How do I create budget reports on a Mac?

LRL

Hi Support,

I just signed up and am testing the software to create and monitor my budget.

I searched the forums but can't find an answer on how to create reports for my budget. I hope I just missed it somewhere.

I see the only financial information for the budget is the budget view itself unless I am editing the budget.

Thank you,

jacobs

The only reporting for a budget is to print from the budget screen itself -- or to export to a csv file and do further analysis or report formatting in Number or Excel. 

Printing and exporting include actual versus budget data. The fundamental flaw with printing budgets currently is that the year-to-date values are only useful on the last day of each month. there's no way to specify a date range, or "as of the end of last month". As a result, you're getting YTD through the current month, even through the actual values for the current month are incomplete. Anyone who uses budgets in Quicken Mac is hoping the developers will fix this sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, the workaround is to export the budget and quickly create your own YTD report through the end of the prior month in a spreadsheet.

JayBugs

On the screen showing the budget, click on the [|] Export link at the upper right and select one of the options for the full budget or the summary. You can also print the full budget or summary from the Print link next to Export.

That is the only budget type reporting that I've seen. Searching in the report screen for budget gives nothing. Perhaps if the above doesn't give you what you need, you could describe what you want and add it as a suggested feature.

Remember that the minimal basically useless budget in Quicken Mac does not do any kind of useful rollover of unspent (or overspent) funds from month to month in the budget display/export. The useful part I use is the first column that shows running totals from the start of the year to the current month. This first column DOES appear to add up all the budgeted monthly amounts and the spent monthly amounts so that first section is technically doing a rollover from month-to-month but loses the rollover year-to-year. Thus if my dining out is $2,000 overspent at the end of December then January 1 it says I'm fine again...perfect way to go bankrupt!

(I get around this by taking the end of year figures and using them to increase or decrease my January monthly budget for each category and then set the other 11 months to the actual monthly budget. That works as a faked rollover but is a real pain to do manually ever year.)

jacobs

The only reporting for a budget is to print from the budget screen itself -- or to export to a csv file and do further analysis or report formatting in Number or Excel. 

Printing and exporting include actual versus budget data. The fundamental flaw with printing budgets currently is that the year-to-date values are only useful on the last day of each month. there's no way to specify a date range, or "as of the end of last month". As a result, you're getting YTD through the current month, even through the actual values for the current month are incomplete. Anyone who uses budgets in Quicken Mac is hoping the developers will fix this sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, the workaround is to export the budget and quickly create your own YTD report through the end of the prior month in a spreadsheet.

LRL

Well,...this is unexpected. Basic budget reports are well.. basic and not unreasonable. ???

And working outside of Quicken defeats the purpose of working with Quicken at all. So very disappointed that a feature so essential is not offered. :-(

Hmm...I'll look at exporting, but this is not what I was looking for. I may have to cancel and try to find another software. Thank you for your insight.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LRL

Hi Jaybugs,

I am looking for a report that will show my expenses and income for a given period and the differences between the budgeted and the actual amounts spent.

I hope this helps.

- select data by date range (1 month, months, 1 quarter, the whole year)
- select which expense categories to report
- select which income categories to report
- show the difference between the budgeted amounts and actual
- allow the ability to display categories and or subcategories or not
- possibly offer a visual like a pie chart, for example

jacobs

LRL said:

I am looking for a report that will show my expenses and income for a given period and the differences between the budgeted and the actual amounts spent.

Printing the budget currently does this. 

- select which expense categories to report
- select which income categories to report

In Edit Budget, you can select which expense an income categories to include in your budget.

- show the difference between the budgeted amounts and actual

The budget report does this.

- allow the ability to display categories and or subcategories or not

You can do this onscreen. The printed report doesn't allow this.

- select data by date range (1 month, months, 1 quarter, the whole year)

You can't really do much of this currently. (Hopefully date range selection is coming.) The current report is a full year.

There's a crude hack if you want to see a quarter: in the print dialog box, set the "Scale to fit" setting to 3 months/page and Open in Preview. Now you have one quarter per page. Select every 4th page in preview (for the quarter you want) and print. (This gives you three months, but not a total for the quarter.)

- possibly offer a visual like a pie chart, for example

Charting is something of a can of worms. A pie chart of what? If you have 10 income and 40 expense categories, what do you expect a pie chart of? How would a pie chart help show your actual versus budget?

Please understand I'm not disagreeing with you that more flexible budget reporting is desirable; I'm only saying what you can and can't do today.

And although you might not prefer to use a spreadsheet program, you can do most of these missing things by exporting the budget and some quick manipulating of the data in Excel or Numbers. Keep in mind you're not likely analyzing your actual-versus-budget status every day or week, so if it takes you five minutes a month to create an updated report, you may find you can get what you need out of Quicken until there are more options and controls within the program. But if budget analysis is the primary financial tool you're looking for, there may be better options than Quicken Mac.

LRL

Thank you, I'll play with the print and export options you describe.