Preferences to customize Quicken Mac Dashboard

R1456

For Quicken for Mac 6.10.0, allow the user to edit/customize the Dashboard. Specifically, each of the 4 widgets/graphs should be allowed to be resized or rearranged.

In addition it should be possible to change the displayed information in each of the 4 widgets/graphs. As an example the user should be able to replace "Top Spending Payees" with "Upcoming Bills & Transactions" or another useful chart.

(Add ideas for additional useful Dashboard customizations in comments below.)

R1456

This is an expansion of the Idea request in:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7920607/add-upcoming-bills-income-to-dashboard

Andre Zilio

We should be able to customize the dashboards or at least keep the current Overview option also available until this customization is possible. Current Overview informations are more useful than these new dashboard.

Jon

Rearrangement is already possible - you can drag & drop the cards on the dashboard.

I don't care so much about resizing - the automatic resizing that happens now is fine IMO - but I would like to be able to remove cards that I have no interest in.

BruceLeon

I second Andre Zilio's comment about allowing the Overview tab information to be shown on the Dashboard tab. It is what I go to see every time I open Quicken. If you can't do that, at least don't get rid of the Overview tab!

Claudia Berman

Agree with this suggestion. None of the 4 cards are remotely helpful. I use the Overview all the time with Spending with the subcategories having a pie chart and for the Income view as well. I would prefer to keep the Overview and be able to hide the Dashboard until the Dashboard functionality is on par with the Overview.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Claudia Berman

@DocGer ,
1) The Spending Card does not have Income. The drill on the spending card does not have a pie chart by subcategory. It goes straight to all the detail. I don't need to see investments.
2) Thank you for the tip to exit on the Overview tab. That will allow me to avoid the Dashboard. When the new version installed, it defaulted to the Dashboard. I didn't realized that on exit, Quicken will show the last page viewed.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Kally916

also separate banking accounts from investment accounts

Sherrie

Ability to customize dashboard cards to include/exclude specific accounts and/or categories. Example: I would like to see my income and expenses by month but not include gains or losses on investments.

Ability for the user to create Dashboard cards that are beneficial to that user. Remove ones that are not relevant.

jacobs

A few thoughts...

• There are only five Dashboard cards now, so removing cards isn't a big need. You can move the ones you like to the top and ones you don't to the bottom. The developers clearly intend to add more cards. I think it's very likely they'll add a way to remove, collapse, hide, or otherwise get cards you don't care about out of the way. But I agree such a mechanism will be needed as more cards are added.

• Allow users to create Dashboard cards? Probably not. Each of these cards requires database queries, some rather complex, plus a user interface, plus drill-downs to reports or pop-up screens. I don't see them creating and interface builder and query builder for user-created cards. I think it would be better for users to create a case for specific cards, and convincing the developers to build them,

• Regarding customization, of dashboard cards, I think that in general, the developers' approach to the Dashboard is quick and simple slices of data. I don't think they want to make them complex (in implementation, or in the user interface) by adding a lot of controls and preferences. Reports and Budgets are designed to be configured and tweaked; Dashboard cards are not. But…

• I agree 100% that there needs to be a toggle/switch to include or exclude investment accounts in a card like Income & Expenses. That new card would be pretty useful if I could switch it to exclude investment income. I'd like to see a control to select among three options: all accounts, non-retirement accounts, or non-investing accounts. 

Artigas

Allow users to add/delete tiles to the dashboard. The "Uncategorized Transactions" is useless.

MontanaKarl

I agree on add/hide tiles... but disagree on 'uncategorized transactions'.  It's the one I always check after a download.

jacobs

@Artigas  Deleting cards would probably  be easy to implement, but adding them back requires some sort of user interface design for users to be able to discover/select cards to add. Perhaps some sort of a dock to collapse unwanted cards, or a pull-down menu of available cards. 

And I agree with @Jon: I disagree that the uncategorized Transactions card is "useless"; I fund it very useful, and would not want to see it removed. I don't need to see it all the time, but a quick glance at it periodically helps me spot mistakes. 

jacobs

The cards in the Dashboard automatically resize, and users can currently only re-arrange their order. We have 5 cards now in version 6.12, and more (like upcoming bills) are undoubtedly coming in the future. So as more cards re -added, there should be a way to hide or minimize cards which users don't find useful to them.

I'd also like to be able to re-size the cards, in order to make a given card wider or taller. For instance, the Spending by Category card shows categories and percentages of total, unless the main Quicken window is very wide, when it also shows dollar amounts. I don't want to keep my Quicken window that wide all the time, but I'd like it if I could drag that card to be double-wide, so I could see the additional values. Another example: for a card with a lot of transactions, such as Recent Transactions, it would be nice to be able to drag it to be double tall, in order to see more transactions without scrolling.

One or more of the cards needs the ability to switch between showing all transactions and transactions minus investment accounts. The new Income and Expense card could be useful for a quick overview of how our finances are doing, but for I find it not useful because it includes investment income. I'd like to see this card have a toggle to switch between All Accounts, All non-retirement accounts, and All non-investment accounts.

Quicken Anja

Hello @Artigas,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community with your request.

Your idea has been merged into this already active Idea thread regarding the same request.

