Improve functionality of Savings Goals

grantg

I'm a decades long Quicken user and a big fan of the Savings Goals. Somewhat of a nut when it comes to them as I have 60 total. Each pay cycle, I squirrel money away in the Savings Goals. Apparently an inefficient change was made on a recent update. When you contribute to a Savings Goal and then press OK, it closes that Savings Goal and then takes you back up to the first Savings Goal in the list. To contribute to another, you have to scroll down to it. This is rather time consuming. Before, after you pressed OK, it would hold position and not reposition the window to the first Savings Goal. Now I'm in constant scrolling mode. Second, the Savings Goals take up too much screen real estate. They used to be much more compact. They could easily take half the space they currently do.

grantg

BTW, I'm on Release R41.10.

Barliman

We think alike. I have similar complaints about the current version of savings goals and just posted about them. :)

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth, they changed the Savings Goals quite a few years ago to the "big" ones you see today.  Clearly, they viewed Savings Goals in a different way than a lot of people that were extensively using them instead of just say 4 of them.  This was part of the "make it modern looking" push.

When it was changed, and "trickle comments" over the years it was quite obvious that the change didn't go over to well, but they have never changed it.

Just recently they finally put in some sorting options and filtering.  So far that is about the only changes they have been willing to do.

Barliman

Thank for the background. From what I've read elsewhere, it seems like an almost-ignored feature.

Chris_QPW

Barliman said:

Thank for the background. From what I've read elsewhere, it seems like an almost-ignored feature.

It does come in handy for some situations, enough that it is requested in Quicken Mac pretty often.  They don't have the feature.

jay343

> @grantg said:
> I'm a decades long Quicken user and a big fan of the Savings Goals. Somewhat of a nut when it comes to them as I have 60 total. Each pay cycle, I squirrel money away in the Savings Goals. Apparently an inefficient change was made on a recent update. When you contribute to a Savings Goal and then press OK, it closes that Savings Goal and then takes you back up to the first Savings Goal in the list. To contribute to another, you have to scroll down to it. This is rather time consuming. Before, after you pressed OK, it would hold position and not reposition the window to the first Savings Goal. Now I'm in constant scrolling mode. Second, the Savings Goals take up too much screen real estate. They used to be much more compact. They could easily take half the space they currently do.

Right! I only have 16 goals, but only 6 are visible at once. Nothing is worse than making a savings goal contribution on #7 or beyond, and then immediately thinking "wait, which one did I just do???"

I would love to see the standard register view of savings goals. I doubt that any development is required since they already have the required in-cell buttons and other UI controls. For example:

| SG Property Tax | [contribute] | [withdraw] | [edit goal] | $2,700.00 | [ $3600] | [######____]

Another improvement that I'd love is for the Savings Goals display on the Budgets tab to automatically update when a contribution or withdrawal is made on the Savings Goal tab. That would be closer to the desired amount than whatever algorithm they currently use to predict budget amounts ;-)

glenn

Your analysis of the deficiencies with the current savings goals presentation is very accurate.  Adding the sorting feature was a little help, but if you have many goals, moving between goals is difficult.  Once a goal it changed (contribute/withdrawal/edit) it always reverts to the main screen. Simple is best and the register view of savings goal would be better.  

MoneyMike

Any update on this? The tiles/cards/whatever are too large and take up too much space.

Michae1

> @grantg said:
> ... Apparently an inefficient change was made on a recent update. When you contribute to a Savings Goal and then press OK, it closes that Savings Goal and then takes you back up to the first Savings Goal in the list. To contribute to another, you have to scroll down to it. This is rather time consuming. Before, after you pressed OK, it would hold position and not reposition the window to the first Savings Goal. Now I'm in constant scrolling mode. ...


This. This is inefficient, time consuming, and annoying. I only have 21 savings goals at the moment and it used to be easy to update them, now it is a chore. Could someone go back and look at the old code to see how it used to work and get rid of the page refresh after every update that sends the view back up to the top. Somebodies somewhere missed something during the update.

Also, the default sorting options for the Savings Goals on the Planning tab are better than nothing, but I am sure quite a few users would like a custom sort option to put them into a more efficient sort based on their needs.

My work around at the moment is to sort alphabetically after changing the name of the goal by inserting an Alpha-Numeric mini header in front of the goal name. When I need to change the sorting order, I just need to change the Alpha-Numeric mini header.

1A Car#1 Registration
1B Car#2 Registration
1C Car#3 Registration
2A New Car Savings
2B 3 Months Savings
3A Estimated Tax
3B Property Tax
etc...

Would be easier if you could change the name when you click on the "Edit goal" link, but you have to go into the Savings Goal register and change the name in the "Edit account details" option, under the Actions cog in the top right corner.

stoll

I'll chime in on this "feature request" and complaints thread.

While the Saving Goal Sort addition has helped me I sure wish the code slingers could write it such that it remembered my chosen sort type by default, instead of always reverting back to "Date Created".

I have over 30 Savings Goals, and the names are prefixed with a XX number so they sort the way I want them (alphabetically).

Thanks, Gregg.. (been running Quicken since Windows 3.1.1)

bbeardsley

Totally agree on remembering the sort type for savings goals. Frustrating that it doesn't remember. Savings goals is also one of my most used features.

Please make Quicken remember the sort order of the savings goals.