"What if.." tool *still* broken? Q.Premier

Charger2001

Good evening,

Quicken Details are as follows;

Windows 10
Quicken Premier
Version: R47.11
Build: 27.1.47.11

Steps taken so far:

File > Validate & Repair > Completed.
Accounts removed and added
Backups restored
Removed mortgage account as an online option and added it manually as an offline account.

I've been trying to find a solution to the issue(s) surrounding the 'what if' tool for a few months now, and it would appear that other users having the issue have ranged in support from being told to validate and repair or just not getting any replies.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7910018/mortgage-what-if-tool-isnt-working

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7923775/what-if-tool-is-broken

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7918402/mortgage-what-if-tool


I'm reaching out in hopes that someone will have a solution to this problem as it appears to only happen to certain accounts and not others.

I have a mortgage account setup to pull online through my lender. With a 190k balance and a 2/1/2040 end date adding $50 monthly offers no change. $500 offers no change, and oddly enough adding a $5000 principle payment (monthly > top option) offers a whopping 7 months of earlier payoff. A comical $50,000 per month reduces my payoff date a mere 5 years and 4 months early, but somehow has no problem with me paying over $6 million dollars between now and 10/1/2034.

I'm really hoping someone has a possible solution to this problem as it seems to be dismissed each time someone tries tracking down a remedy.

Thanks in advance

mshiggins

This problem has been around for years. It apparently impacts both online enabled and manual loans. But not everyone is impacted. My loans all worked fine with the “What if” tool. 

I’ve never seen a definitive answer on the cause or a solution. You might try creating a new file with just the loan account and a checking account just to test if there is an issue with your data file. 

Another alternative is to use the Debt Reduction Planner. It works well to calculate the impact of regular extra principal payments and you don’t have to reset it every time you want to see the “what if” figures. 

yoda7th

I suspect this issue has been constantly dismissed because Quicken support engineers couldn't reproduce this problem. It just needs to be escalated to higher up management. For many years, loan accounts have always been problematic because a change in payment amount requires re-calculation of that entire loan account. Someone in Quicken has seriously messed up the amotization code logic! For community members here, here's a workaround. Goto edit 'loan details', click on 'Recalculate'. I know the calculated monthly payment will not be the actual monthly payment. But until Quicken engineers fix this, there is no other option to get the 'What If' toool working. This is clearly a regression bug!

mshiggins

yoda7th said:

I suspect this issue has been constantly dismissed because Quicken support engineers couldn't reproduce this problem. It just needs to be escalated to higher up management. For many years, loan accounts have always been problematic because a change in payment amount requires re-calculation of that entire loan account. Someone in Quicken has seriously messed up the amotization code logic! For community members here, here's a workaround. Goto edit 'loan details', click on 'Recalculate'. I know the calculated monthly payment will not be the actual monthly payment. But until Quicken engineers fix this, there is no other option to get the 'What If' toool working. This is clearly a regression bug!

Can you post a picture of where in the loan Recalculate is located?

yoda7th

Note: You'll need to enter a different 'Monthly payment' value for the 'Recalculate' option to appear.

mshiggins

Well that is interesting. Do you have to do this forced recalculation often?

yoda7th

Using Quicken's Calculated Monthly Payment will render the 'What If' tool useless. So the question is NOT whether I have to do this forced calculation. The issue here is whenever I use my own 'Monthly Payment' value, the 'What If' tool will not work. This is a regression bug. I know because I was regularly using 'What If' tool late 2021 and it was working correctly back then.

mshiggins

@yoda7th can you provide example loan and payment values, especially the calculated payment vs. your payment amount, so that others can replicate the issue? 

Charger2001

I appreciate the follow-up replies this last week.

I've compensated for the most part by simply having both an offline and online account variants (with appropriate names) so that I can have an automatic system in place (online accounts), but also put in my own unique amounts (offline) and see what the varying differences are. One reason this has been so frustrating for me personally is that a number of the accounts in question are all from the same financial provider, but the tool only works with a select minority of them.

I've seen lots of suggestions that this issue will remain until someone from a higher level support role takes a look, but I've yet to see any system in place for which we can escalate the issue(s).

yoda7th

@mshiggins Asking me to spend more time on this? Fair ask if I'm working for Quicken but I'm a decade-old paying customer. Unless Quicken is compensating me for my time & contribution, I think I've helped enough given my other priorities. I'll offer for free another image for you. If Quicken engineers see this graph, it should quickly raise a few flags about missing functional and test scenarios.

mshiggins

yoda7th said:

@mshiggins Asking me to spend more time on this? Fair ask if I'm working for Quicken but I'm a decade-old paying customer. Unless Quicken is compensating me for my time & contribution, I think I've helped enough given my other priorities. I'll offer for free another image for you. If Quicken engineers see this graph, it should quickly raise a few flags about missing functional and test scenarios.

Suit yourself...