How to create a report, export (Excel & PDF), save & repeat later

jarhtmd

I'm almost 83 years old. In preparation for the inevitable, I would like to leave a 'financial paper trail' for my daughter & granddaughter who will be the only heirs. I'm still using (plain vanilla) Quicken2007, with no special bells/whistles, like downloading transactions, etc. (Why change at this late date?) Of course, I no longer have a hard-copy ledger, like in the old days. My daughter is unfamiliar with Quicken, but is knowledgeable about Excel. I'm thinking that my Quicken 'exit routine' (along with my standard backup, etc) could be modified to create snapshot reports of my finances. I apologize for my ignorance of Quicken reports.

I have several (checking/saving/credit card) accounts in Quicken's 'Cash Flow Center' and several mutual funds in the 'Investment Center' (some taxable & some tax deferred). I've very rarely used Quicken Reports, except for quick, 1-time purposes and have never saved a report for later use. So I'm unfamiliar with the mechanics & choices. Couldn't a (plain vanilla) YTD Transaction Report to include all 'Cash Flow' accounts be easily created and saved? Then a simple, step-by-step 'click here/click there' routine (set of instructions) could be followed to recreate the report, export to Excel & PDF and save for future use with a later YTD date. Possibly, a similar report-export-import (into Excel) routine would be useful for Investment accounts.

Sherlock

Having dealt with passings, I can tell you Quicken reports are not too useful.  What your executors will need is a complete list of all your accounts (banks, brokerage, account numbers, etc) so they may access your account statements.  They also will need access to your tax filings.  The closest thing Quicken can provide is a print out of the Account List which should not need to be regenerated frequently.  To produce a useful print out of the Account List in the current Quicken, we may press Ctrl + A, check Options > Include additional info when printing, and press Ctrl + P.  Hopefully, the functionality was similar in Quicken 2007.

jarhtmd

Thanks, Sherlock, for your reply. In the past few years I was the executor of my son's estate, which was not complicated. His mutual funds were easiest of all to settle. Vanguard distributed funds according to beneficiaries with very little hassle. However, his day to day bills were not so easy to deal with. He was pretty good at keeping billing statements paid, etc., but there were no ledgers of checks written. It was often hard to find the statement marked paid. Many times the next statement was all I had to work with. I have to say that the attorney and USPS (forwarding mail) were no help in many areas. The fact that we were separated by several hundred miles was no help either. Long story short, it was very frustrating for me, especially while burdened with so much grief. I've had various companies asking for money, some legit and backed up their claims (and were paid). Others were turned over to debt collectors, who couldn't/wouldn't provide documentation (and weren't paid). Both ways required a lot of research on my part. A list of transactions with dates, check numbers, amounts and MEMOS would have been most helpful.

My estate will not be complicated and I want to supply my daughter with as much info as possible.

Tom Young

My thought here is that somebody doesn't really have to "know" Quicken or be an expert in Quicken to extract valuable information from your file. 

What you face - what we all face - is being unable to manage our own affairs so somebody has to take over our finances or, hopefully, we're compos mentis until we go to bed one night and don't wake up, so somebody has to settle our estate. In either situation it seems to me that having someone able to log into our Quicken file pretty much gives them the keys to the kingdom regarding our finances. 

They log in to the file and on the left or right side of our screen is a list of every single financial asset or liability.  Having clear names on the Accounts identifying what it is and where it's at - Checking at Chase, Savings at BofA, Brokerage at Schwab, 401(k) at Fidelity - gets them 95% of the way to knowing who they have to contact and what sort of account they're dealing with. 

A minute's schooling showing them that clicking on an Account in the Account Bar brings up a register or transaction list with each and every transaction in that Account - something that anybody who's ever used a manual checkbook register should understand instinctively - means that if nothing else they can scroll up or down looking for that payment to Shady Car Loans that someone's hounding them to pay.  To anyone who's the least bit computer savvy this would be way better than paging through a 20-sheet thick Transaction List trying to find that $37.89 payment.

Heck, if you care to update to the subscription version, Quicken has even added a Search box at the top of each register where you can type in "Shady Car Loans" or "37.89" and each matching transaction will be listed out in front of them, right on the screen.

