Quicken New Years Resolution

rdrich

1. I will allow Mac Quicken users to choose two ways to define asset classes of investments: (a) let Q choose for the user or (b) let the user choose.
2. I will set up a function in Q for Mac that lets the user set target asset class allocations.
3. I will develop a table that shows how well the user's current asset allocation matches his/her target and how much must be bought or sold to bring risk into line with target.

Should be pretty easy.

Anyone have any other Q for Mac New Years resolutions for Intuit?

jacobs

Your first "resolution" was largely implemented in the latest 6.5 release. By default Quicken will use downloaded asset class information from its third-party supplier, but now you can turn that off and enter your own asset class or asset class mix. (While it does not let you define your own asset classes, within the industry standard ones Quicken uses, you now have complete control.) 

As for asset allocation goals and comparing actual to your goal, that might follow at some point in the future, but it's pretty easy to do now by exporting your asset allocation data to a spreadsheet and doing the comparison there. Actually, with the limited number of asset classes, if you set up a spreadsheet once with actual, goal and variance columns, it's actually fastest to just pop up the current asset allocation in the Dashboard and type the current values in your spreadsheet. Yes, it might take about 15 seconds of work to update, but analyzing your asset allocation is not something you do every day.

Finally, I'd just note that what appears easy to implement often isn't. But more importantly, even if this would be easy, it still needs developers' time to design, code, and test — and this idea is competing for their time with a few hundred other ideas. This might be top of mind for you, but I can assure you if we asked 100 Quicken Mac users for their top wishes for the program, we'd get a wide variety of answers.

I do suggest you add your vote for the existing enhancement request for asset allocation reports if you haven't already done so. (Click the link, and in the yellow box, click the black arrow under the vote counter.) While voting for ideas on this forum produces results only marginally faster than a glacier moves down a mountain, higher vote totals do help influence the order in which the developers dive into the many things we all want them to tackle.