Quicken for Mac report formats in excel and other thoughts
Perhaps a thread discusses this but I have not found it. As a user of both Quicken for Mac (trying to move entirely to Mac) and for Windows, I find it essential to be able to export reports in an excel format for my accountant and other uses. Why is this option not available in the Mac version? And on a more macro level, why are the Mac reports so limited and inferior to the Windows reports including no system for saving reports in a user indexed filing system like the Windows version? Would it not make sense for the Mac team to adopt the best from its Windows counterpart and visa versa? Thanks for considering these comments.
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I think if Quicken Mac were going to be exporting spreadsheets rather than CSV files, Numbers would be a more appropriate format than Excel.
As for a filing system, I already have a system for saving documents (both financial & otherwise) and don't need Quicken to provide one.
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Thanks for you thoughts, John. My accountant and I both use Excel and not Numbers. I suspect that is true of most folks in the financial sphere for a variety of reasons including a widespread belief that Excel is the superior product. Regarding the filing system, my comment was ambiguous because it failed to make clear that I am referring to the Save filing non-system in Quicken for Mac. I save my Quicken reports annually and use the last one to create the next one with appropriate updating. This is easy in the Windows product and difficult to impossible in the Mac product.
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@tcolyer I must not be understanding some of your requests.
Can you please explain why exporting from Quicken in CSV format is not suitable for your accountant? Yes, CSV is the lowest common denominator for spreadsheets, but the upside is that it works with all spreadsheet programs, from Excel to Numbers to Google Sheets. If you want to do formatting or clean-up, you can open the CSV export in Excel, edit as needed, and save as an Excel file. What would exporting in .xls or .xlsx format do for you?
I save my Quicken reports annually and use the last one to create the next one with appropriate updating. This is easy in the Windows product and difficult to impossible in the Mac product.
I'm again not understanding what you're wanting to do that you find can't do in Quicken Mac. You can save any/every report you generate in Quicken Mac. I have some reports that I update each year while preserving the older year versions. In Quicken Mac, you can click Duplicate, edit the title to reflect the new year, change the date range for the report, and save. So I have XYZ Report 2021, XYZ Report 2022, and XYZ Report 2023. When it's time to create this year's version, I click on the XYZ Report 2023, click Duplicate, edit the title to XYZ Report 2024, change the date range to 1/1/24-12/31/24, and Save. (Some people prefer to group their reports by year, in which case you'd put the year at the start of the report titles, so all the 2023 reports would appear sorted together.) What is difficult-to-impossible to do in Quicken Mac?
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Jacobs, I really appreciate your tutorial on how to update and save reports Quicken Mac. I can likely make that work. As a long-time user of the Windows version, I was locked into that mindset which includes an ability to create sub-folders for organizing saved files. Regarding CVS, I will talk to my accountant about your point. Since his office only works in Excel format, I'm guessing he is going to point out the additional steps/work involved in using CSV formats. His time is my money you know. Again, my thanks.
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Saving in Excel format when you read in a CSV file in Excel is trivial, in fact Excel tends to push you to do that, and especially if you do any kind of formatting that will be lost in CSV format.
Out of curiosity I exported a report in Quicken Windows in both Excel and CSV format.
The first thing I noticed is that in the CSV format Quicken Windows didn't put out the split information, but they did in the Excel format, but that is on Quicken windows, for doing something different, not on the fact that it couldn't be done in CSV format.
One thing that definitely would be Excel only is one of the requests people make and that is to put out formulas instead of fixed numbers for things like the balance. I doubt Quicken is ever going to implement something like that though.
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As a long-time user of the Windows version, I was locked into that mindset which includes an ability to create sub-folders for organizing saved files.
And there have definitely been user requests to the Quicken Mac developers to allow creation of folders and sub-folders to organize reports. Happily, the Idea post in this forum for such as feature has been marked as "Planned" by the developers. We don't know when this feature will be released, but it is definitely on their schedule:
Until that gets implemented, we're stuck with just one big list of reports. But by naming your reports with the year, unless you have dozens and dozens of custom reports each year, you'll probably find it workable. If you start your report names with the year (e.g. "2023 XYZ Report") then all your reports for each years will be sorted together.
I'd also point out that when you click Reports in the main menu bar, and click on My Reports, you can change the sort order of your custom reports between alphabetical by name to date order by creation date, last edited date, or last opened date. To see those additional data columns, Control-click on any column heading and select Created, Edited and Opened to add those columns to the screen. Clicking on any column heading will sort the reports in that order.
Also, in the upper right of this screen, there's a Search box, so if you don't want to wade through a long list of files to find your "XYZ Report" from two years ago, you can just type "XYZ" in the Search box, and the screen will just show your "XYZ" reports.
With any/all reports, you also have the additional Description field where you can add anything to help you identify a report in the future. For instance, if you created two versions of a report to show different variations of data, you can use the Description field to embed a note what's unique about this version of a report. The Search box will search Description as well as report name when you do a search.
Utilizing these tools, most people can organize their reports and find what they need from the prior year(s).
Regarding CVS, I will talk to my accountant about your point. Since his office only works in Excel format, I'm guessing he is going to point out the additional steps/work involved in using CSV formats.