Chris_QPW

It seems to me some of the things we do to make it easier on us (my wife and me) would make it easier on the executor our estate.

First off we almost never use checks, about the only use of those these day is to send a gift.  Everything goes on the credit cards or is a direct withdraw from the checking account.  When possible bills are automatically paid with the credit card (with cash back), and in the case of the credit cards and bills like utilities where they don't allow paying from a credit card, they are paid automatically by automatic payments on the biller's site that takes it from the checking account.

My bill paying generally amounts to making sure I have enough in the checking account when the credit card/utility bills/HOA come due.  So short of paying property tax, my estate would be pretty much "settled" in about a month automatically when the monthly payments all came due and were paid by the checking account.

The one thing I realize that would be very beneficial besides the financial institutions/account, and taxes that @Sherlock mention, a list of "services to cancel" would be good to keep with my records.

BTW I don't think account numbers are really needed, the financial institution's would certainly have that information, but for sure you would want a list of the financial institution's and the number/type of accounts.

Mark1104

probably more important in this day and age is maintaining and leaving a list of PASSWORDS for all critical websites.  And don't forget the passcode to the phone. 

Why not just list out all the critical assets, credit cards, etc, notating the name of the firm, the website, the account number. user name and password.  Leave it attached to the will.  

this is a good article: 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-to-do-before-you-die-a-tech-checklist-facebook-google-amazon-twitter-11608310486?mod=hp_featst_pos4

mshiggins

The Emergency Records Organizer was intended for exactly the topic of this discussion - organizing information for ourself and others to be used in event of an emergency.

The ERO was added to Quicken in QW1998 Deluxe. Still there in my QW2017.  Not sure about subscription versions. In QW2017, the ERO is accessed from the Property & Debt menu. 

The first time you access the ERO, it automatically pulls in info for all your accounts. So you'll have a good start in your records just by starting it up. 

Chris_QPW

Mark1104 said:

probably more important in this day and age is maintaining and leaving a list of PASSWORDS for all critical websites.  And don't forget the passcode to the phone. 

Why not just list out all the critical assets, credit cards, etc, notating the name of the firm, the website, the account number. user name and password.  Leave it attached to the will.  

this is a good article: 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-to-do-before-you-die-a-tech-checklist-facebook-google-amazon-twitter-11608310486?mod=hp_featst_pos4

EDIT after more research I see that there isn't any reason not to give the executor of the estate usernames and passwords.  I notice that RoboForm has an automatic way to pass access to someone if you haven't used it in a certain amount of days.

For my wife and I, we use RoboForm which basically gives most of this with the exception of access to the other's phone that might be used for multiple authentication.

BTW one really nice tool for a house that a lot of states have is transfer on death.  If you know who that property should go to then a TOD is great way to get it done and avoid any kind of probate.  A TOD is easy to file and cheap, just the registration fee at the country clerk.

Chris_QPW

P.S. the article talks about dealing with if you need to "speak for the person".  Which is somewhat a different, but related subject that should also be addressed.  Most people don't let others know what their wishes are in the case of them not being able to speak for themselves.  It is a very hard subject to put talk about/put down on paper, but would really help out these people.  We have Kaiser and they have a class/form for this, and is a good way to get started if your health organization provides such a service.

Chris_QPW

mshiggins said:

The ERO was added to Quicken in QW1998 Deluxe. Still there in my QW2017.  Not sure about subscription versions. In QW2017, the ERO is accessed from the Property & Debt menu. 

The first time you access the ERO, it automatically pulls in info for all your accounts. So you'll have a good start in your records just by starting it up. 

I don't use it, but it is still there in Quicken Subscription.  You have to make sure that you have at least one property or debit account and then you can find it either by turning on View -> Classic Menus, Property & Debit -> Emergency Records Organizer

Note this is a very old program that isn't properly maintained.

mshiggins

Chris_QPW said:

mshiggins said:

The ERO was added to Quicken in QW1998 Deluxe. Still there in my QW2017.  Not sure about subscription versions. In QW2017, the ERO is accessed from the Property & Debt menu. 

