Woohoo - We now have reports with stripes - but still no multi-currency (Q Mac)

Ploooplooo

Sorry for the title expressing my frustration, but supporting multi-currency reports is a couple decades overdue. I have both UK and US accounts and still cannot get a single report showing me how much I spent in a period of time.

jacobs

I understand your frustration, truly. I'd just note that the changes required to build out full multi-currency functionality in Quicken Mac likely requires significant re-writing of code throughout the program, while the minor cosmetic enhancement for on-screen reports is likely something a single designer and user interface coder could have built relatively quickly without touching most other areas of the program. While it might seem all time/work is equal, on a small programming team there are people with different areas of expertise who can at times be deep in a large multi-month project or free to tackle small tweaks — and what emerges in any given update may be a function of what work got concluded in the month rather than reflecting the big picture of what the team is working on.  

Chris_QPW

There is also something called priorities.  To a person that has to deal with multiple currencies not having the feature is "long overdue", but I'm pretty sure for most Quicken users it is "a feature they don't need".

jacobs

I agree, Chris. Deciding which features to tackle is an ongoing balancing act for the small development team which doesn't have the resources to implement all the changes the entire user community wishes they'd make. 

One of the factors is what you mention: how large or small is the number of Quicken users likely to be affected by adding a new feature.

Another factor: how significant/impactful would a new feature be. For instance, adding a small user interface tweak might be a small positive benefit for a large number of users, while adding a large new feature might be a very substantial improvement for the relatively small number of users who will use it. Multi-Currency functionality falls into the latter.

Another factor: are there changes in the operating system which provide the developers new tools or features which Quicken can benefit from, or needs to comply with. I suspect the rules and row shading in the recent Quicken Mac release might be an example for the former: a benefit of something in one of the macOS frameworks to toolsets, making it relatively easy to implement. Dark mode is an example of the latter: a new macOS technology which the developers need to re-code the program to support.

Another factor: which members of the development team are needed for a particular feature enhancement? Some, like the rules and shading in reports, may only involve a developer who handles user interface matters. Others require deeper digging into the operating code, updating the database and database queries, expertise with printing technologies, interaction with external connectivity systems, or interaction with the Quicken Cloud infrastructure for mobile and web functionality. I'd guess that multi-currency support touches all those areas, and requires work across the entire development team.

Speaking of different teams, certain changes to Quicken Mac need to be coordinated with other Quicken product teams because they share technology. For instance, a seemingly small feature enhancement in macOS might be put on hold because it needs to work with the mobile app/web interface, which in turn needs to work with Quicken Windows — so all three product teams need to synchronize changes in order not to break one platform or another. 

Finally, there's time and scheduling: how much total time, and time from different members of the team,  is needed to implement a particular feature? If there are one or two developers who are the primary people dealing with database structure and queries, and they have a large stack of projects, that may be why some feature sit on the sidelines for a long time waiting for this specialty to have time. Meanwhile, other projects which may involve one or a few developers might get tackled not because they are deemed the highest priority but because those developers have time on their schedules.

All of these factors go into the decisions of the product managers and executives about what to put into development and when. For us as end users, the end results trickling out of development may seem illogical or frustrating at times, but it's because we don't have the full picture of the development roadmap and the factors which have gone into moving the pieces of the puzzle around.