What happened to Basic edition. Need a product between Starter and Deluxe - need TAGS

Randyg

I recently downgraded from Deluxe to Starter, assuming it was the same as the old Basic edition. I only use about 10% of the features of Deluxe (consolidation and archiving of transactions from dozens of institutions). I use tags extensively and just discovered that Starter doesn't support tags, even though there is no mention of this on the website. I have a hard time justifying spending $55/month on Deluxe, when I don't use bill pay, investment tracking (too cumbersome), budgeting, tax tracking or any of most of the features. The old Quicken Basic edition was just right for me and I expected that Starter edition was the same.
Is there an available complete listing of the limitations of Starter?

Randyg

Correction: $55/year (not month)

NotACPA

The old BASIC was re-branded as Starter ... and some features were removed.  Starter and Deluxe are your only choice.

splasher

You may think $55/year is high, but it is only a $1 a week or so.  Is your time not worth that much?  I bet your spend more on drinks, bottled water, coffee, tea, fruit juice, soft drinks or alcohol related on the average week.

Randyg

Thanks for the fast reply. I can understand why Starter wouldn't support the features that I mentioned (that I don't use). But why on earth would they remove tag support in Starter. Tags are a really basic functionality of the product.

jacobs

Hmmm, the Quicken product comparison webpage shows Quicken Starter does support tags:



Are you certain tags are not supported in Starter? I don't have that version to test with. Have you confirmed this with Quicken Support? Or perhaps one of the MODERATORS here can verify whether this is correct. (And if so, please message the team at Quicken which maintains the product features webpage to get them to update it.)

As for different versions, as noted above, it's Starter or Deluxe; there's nothing in between. Since Starter is $36 and Deluxe is $52, there's really not much reason to create something in between when the price difference is $16/year.

For what it's worth, many Quicken users use only a limited amount of the program's functionality. For instance, I enter my transactions manually and don't download them, and I don't use any of Quicken's bill pay services. But there are enough things that Quicken does well for me in allowing me to have all my financial information under one umbrella that it's worth it for me. 

Randyg

Thanks for the reply. I checked some more and found I need to clarify. I can enter tags in transactions and can create new tags. But the Tag tab has been removed from transaction reports, so it is impossible to create a report sorted by tag. However, saved reports sorted by tag (created under Deluxe edition) still work. I just can't create new reports. Elsewhere on this forum, I saw that a moderator replied that "Starter edition does not support tags" (see thread 7885574/tag-report-starter-version)
Tags are kind of useless if you cannot use them in reports.

splasher

I just tested this in Starter Edition R37.66.  Tags are available in Starter, as shown in the screenshot.



I did have to make the column visible as shown in this screenshot.

jacobs

Randyg said:

But the Tag tab has been removed from transaction reports, so it is impossible to create a report sorted by tag.

Hmm, this doesn't sound right. It would actually be relatively difficult for the programmers to turn OFF such a granular feature like this, so I'm skeptical that they did. 

When you click on Reports and then click on Transaction, do you not see a default Transactions by Tag report in the list?



Or if you click Create New Report, do you not have the option to create a report by Row = Tag?



Or on any existing transaction-type report, can you not click on View > Columns and check Tags to include in the report?

Randyg

Yes, I can display tags in the register view. But try doing a "Find" from the register. There is no field selection for "tag". Then try creating a transaction report. There is no way to select by "tag".

Randyg

In Starter, the Report menu is different than in Deluxe. "Transaction" only appears under "Banking". It creates a simple report and does not include tag as a customization for display or report type.
When customizing the report, the "Sort by" selection includes "tag" and selecting it appears to change the sort order. But since the tag column is not displayed, the sorting is meaningless.
Also, I cannot use "Find" from register display because "tag" does not show up in the field list.

It looks like the developers screwed up the implementation of tags in the starter edition. It's kind of half-assed implemented in sometimes meaningless sprinkles.
I can go back and upgrade to Deluxe, but on principle, the implementation of tags in Starter is not right and shouldn't be advertised as being available.

Bob_L

@jacobs I think the op is referring to the windows product.

splasher

Bob_L said:

@jacobs I think the op is referring to the windows product.

I hope so, because I only know how to spell Mac, not how to use it.

Chris_QPW

The support for tags in the Quicken Windows Starter edition has been "fickled".

Before Quicken Subscription, they weren't supported at all, and totally blocked.
I think more by mistake than anything else they appeared in Quicken Subscription transactions and such (as in I think they intended to keep blocking them, but they changed some code and it slipped through).

BUT they continue to block tags in the reports.

So, it was always questionable of which is the bug.  For them to show up at all, or for them not to be available in reports.

Now that they have really updated the product comparison and as @jacobs pointed out:


I think we can now call it a bug that the Starter version in Quicken Windows does support them in reports.

jacobs

Ah, sorry all. I mostly follow just the Mac categories here, so sometimes when there's a post in the Before You Buy category, I lose track of whether a user has specified Mac or Windows. (Actually, re-reading the thread, the platform wasn't mentioned, and didn't become apparent until Randy's recent screen shot.) In any case, apologies for heading down a wrong path…

Randyg

Thanks Chris_QPW for the clarification.
I did find a slight improvement: The report customization window (display tab) includes a button called "reset columns". I clicked that and now I can view the tag column in my reports.

Still importantly missing is the ability to create a transaction report subtotaled by tag. It will open such reports previously created in Deluxe, but won't allow you to create a new report.

I believe I have a back-door solution to this though: Since I can bring up a previous tag report (created in Deluxe), I can modify the report to my liking (selecting different categories/accounts) and then save it under a different name, resulting in a "new" tag report.

splasher

jacobs said:

Ah, sorry all. I mostly follow just the Mac categories here, so sometimes when there's a post in the Before You Buy category, I lose track of whether a user has specified Mac or Windows. (Actually, re-reading the thread, the platform wasn't mentioned, and didn't become apparent until Randy's recent screen shot.) In any case, apologies for heading down a wrong path…

Nothing I haven't done in the past.  There used to be a SU named Carl (Mac guy) that got upset with me a couple of times when responding in a Mac thread with Win info.  I learned quickly to be real careful, but it hasn't kept me from straying every once in a while.