Just to clarify, if you send your accountant a CSV file, and he simply selects and opens that file, it will open in Excel, just as if it had been saved as an Excel file. There's no formatting to make it look pretty, but there's no time involved in opening a CSV file versus opening an Excel file. And as Chris noted, even if there were an Excel export option from Quicken, it would include just the data and no formulas to sum rows or columns.
@Chris_QPW said: The first thing I noticed is that in the CSV format Quicken Windows didn't put out the split information
In Quicken Mac, reports don't have splits. That is, a category report includes any splits as if they are stand-alone transactions. So if I have a transaction for a purchase at a grocery store with one split for Category=Groceries and another split for Category=Drugs/medicine, an expense report by category will list each of these splits under their respective categories. Isn't it the same in Quicken Windows?
In Quicken Mac, if one exports all or part of a transaction register, that's where you need splits. And Quicken Mac exports each split line as its own row in a CSV export.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
@jacobs most reports wouldn't have splits, but the transaction report would be one that does have it. And I'm sure the Quicken Mac does something similar because Quicken Mac Essentials had it.
In that report there is an option on how to show them (or more exact how not to show them):
With "Show split off" in the report":
Exported in Excel format:
In CSV (viewed in Excel):
With it on:
Excel format:
CSV:
So, you have
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In Quicken Mac, there is currently no way to suppress split lines when printing or exporting a transaction register. (This isn't done through the regular reports are, but simply by selecting the transactions in the register desired for printing/exporting, and then selecting to print or export.)
The ability to print/export transactions without split detail lines is a long-running Idea thread which still needs 6 more votes in order to be forwarded to the developers. (sigh)
Anyone who wants this capability in Quicken Mac please click View Post above and add your vote!
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Thank you both for your thoughtful comments Jacobs and Chris. My interface with my accountant is complicated by the fact that I am a dual citizen filing tax returns in two countries having different currencies. This requires me to do a lot of work on my spreadsheet data exported from Quicken. I find that the Quicken for Windows exportation process works far better for me than what I have seen so far from the Mac version. Perhaps I will find additional better workarounds if I decide to continue using the Mac product but I do have trouble understanding why two sister products don't do a better job of each adopting the best discoveries from the sibling product for the benefit of all users of both. I'm guessing the reason must be bureaucracy within Quicken and that's too bad if it is. Again, my thanks to you, J. and C.
PS Chris, I also thank you for the website you linked in. I'm downloading an older QWindows product from it with a current patch to see if I can overcome a persistent problem with crashes on my older Mojave OS (used with CrossOver to run the WQ product). Cheers.
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I do have trouble understanding why two sister products don't do a better job of each adopting the best discoveries from the sibling product for the benefit of all users of both.
Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac have related but different development paths and histories. The Mac and windows platforms were so different that both products were developed using tools tightly tied to their respective operating systems. The underlying databases were specific to each platform. the legacy Quicken Mac product actually reached a point about 18 years ago where development had to be stopped because changes to the modern Mac operating system made it impossible to bring forward software using old tools which would be obsolete and removed from the OS. At that point, they decided they needed to start building a next-generation Quicken Mac from scratch. Trying to make it use the database and development tools utilized by Quicken Windows was technically infeasible. They could have decided to rebuild both Quicken Mac and Quicken Windows around a common database and technology, but that wold have required a massive development effort to recreate two decades of development as well as abandoning the tools built into each of the two operating systems — which would have meant much more work to build their own tools and libraries instead of those already available for Windows and for Mac. So the modern Quicken Mac was redeveloped, with some stops, starts, and missteps as former parent Intuit changed leadership and directions several times. Eventually, the modern Quicken Mac emerged in 2014, and the Mac development team has been continuing to play catch-up on adding features over the past 9+ years.
The Mac developers often look at how things were built in Quicken Windows and try to make Quicken Mac similar. But they sometimes decide there's a better approach than emulating something which may have been built 20+ years earlier using older technologies than exist today. I don't think any of that is bureaucracy. They also just don't have enough programmers on the Mac team to build out all the desired features and functionality, so they have to pick and choose which features they think will have the greatest impact.
They certainly could add native Excel format export capabilities, but I imagine the question is whether there would be significant added functionality over the existing CSV export capabilities. Then add the question of what percentage of home Mac users actually have Excel, since Macs come with Apple's free Numbers spreadsheet which can read and write in Excel format.
Best wishes!
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Thanks for this, too, Jacobs. It makes sense given the differing histories. I have been very favorably impressed with the catch-up job the Mac team has done with its product. I know some of my frustration is having to use the equivalent of two sometimes completely differently designed hammers on my numerical construction projects. It's just not very efficient. Cheers.
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I have been very favorably impressed with the catch-up job the Mac team has done with its product. I know some of my frustration is having to use the equivalent of two sometimes completely differently designed hammers on my numerical construction projects.
Yes, that's understandable. I think at a high-level, Quicken's assumption is that most people will use one platform or the other, but not both simultaneously except during a period of transition. So while the tools are different, and require some learning and mental reprogramming, under this assumption, there's an initial learning curve, but then a user will settle in with their new platform. Someone who is straddling both platforms for a prolonged period of time is subject to much more in the way of mental gymnastics!
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930
