New User - Quicken for Mac Questions

dioxide45

Okay, I am a LOOOOONG time Microsoft Money user. I actually converted from Money to Quicken for Mac yesterday. 25 years using MS Money. So far, I am loving the Quicken interface. I like the ability to easily download transactions and the fact that it doesn't take 10 minutes to load my Money data file that has 20 years of transactions is great. I decided to start fresh in Quicken and not try to import transactions from Money. I suspect it wasn't worth the trouble as I will just export Money transactions to CSV in case I ever need to look up something.

So far I am finding Quicken for Mac to be very easy to use. It took me a good chunk of time to connect to our accounts and reconcile the transactions between them since transfers didn't connect automatically. Luckily only the last few months of transactions downloaded. Now that all that is out of the way and I also reconciled all of the accounts that I could to their last statements and I think I have just about everything setup as I like it.

A few questions though, and I know some may not be experienced with MS Money, so I will try to explain them best I can.

1 - Is there a way in the register to only show unreconciled transactions? I see that I can filter by Status, but can't seem to find a way to filter by the "Clr" column.

2 - I can't figure out if it is possible to edit the date and amount of a specific bill before or during the "Mark as Paid". Sometimes my electric bill isn't always the $150 I have it set at and I have it in my Bills & Income with a date one day prior to when it is usually due. I often pay it early. Clicking on the Mark as Paid button just adds it to the register, then I have to go over to the account and edit the date and amount. In Money, when you click to add a bill to your register, it would popup and allow you to adjust the date or amount, I can't figure out if it is possible to do the same in Quicken for Mac.

3 - I can't figure out how to edit specific instances of a bill. Some bills I have set with a $0 amount and when the bill comes in I like to update the amount for projection purposes but not pay it right away. I found I can go in to Projected Balances and update the amount for a single item, but is this the only way to update specific instances?

4 - It would be nice if there were other schedules frequencies available. I have a couple bills due every four months. Also, certain things I like to track I would like to be able to set to # weeks. I guess this isn't in Quicken. To be fair, MS Money couldn't do this either, but it could do every four months.

Thanks in advance. I am sure there will be more questions as I go along, but I have found many answers already reading through the community forums.

jacobs

Welcome to Quicken. It will take a while to get used to it, so just keep exploring and plugging away until it starts to become natural.

1 - You can't filter on the Clr column, but you can easily have it show you the unreconciled transactions. When you click on any column heading, Quicken sorts the register by that column, and clicking on the column heading a second time sorts in the reverse order. In this case, click on the Clr column and it will bring the reconciled transactions to the top; click a second time and the unreconciled transactions will be at the top.

2 & 3 - There are some things you can do with scheduled transactions in the Bills & Income screen, but for some things, you do need to go to the register. You need to set the register to be showing Scheduled Transactions, which is controlled in Settings for the register (bottom right toolbar). Set it to show the next occurrence, occurrences in the next 30 days, or whatever future period of time you want to see in the register. If you doulbe-click to edit the next occurrence of a scheduled transaction, you will see that you can edit the date and the amount. When you save the transaction, that one is updated, but future ones in the schedule are unchanged. Also note that when you select the first instance of the scheduled transaction, a small blue menu pops up under the transaction. Here, you can control whether you want to skip an instance, edit all future instances, or delete all future instances of this transaction. The Bills & Income screen has been evolving over the past year or so, so I'd expect they may eventually move some of this functionality to that screen, but for now, instead of fighting it, just pop over to the appropriate register and you have the control you want.

4 - Scheduling transactions is very flexible, but the developers made a change last year to try to make it simple, to avoid confusing users, by hiding some of the options -- and from the posts on this forum, it seems they only managed to confuse more users.  Here's the trick… On the Schedule screen, by default it shows the Frequency menu and a starting date. But to the left of the date, there's a little triangle. Click the triangle and it reveals the other scheduling parameters. You can easily set a bill to be due every fourth month on a certain day, or every 'x' weeks. The scheduling options here cover most normal circumstances people need. Just make sure after you're done tweaking the parameters that your starting date is what you want; as you edit the parameters, it may not change to the starting date you intend.

Hope that helps!

John_in_NC

dioxide45 said:

1 - Is there a way in the register to only show unreconciled transactions? I see that I can filter by Status, but can't seem to find a way to filter by the "Clr" column.

2 - I can't figure out if it is possible to edit the date and amount of a specific bill before or during the "Mark as Paid". Sometimes my electric bill isn't always the $150 I have it set at and I have it in my Bills & Income with a date one day prior to when it is usually due. I often pay it early. Clicking on the Mark as Paid button just adds it to the register, then I have to go over to the account and edit the date and amount. In Money, when you click to add a bill to your register, it would popup and allow you to adjust the date or amount, I can't figure out if it is possible to do the same in Quicken for Mac.

3 - I can't figure out how to edit specific instances of a bill. Some bills I have set with a $0 amount and when the bill comes in I like to update the amount for projection purposes but not pay it right away. I found I can go in to Projected Balances and update the amount for a single item, but is this the only way to update specific instances?

4 - It would be nice if there were other schedules frequencies available. I have a couple bills due every four months. Also, certain things I like to track I would like to be able to set to # weeks. I guess this isn't in Quicken. To be fair, MS Money couldn't do this either, but it could do every four months.

