Actual spending vs budget report: how do I find?

Antonio27

Have moved from Quicken 7 on my old Mac to the new(er) subscription plan on the new Mac. For years . . . close to 20 . . . I have been able to create a clean and accurate reort of my actual spending vs my budget. This now appears to be beyond the new Quicken Team to develop. Any thoughts other than keeping my old Mac alive and have all my financials on it?
Michael

jacobs

You can and you can't. In your budget, you can print a report at any time, and it includes actual versus budget. The major flaw is that it is always based on the current date. So on the last date of the month, it is an accurate comparison of budget to actual; but on the first day of the next month, it will begin using the budget values for the next month, creating a mis-match with actual spending (e.g. spending through May 1 versus budget through all of May). What we need is for the developers to change the report to use the last day of the previous month (e.g. YTD through March actual and budget), or to allow the user to specify the ending month, or range of months;  please take a moment to vote for this important feature (click on the link, and click the little arrow in the yellow box under the first post).

That all being said, you can create an accurate budget versus annual report through the end of the prior month if you export the Quicken budget to a CSV file. Open it in Excel or Numbers, delete the columns for the months you don't want, and create a YTD column to sum the remaining months. It's annoying to have to do this outside Quicken, but it takes only a minute or so to build the spreadsheet anytime you want the report. Considering this is relatively easy to do, I would not use it as a significant reason to stay on an old Mac and old version of Quicken. 

jacobs

You can and you can't. In your budget, you can print a report at any time, and it includes actual versus budget. The major flaw is that it is always based on the current date. So on the last date of the month, it is an accurate comparison of budget to actual; but on the first day of the next month, it will begin using the budget values for the next month, creating a mis-match with actual spending (e.g. spending through May 1 versus budget through all of May). What we need is for the developers to change the report to use the last day of the previous month (e.g. YTD through March actual and budget), or to allow the user to specify the ending month, or range of months;  please take a moment to vote for this important feature (click on the link, and click the little arrow in the yellow box under the first post).

That all being said, you can create an accurate budget versus annual report through the end of the prior month if you export the Quicken budget to a CSV file. Open it in Excel or Numbers, delete the columns for the months you don't want, and create a YTD column to sum the remaining months. It's annoying to have to do this outside Quicken, but it takes only a minute or so to build the spreadsheet anytime you want the report. Considering this is relatively easy to do, I would not use it as a significant reason to stay on an old Mac and old version of Quicken. 

Antonio27

WOW! That is so helpful and will likely mean I can stick with the subscription plan. I was thinking of dumping Quicken on my new Mac and simply keep all the financials under Q7 on the old one. Thank you so much for going into the detail. I have printed your instructions and will be diving in this afternoon.
Thank again.