I don't use it, but it is still there in Quicken Subscription.  You have to make sure that you have at least one property or debit account and then you can find it either by turning on View -> Classic Menus, Property & Debit -> Emergency Records Organizer

Note this is a very old program that isn't properly maintained.

I think it would be more accurate to say "not maintained at all since 1998". But some of those older features are way more reliable - especially if they have not been updated or revamped. 

jarhtmd

I appreciate all the comments. I think I confused the issue by trying to explain the why of what I want to do. I have already done (or plan to do) several of the suggestions. I think a Cash Flow transaction report, subtotaled by account (and probably another Cash Flow transaction report by payee) will do what I have want. I'm thinking of using a date span from 01-01-[last year] to 12-31-[next year]. "[last year]" will provide some recent history and "[next year]" will help with already scheduled auto-pays, etc. as well as transitioning through year end & beginning situations.

Is there a way to get 'Word Wrap' for report fields? Itemized Category splits?

As far as I can determine, QW2007 does not include the Emergency Records Organizer. The CD, which I still have, goes right to 'Install'.

I haven't looked at investment reports yet, but monthly/quarterly statements often include YTD.

Chris_QPW

jarhtmd said:

As far as I can determine, QW2007 does not include the Emergency Records Organizer. The CD, which I still have, goes right to 'Install'.

Quicken Windows 2007 installs the Emergency Records Organizer as part of the Quicken install.

jarhtmd

Looks like Quicken2007 'Basic' is my problem. I'll just have to be creative with the standard reports. Thanks, again, for your help.

jarhtmd

Oops! I screwed up posting the screen capture. Sorry 'bout that. If I can't even attach a jpg, it's no wonder I'm having problems in Quicken.

Chris_QPW

jarhtmd said:

Looks like Quicken2007 'Basic' is my problem. I'll just have to be creative with the standard reports. Thanks, again, for your help.

Oh, that must be the difference.  And now we know one of the differences between Basic and Deluxe.
You can get Quicken Windows Deluxe 2013 for free if you want it.
Convert Data From an Earlier Version of Quicken (When to Use an Intermediate Version)

Expand the section on converting from Quicken 2004 to 2009 and you can download it from there.
Also you can get that last Mondo patch for it from here:
http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/quicken-2013-patches.html

jarhtmd

> @Chris_QPW said:

> You can get Quicken Windows Deluxe 2013 for free if you want it.
>

That sounds great, but I'm hesitant to go that route. I seem to have a history of "non-standard problems", not just Quicken, but other stuff too. Murphy's Law seems to always be waiting to pounce.

In addition to my Win10 desktop computer, which I have used exclusively for about 3 years, I also have a Win10 laptop that has been idle all that time. Maybe I'll try copying my Quicken backup files to the laptop and do the conversion/update there. If all goes well, the laptop can then be my stand-alone "Quicken computer". If there are problems/frustrations . . . oh well, my working Quicken2007 Basic (& data) is still available. Actually, thinking about it now, there might be other major benefits to taking that route.

volvogirl

Yes download 2013 Deluxe.  I have 2013 Premier on my Windows 8.1 Desktop.  I got a new Windows 10 laptop for Christmas without a CD drive do I downloaded the 2013 Deluxe.  It's basically the same as Premier.  Here's some more info on converting.

You should at least try to convert to the 2013 version since you don’t use any online services or download transactions now.  Then it should run on newer versions of Windows.  Starting in 2014 they instituted an ID password to get into your own data. I’m staying on 2013.

2013 should run on Windows 10.  You can download 2013 Deluxe for free using this how to convert article.  It’s under Converting from Quicken 2004-2009.

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-and-when-use-intermediate-version-convert-older-versions-quicken 

If your version is 2003 or earlier you will need to first convert to 2004.  Then convert to 2013.  Read that whole article on converting.

And FYI - If your Quicken was before 2010 you should have several files making up the data.

