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How to enter a six month payment schedule for an annual contract.

Quick-Start

I have several annual accounts that only require a six month payment schedule. For example: I have an annual rental house insurance policy (running from June-to-June each year) which has a payment schedule that runs from June to November each year. The initial month’s payment is one amount, while the remaining five months are a different amount, followed by six months with no payments scheduled.

In the past, I had found and used a screen where I could enter the payment schedule for this account into Quicken directly. It displayed a month-by-month entry screen that I could fill in with the figures from that company's payment schedule. Beautiful!

I (gasp!) lost my way and cannot locate that screen anymore. I searched by looking through 'Bills and Income', and then searched each remaining tab hoping for a memory jogger without success. I hope it has not been ‘updated’ out of Quicken, as one of the Quicken support folks guessed after being unsuccessful at helping me find it.

Can anyone help me re-discover this lost treasure in Quicken?

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Comments

Frankx

Hi @ Quick-Start,

I believe that you were using the "Bill Reminder" feature. It allows you to schedule future payments of bills. However, it does have its limitations and I believe that the "screen" isn't exactly as you remember it.

To take your insurance policy example - you would need to set up two bill reminders, as follows:
First set up a reminder for (let's say) the "June 15th" amount for a single payment.
Next, you would set up a series of 5 months of payments July 15th through November 15th, for the remaining monthly payment amount.

Here are the specific steps:
1) In Quicken - you would go to "Bills > "Bill and Income Reminders" > "Add" > "Bill" > "Manual Bill"
2) Next you input the "Pay to" field;
3a) Then fill in the "Due next on" date of the first payment; the amount of the first payment, the account, and the category.
3b) For payments #2 through #6 you'll follow steps 1) and 2) above. Then enter the due date of payment #2 in the date field. Next you should click on "change" link - located to the right of the date field. Fill in the appropriate information for the remaining five payments, including the date that the last payment is due.

Hope the instructions aren't too confusing...

Get back to me if you have any follow-up questions.

Frankx

UKR

@Frankx has a good solution. Only two reminders are needed to handle this situation. But these reminders (a "One time only" for June, the 2nd one monthly for July with an End date in November) only cover the payment needs for this year. Next year you'll have to remember to create new pair of reminders.

Assuming that you'll be paying these insurance premiums every year, you might want to consider setting it up as follows:
Six reminders, one for each month, Frequency: Yearly, no end date

Acme Ins {Jun}, $xxx.xx, due June 15th, yearly
Acme Ins {Jul}, $yyy.yy, due July 15th, yearly
etc.
Acme Ins {Nov}, $yyy.yy, due Nov 15th, yearly

each of the reminders should be set

to remind you 15 days (or so) ahead of due date so that you can record them with the correct premium amount for this year
Estimate amount from last [1] payment

I'm hoping that one of these days Quicken will add some more frequency methods to the Scheduled Reminders, including one where you can enter a table of Due Dates and amounts for monthly payments on a schedule like yours, repeating every year.
See https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7352236/new-frequency-for-scheduled-reminders-both-q-windows-and-mac for more details.

Boatnmaniac

The way I handle these types of bills: Set up 1 (not 2) Bill Reminder for 6 months using the monthly dollar amount for months 2-6. After the Reminder is set up, edit only the first instance of the reminder by entering the correct $ amount for that month. Done. As my wife says, "Easy, breezy."

Yes, this means another 6 months reminder will need to be set up for the next year but that can be done once the insurance bill is received. Or you can set it up at the same time with estimated insurance costs and then edit it once the insurance bill is received.

Rocket J Squirrel

Quick-Start said:

In the past, I had found and used a screen where I could enter the payment schedule for this account into Quicken directly. It displayed a month-by-month entry screen that I could fill in with the figures from that company's payment schedule. Beautiful!

Can anyone help me re-discover this lost treasure in Quicken?

Perhaps you were using the Calendar? Tools > Calendar. You can right-click on a date to add a reminder.

For a really good easter egg, right-click a date, hold the Shift key, and left-click "Add Reminder...". You will get a screen full of all the reminder options, which you may find more convenient than the standard reminder dialog which requires a lot of clicking through to get to various options.