where can I create a Budget to Actual Report?

nmlaing

want to be able to create a budget to actual report (regular income statement) for whatever time period I desire. having trouble finding this very basic report format.

jacobs

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but… this "very basic report format" doesn't exist in Quicken Mac. Yet. To me, it's the largest and most stupefying omission in the program.

My understanding is that adding new features to the budget area of the program requires that they significantly re-write that portion of the code, and perhaps that's why this seemingly-straighforward feature hasn't been built yet. In any case, in this long-running Idea thread for this functionality, the developers have this marked as "Planned", which means it is not only planned but has a specific time slot on their development schedule. But we users have no idea whether this is coming next month or next year or …

Sigh.

That said, there are some things you can do to work around this missing functionality.

First, do you have the actual-versus-budget year-to-date columns visible on your budget screen? If the top left of your budget screen has January, February, etc. starting in the second column, like this…

… then click that "<<" button to reveal the actual-versus-budget columns:

If the heading is showing "January to December", click the "v" icon to display a small drop-down menu, and select Budget Year-to-Date Totals:

None of this is intuitive, so unless you've clicked everythign in sight, you may not have discovered it. This seems like a step in the right direction, but the usefulness here is unfortunately limited. First, these columns don't print if you print your detailed budget. (Seems crazy, I know, but that's the way it is.) The other major flaw here is that it always shows year-to-date through today. There is no way to specify you want to see budget versus actual through the end of the prior month or quarter. So as I'm writing this on March 29, that might not be so bad since the month is almost complete. But if you check it this weekend and the calendar has flipped to April, the year-to-date will be comparing your budget through April with your actual income and expenses through April 1 — a mismatch which makes the comparison pretty useless.

The only real way to get an actual versus budget report through the end of a particular month is to export your budget and open it in your spreadsheet of choice (Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets). In a spreadsheet, you can get the YTD report you want by deleting the future months, summing the actual columns, summing the budget columns, creating a difference column, and then copying those cells down through all the rows, and totaling them. (Even totaling the columns its tricky, though, because the budget rows show both main categories and subcategories, and you can't include both in your totals.) If you're comfortable with a spreadsheet, you can get there reasonably quickly. But it's annoying to have to build each month. 

If you're an advanced spreadsheet user, you can build a spreadsheet with formulas for each month such that so you just have to export the Quicken report and paste it into one sheet, select your month, and see a YTD report in another sheet. I have an Excel file with three sheets: the first is where I paste in the export from Quicken; the second builds 12 columns of YTD actuals and 12 columns of YTD budget values from the first sheet; the third is my YTD report where I enter the month number and it pulls the appropriate actual and budget values from the second sheet. This allows me to generate a YTD budget report in 5 seconds without needing to create or edit any formulas — but building such a spreadsheet requires some proficiency.

Hopefully the developers will deliver a true budget report in the not-too-distant future. (But, sadly, I've been saying that for several years!)

Pedro504

There is no way to specify you want to see budget versus actual through the end of the prior month or quarter.
Well stated "jacobs" and I use a similar approach with excel spreadsheets to overcome this shortcoming in quicken.
Perhaps one day they will author a quicken report for us.

jacobs

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but… this "very basic report format" doesn't exist in Quicken Mac. Yet. To me, it's the largest and most stupefying omission in the program.

My understanding is that adding new features to the budget area of the program requires that they significantly re-write that portion of the code, and perhaps that's why this seemingly-straighforward feature hasn't been built yet. In any case, in this long-running Idea thread for this functionality, the developers have this marked as "Planned", which means it is not only planned but has a specific time slot on their development schedule. But we users have no idea whether this is coming next month or next year or …

Sigh.

That said, there are some things you can do to work around this missing functionality.

First, do you have the actual-versus-budget year-to-date columns visible on your budget screen? If the top left of your budget screen has January, February, etc. starting in the second column, like this…

… then click that "<<" button to reveal the actual-versus-budget columns:

If the heading is showing "January to December", click the "v" icon to display a small drop-down menu, and select Budget Year-to-Date Totals:

None of this is intuitive, so unless you've clicked everythign in sight, you may not have discovered it. This seems like a step in the right direction, but the usefulness here is unfortunately limited. First, these columns don't print if you print your detailed budget. (Seems crazy, I know, but that's the way it is.) The other major flaw here is that it always shows year-to-date through today. There is no way to specify you want to see budget versus actual through the end of the prior month or quarter. So as I'm writing this on March 29, that might not be so bad since the month is almost complete. But if you check it this weekend and the calendar has flipped to April, the year-to-date will be comparing your budget through April with your actual income and expenses through April 1 — a mismatch which makes the comparison pretty useless.

