How do you delete payees, tags, and accounts and not effect previous year's transactions?

Scott8

I have several years of transactions and I want to delete payees I no longer use or who have gone bankrupt. I also want to get rid of old closed accounts, unused categories and old and unused tags without affecting previous years stored transactions? Since we don't have the option in the Mac Version to start a new year, how do you get rid of these old things?

jacobs

For Payees, do you want to change the historical transactions, or just remove the Payee from popping up in your Payee selection list as you'r entering transactions? You can't delete an old Payee, because it would leave the original transactions which used that Payee with an undefined Payee. But in the Payees list, you can mark Payees as Hidden; that won't change old transactions, but will prevent that Payee from showing up in the list as you're entering transactions. 

If you really want to get rid of old Payees, you can merge old Payees into a Payee you call something like "Deleted Payee"; you could merge 20 or 100 or 500 Payees into that single Payee name. I wouldn't want to do this to my data; I'm just saying it can be done.

Accounts can be marked as Closed and Hidden, which won't delete any transactions or details, but will keep them (mostly) out of sight.

Tags and categories can't be hidden like Payees. You have a few options. You could find all transactions for Tag="xxx" and bulk edit them to have no Tag; once no transactions use "xxx", you could delete the tag. Same for categories. Or, you could merge multiple tags into one tag like "Old". Same for categories. But all of these changes will change your past transactions which used Tags or Payees you change into something else. 

jacobs

For Payees, do you want to change the historical transactions, or just remove the Payee from popping up in your Payee selection list as you'r entering transactions? You can't delete an old Payee, because it would leave the original transactions which used that Payee with an undefined Payee. But in the Payees list, you can mark Payees as Hidden; that won't change old transactions, but will prevent that Payee from showing up in the list as you're entering transactions. 

If you really want to get rid of old Payees, you can merge old Payees into a Payee you call something like "Deleted Payee"; you could merge 20 or 100 or 500 Payees into that single Payee name. I wouldn't want to do this to my data; I'm just saying it can be done.

Accounts can be marked as Closed and Hidden, which won't delete any transactions or details, but will keep them (mostly) out of sight.

Tags and categories can't be hidden like Payees. You have a few options. You could find all transactions for Tag="xxx" and bulk edit them to have no Tag; once no transactions use "xxx", you could delete the tag. Same for categories. Or, you could merge multiple tags into one tag like "Old". Same for categories. But all of these changes will change your past transactions which used Tags or Payees you change into something else. 

Scott8

Thanks to both Jacobs and RickO- I appreciate the suggestions and will check them out, especially the hiding ability of payees. How I categorize by transactions are by fiscal year since they tie to my taxes, and other financial paperwork. It was easier in the Windows Version to start new years and have them separate from one another- a "clean break" from the past years and you can customize the items you wanted geared to each fiscal year. I think these are helpful workarounds, but why not build in a option, to allow customers to do new years if they prefer, and thus one doesn't need to do work arounds. This is especially true if other versions have this feature? Thank you all for the responses.

jacobs

@Scott8  Every transaction register and every report in Quicken Mac allows you to set a date range, including a pre-defined Last Year or any custom date range you want. This allows users to get reports by calendar year for taxes and other financial needs. Is there something you're finding difficult to accomplish by using the date filters.

To me, separating data each year is using a sledgehammer for this issue. And it throws out one of the most useful things about Quicken, which is having all your historical financial data in one place and being able to search for transactions back in time. Legacy Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows had this feature created because their 1980s era databases could not handle the transaction volume, and avoid periodic data corruption, and there was a practical need to separate out data from time to time, but those reasons don't exist with modern Quicken Mac. So both the developers and users need to look at this issue through current-day eyes and evaluate if/why/when there's a need to separate data.

I do understand how for some users, making a "clean break" every once in awhile, particularly following "life events" — e.g. kids are grown and on their own, death of parent or spouse, divorce/re-marriage, moving to another part of the country — could be useful to get rid of accounts, categories, tags, or payees which belong to your prior life but not your current and future life. So I do believe the developers should add this capability. (But I'd still argue against doing it every year, and only using it if/when you need to do some major reorganization of your finance tracking. )