Howdy to using Quicken for Mac, Dioxide45:

1: There isn't a filter, but you can certainly click on the "Clr" column to make that the sort order. This will show all unreconciled transx together. Click on the Date column when finished to return to the regular sort order.

2. I suggest you examine the "Projected Balances" button under Bills & Income-this will show all of your scheduled transactions. You can Double click on one and choose the Mark as Paid option dropdown option. This will allows you to edit and details (date/amount, etc.) for that single transaction that will get posted.

3. See Number two regarding Projected balances. In this view, you can edit date/amount for a single instance without actually posting it. (Don't use the Mark as Paid dropdown option.) Just change the reminder and hit return to save. That will only affect that instance without altering (editing) the entire series. 

4. Can't help you on the frequency options. Those appear to be the standard ones used for years.

jacobs

Welcome to Quicken. It will take a while to get used to it, so just keep exploring and plugging away until it starts to become natural.

1 - You can't filter on the Clr column, but you can easily have it show you the unreconciled transactions. When you click on any column heading, Quicken sorts the register by that column, and clicking on the column heading a second time sorts in the reverse order. In this case, click on the Clr column and it will bring the reconciled transactions to the top; click a second time and the unreconciled transactions will be at the top.

2 & 3 - There are some things you can do with scheduled transactions in the Bills & Income screen, but for some things, you do need to go to the register. You need to set the register to be showing Scheduled Transactions, which is controlled in Settings for the register (bottom right toolbar). Set it to show the next occurrence, occurrences in the next 30 days, or whatever future period of time you want to see in the register. If you doulbe-click to edit the next occurrence of a scheduled transaction, you will see that you can edit the date and the amount. When you save the transaction, that one is updated, but future ones in the schedule are unchanged. Also note that when you select the first instance of the scheduled transaction, a small blue menu pops up under the transaction. Here, you can control whether you want to skip an instance, edit all future instances, or delete all future instances of this transaction. The Bills & Income screen has been evolving over the past year or so, so I'd expect they may eventually move some of this functionality to that screen, but for now, instead of fighting it, just pop over to the appropriate register and you have the control you want.

4 - Scheduling transactions is very flexible, but the developers made a change last year to try to make it simple, to avoid confusing users, by hiding some of the options -- and from the posts on this forum, it seems they only managed to confuse more users.  Here's the trick… On the Schedule screen, by default it shows the Frequency menu and a starting date. But to the left of the date, there's a little triangle. Click the triangle and it reveals the other scheduling parameters. You can easily set a bill to be due every fourth month on a certain day, or every 'x' weeks. The scheduling options here cover most normal circumstances people need. Just make sure after you're done tweaking the parameters that your starting date is what you want; as you edit the parameters, it may not change to the starting date you intend.

Hope that helps!

John_in_NC

dioxide45 said:

1 - Is there a way in the register to only show unreconciled transactions? I see that I can filter by Status, but can't seem to find a way to filter by the "Clr" column.

2 - I can't figure out if it is possible to edit the date and amount of a specific bill before or during the "Mark as Paid". Sometimes my electric bill isn't always the $150 I have it set at and I have it in my Bills & Income with a date one day prior to when it is usually due. I often pay it early. Clicking on the Mark as Paid button just adds it to the register, then I have to go over to the account and edit the date and amount. In Money, when you click to add a bill to your register, it would popup and allow you to adjust the date or amount, I can't figure out if it is possible to do the same in Quicken for Mac.

3 - I can't figure out how to edit specific instances of a bill. Some bills I have set with a $0 amount and when the bill comes in I like to update the amount for projection purposes but not pay it right away. I found I can go in to Projected Balances and update the amount for a single item, but is this the only way to update specific instances?

4 - It would be nice if there were other schedules frequencies available. I have a couple bills due every four months. Also, certain things I like to track I would like to be able to set to # weeks. I guess this isn't in Quicken. To be fair, MS Money couldn't do this either, but it could do every four months.

Howdy to using Quicken for Mac, Dioxide45:

1: There isn't a filter, but you can certainly click on the "Clr" column to make that the sort order. This will show all unreconciled transx together. Click on the Date column when finished to return to the regular sort order.

2. I suggest you examine the "Projected Balances" button under Bills & Income-this will show all of your scheduled transactions. You can Double click on one and choose the Mark as Paid option dropdown option. This will allows you to edit and details (date/amount, etc.) for that single transaction that will get posted.

3. See Number two regarding Projected balances. In this view, you can edit date/amount for a single instance without actually posting it. (Don't use the Mark as Paid dropdown option.) Just change the reminder and hit return to save. That will only affect that instance without altering (editing) the entire series. 

4. Can't help you on the frequency options. Those appear to be the standard ones used for years.

dioxide45

Thanks. I was able to fix all my scheduled transactions using that small triangle. I had checked in there, but couldn't edit that field because I had it set to quarterly. Works for all of my schedules now.

As for editing a schedule before marking as paid, I think I will go the route of using my account registers to update before making as paid/deposited. With this, there really won't be a need to work in Bills & Income unless I am adding or editing something or I want to do projections. I just wish there was reporting for projections. I don't really like how the current projections work. Lining up the dates with the green dots isn't easy and a lot of times the popup box blocks the green dots.

Thank you both for the responses. Very helpful.