The only real way to get an actual versus budget report through the end of a particular month is to export your budget and open it in your spreadsheet of choice (Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets). In a spreadsheet, you can get the YTD report you want by deleting the future months, summing the actual columns, summing the budget columns, creating a difference column, and then copying those cells down through all the rows, and totaling them. (Even totaling the columns its tricky, though, because the budget rows show both main categories and subcategories, and you can't include both in your totals.) If you're comfortable with a spreadsheet, you can get there reasonably quickly. But it's annoying to have to build each month. 

If you're an advanced spreadsheet user, you can build a spreadsheet with formulas for each month such that so you just have to export the Quicken report and paste it into one sheet, select your month, and see a YTD report in another sheet. I have an Excel file with three sheets: the first is where I paste in the export from Quicken; the second builds 12 columns of YTD actuals and 12 columns of YTD budget values from the first sheet; the third is my YTD report where I enter the month number and it pulls the appropriate actual and budget values from the second sheet. This allows me to generate a YTD budget report in 5 seconds without needing to create or edit any formulas — but building such a spreadsheet requires some proficiency.

Hopefully the developers will deliver a true budget report in the not-too-distant future. (But, sadly, I've been saying that for several years!)

nmlaing

Thank you so much for taking the time to share all that. I am familiar with the information provided and as a seasoned spreadsheet creator can take the extra steps, just shouldn't have to. I am a long time user of Quicken for Windows, switched to MAC 4 years ago - disappointed with a number of features they are missing.

Hoping Quicken are on this matter sooner than later - as you know, it is a basic component of managing finances - should have been included in the first edition!!

Pedro504

There is no way to specify you want to see budget versus actual through the end of the prior month or quarter.
Well stated "jacobs" and I use a similar approach with excel spreadsheets to overcome this shortcoming in quicken.
Perhaps one day they will author a quicken report for us.

jacobs

@nmlaing said: It is a basic component of managing finances - should have been included in the first edition!!

Not everyone uses the budget section of Quicken Mac, but for those who do — or want to! — I agree that the absence of a simple actual-to-budget report is a pretty debilitating omission.

@nmlaing said: should have been included in the first edition!!

I agree… and disagree. 😉 As someone who migrated from Quicken Windows only a few years ago, you may not be aware of the tortured history of Quicken Mac. The short version: the original Quicken Mac was built on database, user interface and programming tools which Apple was removing from the modern Mac operating system 15 years ago, and there was no way to keep updating it — so they had to start over from scratch. Intuit failed in their first attempt at a new product, then released one with a significant subset of features, then nearly stopped work on Quicken Mac during a series of management changes, and when they decided to move ahead, hired a team to do it which was originally about 5 people. The "first edition" of modern Quicken Mac came out in the second half of 2014, and it was lacking a lot of functionality. Many of us longtime Quicken Mac users clamored for more features before it was even released, but the simple and pragmatic answer from the product manager was that if they waited until they could build all the essential features (or all the features from the old Quicen Mac, or all the features from Quicen Windows), they would still be working on developing it in the lab today, and there would be no Quicken Mac on the market!

If you look at the Product Ideas section of this forum, you'll find that there are more than 500 feature requests for the developers. Some of those are very niche or not well thought out, but many of them are indeed features from the old Quicken Mac or Quicken Windows which users would like to see incorporated into Quicken Mac. If you compare Quicken Mac today to the Quicken Mac product which debuted in 2014, you'd see how significantly the program has improved over that time. Heck, annual budgeting didn't even exist in the original Quicken Mac! So little by little, the developers are indeed tackling shortcomings and needs, large and small — but of course for us users, it feels like the progress is never enough and always too slow!

So while I disagree that a budget report could or should have been in the first edition of Quicken Mac — because they simply could not build from the start all the features users needed — I do agree that when they built the current 12-month budgeting portion of the program, it should have included an actual-versus-budget report. Or it should have been added shortly after that. It sure feels like the members of the development and management teams don't use Quicken Mac for their own finances (or at least use it to budget) because it's so limited without this basic report. I remain hopeful that the developers understand the need, and that their stated commitment to implementing this request is not too far down the development road map.

nmlaing

thanks for the history on this! Very interesting. Appreciate you taking the time to share.