entry a little cumbersome, because now I have to pause and think and select one of the two mostly indistinguishable transactions. There should only be 1 option presented to the user IMHO.

Best matches: Unicode support (diacritics)
This seems to have improved since 5.13, but there's just one easy, extra step missing. Example:
1. Enter a new transaction, type "cafe" as Payee.
2. QM display "Café" as the best match (excellent!), but it's not selected. The option to "Create a new Payee" is instead. This is not the expected behavior. The expected behavior would be for "Café" to be selected.

Splits
Splits seem to retain "all fields", even when only "category" is selected. At least, this seems to be what happens when QuickFill rules are automatically created when moving from 5.13 to 5.16.

Preferences / "When saving new QuickFill rules, save:"
I thought there was a discussion that intermediate options would be allows between the 2 current extremes: "category" and "all fields". I need QuickFill to remember Tags and Amounts for most transactions (but not Memos). Any idea when this might be available?

markrougeux

I cannot believe the format of the new reports. Terrible. Whoever designed these doesn't seem to understand how things like Net Worth are reported or used. A net worth report is as of a certain date. A snapshot of a moment in time. (Whereas an income and expense report is over a period of time.) The new report is just Net Worth over time. A whole bunch of columns of different points in time. Who needs that?? The default should be a one column report of my net worth, say at 12/31/19. And even if I specify the date range at 12/2019 to 12/2019 to get just one column, the formatting is so bad. A whole page of a blank header!! This is really just the same awful mess that was offered before. Very disappointing.

RickO

some entries are presented twice: the ones for which both a Payee and a QuickFill rule exists it seems.

I think you're seeing the payee name which is presented to create an otherwise blank transaction for the payee and the quick fill, which will contain the category and perhaps other data. However, if you mark the quick fill rule as the default, it will be the one that pre-selected in the popup list.

markrougeux

Re the "new" Cash Flow report, have you tried printing this or saving as a PDF? Again, the formatting is bad. The data is jammed against the left margin, and the lines beneath each total go all the way across the page. I'm happy you are trying to improve the reporting function, but I'm wondering who looks at this before it is published. There is such a long way to go before the reporting here approached Quicken 2007 for Mac. Someone who understands financial reporting needs to look at this. I'm happy to help you understand how financial reports should be created and formatted. Let me know.

RickO

The new report is just Net Worth over time

This is not new. This is the same report that's been there since QMac 2015. You can limit it to a single column by choosing a single month in the report customization. Unfortunately though, that net worth value will be as of the end of that single month. There's no way to specify an exact date. This has been brought up on the forum many, many times.

Bottom line: the Net Worth report has not (yet) been changed or improved, but I believe the product manager has indicated that this is pretty high on the list for the next rounds of report improvements.

markrougeux

Re: Spending over Time report. If I want to know how much I spent over a period of time, (for example, the year 2019), currently what I get is a 13 column report that shows every month and Total. What I really just want is the total over that period of time, but there is no way to only get that column displayed. I have to have all 13 columns, which is unnecessary. And good luck trying to print that! The first page is the bar graph (why can't I exclude that from printing?) Then a 13 column report spread over several pages, when all I really wanted was a nice, tidy one column report on one page. There should be an option to exclude the monthly detail.

RickO

The data is jammed against the left margin, and the lines beneath each total go all the way across the page.

The Cash Flow report is just a special case of the Summary Report that happens to be set up as Year to Date with Time as the columns and no interval. The general report can accommodate many columns if you were, for example, to change the interval to Month. Yes, it would be nice if it were centered without the extending lines if there is only one column. But that seems to me to be a pretty minor formatting issue in the big scheme of things.

caram

Damm! My post reporting several QuickFill issues has just disappeared from this thread! Would anyone have a copy that would make it easier for me to repost?

RickO

Here it is. Weird, I don't think it's something that mod would have deleted.

@marcus, I noticed a couple of issues with QuickFill rules:

Phantom rules
1. Create a new transaction Pay:Test, Cat: Test for which no QuickFill rule exists and allow QM to create one.
2. Go to Payees & Rules and delete the rule just created.
3. Create a new transaction for Pay:Test, the QuickFill rule is still presented as an option even though it was deleted. This behavior persists along restarts of QM.

Splits
- Splits seem to retain "all fields", even when only "category" is selected. At least, this seems to be what happens when QuickFill rules are automatically created when moving from 5.13 to 5.16.

Preferences / "When saving new QuickFill rules, save:"
- I thought there was a discussion that intermediate options would be allows between the 2 current extremes: "category" and "all fields". Do you know when this will be released? I need to remember Tags and Amounts for most transactions (but not Memos).

RickO

Re: Spending over Time report. If I want to know how much I spent over a period of time, (for example, the year 2019), currently what I get is a 13 column report that shows every month and Total.

The Spending Over Time report is one of the old reports using the old reporting engine. I don't know why they didn't put that under the Other group to kind of hide it since it can be pretty much replicated with a Summary Report. The Summary Report will solve the issues you mention:

1. Click Create Summary Report
2. Set Row to Category
3. Set Column to Time
4. Set Time Interval to None
5. Click Continue to Customize
6. Set the time period Date Range

You will now have a single column for that date range without the bar graph. 

Yes, when you print it, it will be left-justified and the lines will extend across the page as you complained about in your previous post. Here's a workaround for that:

1. In the Print dialog, click the Manage Custom Sizes in the Paper Size popup
2. Click the + sign to create a new paper size
3. Make the new paper size Height = 11 and Width something narrow like 5"
4. Click OK

When you use that new narrow paper size to print, the report will take the same number of pages but will be centered without the extending lines. You will have to experiment with the new paper size width to get something that looks good to you.

pmele

Update killed the ability to updates accounts for me. Get a general error about syncing failure. I have turned off sync and yet it still fails.

RickO

That's much more likely to be a coincidence rather than related to the update since the update didn't really change anything about syncing. Might help if you mention which bank and connection method you're having trouble with.

JoeyMaggard

I am having the same problem. Not updating any accounts. Also not able to report to Quicken. Trying to report gives back a check your internet connection and try again message. The error message is for my Mountain America Credit Union account, but none of my other accounts updated.

JoeyMaggard

Correction: It updated ONE account.