The main data file ends in .QDF.  All Quicken versions prior to QW2010 store your data in a series of files all sharing the same filename but with different extensions like  - .QDF .IDX, .QEL, .QPH  and all 4 of those files were rolled into a single-file .QDF starting in 2010. 

volvogirl

I can't remember when I upgraded to 2013.  I think there was a bit of a learning curve but it's really a lot cleaner and runs very well.  It's about the last real good stable version.  It's easy and simple and I love it.  

Chris_QPW

About the only thing I can think of that is drastically different between Quicken 2007 and Quicken 2013 is the budget.  They change that quite a bit in Quicken 2012, and then again in Quicken 2013.

jarhtmd

I put all this aside for a few days for several reasons, not the least of which was to just to clear my head and start fresh. Several things in the download/convert instructions cause some concern for me . . .
• "if you convert from any Quicken for Windows version older than Quicken 2010, you may experience some data file issues. Unfortunately, if you choose to do this, we will be unable to assist you with any issues you encounter during the conversion process. We can only assist with conversions from 2010 or later versions of Quicken."
o I'm hoping the "unable to assist" doesn't apply to Quicken Community.
• "After the process is complete, verify the information is correct. If you find errors or issues with your data, it is best to manually correct them."
o I've got 30 years of Quicken data. There's no way to verify the correctness of everything. Account balances, etc may appear correct while "hidden nitty-gritty (history transactions)" might not be.
The link to the Mondo Patches is the 1st I've heard of them. I'm a little confused. Why are both "Release R12" and "Release R12 Mondo" shown? Both have the same date. Which should I use? Why are the dates for the 2 "R12" releases earlier than the lower numbers?

Tom Young

"I've got 30 years of Quicken data. There's no way to verify the correctness of everything."

Presumably you could run an "Income and Expense by Category" report with all Categories and all Accounts selected, (including hidden Accounts and Categories) for the period "Include All Dates," and one of the balance sheet reports that likewise includes all Accounts using your current version.

After updating you'd run those reports again and compare the "before" and "after."  Those reports should agree with one another.

Chris_QPW

In any conversion there might be an error even though it is pretty rare actually, and they warning you that they aren't going to support it, but you are right that doesn't apply the Quicken Community.

Generally when things mess up in a conversion there are either errors or it is pretty easy to see problems like account that are suppose to zero now have some amount in them.

Use the Mondo patch install.  Both should work, but the difference is that the non Mondo patch install checks the existing file versions of all the files currently installed, and if they are the same or newer, doesn't change the file.  The Mondo install overwrites all files without checking.  The non Mondo install is suppose to be slightly faster, but these days with high speed drives that really isn't true any more.  And for Quicken Subscription they have dropped putting out non Mondo installs.

jarhtmd

Things have gone as I feared. Thankfully, rather than trying to DL/install QW2013DLX on my desktop computer where my "real" Quicken data is located, I tried on my laptop which had outdated QW2007 data from a couple of years ago. I figured if things went haywire, I wouldn't loose any important data.

Well, things went haywire.

During install, I got a msg "This program might not have installed correctly" with choices "Install using compatibility settings" and "This program installed correctly". Knowing nothing about "compatibility settings", I picked "installed correctly", figuring I could re-do if necessary.

A execution shortcut wasn't created, so I tried various .exe files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Quicken but nothing worked. Some showed 2007 remnants.

When I tried to re-do, " . . . you need to manually uninstall the version that is currently installed". " . . . use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel."

Quicken is not shown in Control Panel, so I can't uninstall.

Chris_QPW

In this article try the steps under "If the steps above do not resolve the issue" to uninstall, and then try the install again.
https://www.quicken.com/support/using-qcleanui-uninstall-quicken

jarhtmd

I think all this is above my pay grade.

As I said earlier, my laptop has been idle for at least a couple of years. In fact, I never did a great deal of work on it. Even though both my laptop & desktop computers are both Windows10, the laptop occasionally throws "surprises" into the mix. Also, I don't know how to turn off my ESET NOD32 Antivirus, so I tried installing w/o disabling it. I think that is probably the cause of the Error 1303 . . . "insufficient privileges to access the directory".

I've never had a User's Guide for Quicken 2007 Basic. I just figured things out, as needed on the fly, over the years. Is there a GOOD User's Guide available, either online or in print.