Thank you!

curious$

The Income and Expense Dashboard Card displays data that from categories I do not need to be part of this card. There is no method to customize this card so, in fact, the information is meaningless to me. When will the developers place this functionality into Quicken for Mac?

jacobs

We have no idea if or when the developers will make the cards more user-configurable.

It seems their overall philosophy for Dashboards is to provide quick but limited looks at different aspects of your data, while pushing users to use searches and reports to dig deeper into specific sets of data which may be of interest.

I hope they will provide some limited customization, such as the ability to view non-retirement or non-investment income; for me and many Quicken users, having investment income included in this card makes it pretty useless. But I doubt they will go as far as the fine-grained customizations on reports, where you can select the accounts, categories and tags you want included or excluded.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

QuickT

I would agree. Seems we are paying our subscription and being provided useless features like this latest Dashboard card. If it is not configurable is just provides meaningless and gibberish data - built for the really simple Use Case. When you throw investment and transfers in, this card just cannot handle it. In Windows you can configure each view/card so I have no idea why the Mac team cannot do something smart. For example, if you click on the income graph element, it runs a report. So if income/expense report is behind generating the data for this card, why not simple edit the Accounts and Categories you want to include for your view of Inc/Exp and save it as THE generating report, not as a custom report. That way there is no hard coded database queries running and you get a layer of abstraction and customization. How hard would that be?

Jon

I don't think excluding accounts would be very useful to me, but excluding categories I think would be helpful. But it would have to be done on a card by card basis.

eriknelson65

I agree with the ability to exclude certain accounts. I don't need my retirement investments showing up as income! Otherwise I'll have to go in and recategorize EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION as a workaround, which isn't optimal.

Chris27

Fair Warning:  If you recategorize transactions on the desktop to make the latest dashboard card correct, it will still be erroneous on the mobile app! (earned income/expense).  It does not work well with the adjustment category!

I learned the hard way. 

Unknown

This content has been removed.

AndrewG

> @Jon said:
> I don't think excluding accounts would be very useful to me, but excluding categories I think would be helpful. But it would have to be done on a card by card basis.

I think both should be customizable on a card by card basis and I should be able to have multiple instances of the same card with different filters or date ranges. Sizes should also be configurable.

Also, why isn't there a net worth/net cash card that can be configured to just be bank/cc or include investment and asset accounts.

jacobs

@AndrewG We'll see what the developers create over time, but I'd pretty doubtful they're going to add the degree of customization you're asking for. You essentially want them to re-create everything you can do in reports in Dashboard cards, and I don't think that's what they're aiming to provide in the Dashboard. For instance, the net worth for bank & credit card accounts, and for investment and asset accounts, are easy-to-create reports you can configure and save, tweaked to just what you want. 

AndrewG

> @jacobs said:
> @AndrewG We'll see what the developers create over time, but I'd pretty doubtful they're going to add the degree of customization you're asking for. You essentially want them to re-create everything you can do in reports in Dashboard cards, and I don't think that's what they're aiming to provide in the Dashboard. For instance, the net worth for bank & credit card accounts, and for investment and asset accounts, are easy-to-create reports you can configure and save, tweaked to just what you want. 

Yes, that is exactly what I am asking for. I want to be able customize the dashboard in the same way I can customize reports. I don't understand why that is an unreasonable expectation. Quicken for Windows has had this feature for decades.

jacobs

@AndrewG I can't share the full conversation because it was in a beta testing thread, but I can tell you that the Quicken Mac team is viewing the Dashboard as overviews rather than entry points into all of your finances. I wrote that my perception was that the developers' philosophy of the Dashboards is to provide quick looks at your data in different ways, and I was told that was correct. Their goal is to have the Dashboard help you see your financial data at a glance, and to in some cases take quick actions, such as the card for uncategorized transactions which allows you to enter a category directly in the card entry; beyond that, their expectation is that users will use registers, Search, Reports, Bills & Income, etc. to dig more deeply into any aspects of your finances.

I understand you would like to be able to drill down into any details, from the Dashboard screen, configured for such points of entry. I think that could make the cards much more complex for non-power users. (I haven't ever used the windows version and don't know how the user interface for such customizations is implemented there.) I'm not arguing against offering customization of Dashboard cards, and intact, I've argued above for some customizations I believe as desperately needed; I'm only sharing my insight into why I don't think the development team is headed broadly in that direction. 

Unknown

This content has been removed.

AndrewG

> @jacobs said:
> I understand you would like to be able to drill down into any details, from the Dashboard screen, configured for such points of entry. I think that could make the cards much more complex for non-power users. (I haven't ever used the windows version and don't know how the user interface for such customizations is implemented there.) I'm not arguing against offering customization of Dashboard cards, and intact, I've argued above for some customizations I believe as desperately needed; I'm only sharing my insight into why I don't think the development team is headed broadly in that direction. 

It's not about being able to drill down to every detail, it's about being able to control what data is displayed on the Dashboard screen. As I mentioned, it is one of the features that the Dashboard in the Windows version of Quicken always had. I don't really see it as a "power user" feature but in a sense, all Quicken users are power users, if we wanted no control we would be using Mint.