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Credit card bills not reflected in Projected Balances chart

Adience

I am using Quicken Classic on Windows.

I like using "Bills & Income" > "Projected Balances" chart to give me a sense where my check account balance is for the next 12 months to manage my excess cash flow in and out of the checking account when needed.

I do that by creating recurring income and expenses, which are reflected in the screenshot as "cash out" and "cash in" on Oct 10, and Oct 24 (every 2 weeks). The combined effect of the 2 cash outs and 1 cash in is a net increase in my checking account. These entries are then reflected in the "Projected Balances" Tab in the bottom table, and the line chart goes up every 2 weeks reflecting the net cash increase.

However, Quicken also automatically downloads my credit card statements when they are released by the credit card companies. As shown in the screenshots, I can see them in the Bills tab ( 2 chase cards due Oct 19, and Amex on Oct 22), but they are not included in the Projected Balances when the payment is due.

FYI, credit cards are set to debit my checking account on the due dates and pay in full.

How can I make Projected Balances to include the full payments of my credit card payments on their respective future due dates?

(ignore the overdues, it's not for the checking account in question)

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nmestanas

If I understand your issue properly, I see the same thing.

I have several CC cards as well as utility bills set up as online bills. Their balances are paid directly out of my Checking account (not through Quicken Bil pay). I think this issue stems from having them linked to an online bill (amount unknown until the bill updates) yet doesn't appear in your register until the "show in list" setting. None of these appear in my projected balances.

Now, I also have bunch of Bill and Income Reminders that are not linked to an online bill since they are "fixed" payments (like Netflix subscription, healthcare/insurance premiums, etc.). All of these appear in my projected balances so I see the bumps up with each projected deposit and the bumps down with each projected payment.

Here's an earlier thread on this subject that might provide more insight.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7874567/why-is-my-projected-balances-graph-is-incorrect

Admittedly, I don't really use this feature so I can't offer more help.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Adience,

To troubleshoot this issue, I tested to see if I could replicate it in my own Quicken. I also have a couple credit cards with a financial institution that uses Express Web Connect +.

When I look in Projected Balances, the credit cards don't show up unless I use a manual bill reminder to force the issue.

When I set up a regular manual bill reminder, then the projected payments show up.

I forwarded this issue to the proper channels to be further investigated. In the meantime, if you would like to contribute to the investigation, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.

(CTP-11131)

Adience

thanks @nmestanas and @Quicken Kristina.

@Quicken Kristina can you be more specific what you mean by setting up a manual bill reminder? In my experience manual bill remainders can only be set for fixed payments like Netflix or rent. These type of reminders is exactly what I have set as "cash out" in my original screenshot. But monthly credit card balance can vary greatly from one month to the next, so I can't really set a manual reminder., But to ability for the Projected Balances feature to take into account future variable payments is precisely what I would like the projection feature to do, i.e. once the CC statements are out, I can see if there is any shortfall in my checking account to cover all 3 of my credit cards (I used to build a spreadsheet to do this).

If I read your message correctly, maybe this isn't an available feature yet, because people do have the choice to pay their CC in full or in part every month. So if the development team is to build this feature in, they should give it a prompt box every month for users to indicate how much of that bill they want to pay. Alternatively, in the Projected Balances tab, show a line that indicates your future cash flow if you were to pay your bills in full.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Manual reminders work best when you pay a predictable amount every time. I mentioned it only because manual reminders are a way to force Quicken to see the anticipated upcoming payment(s). The closest Quicken has to a feature to accommodate the variation with credit card bills is an Estimate amount for me feature (under Optional Settings in the reminder).

There is currently an Idea requesting improvements to that feature:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7907222/feature-request-bill-reminder-estimate-amount-for-me-enhancement

If the above Idea is something you'd like to see added, I recommend adding your vote. Ideas that get enough votes may be implemented in the future!

I hope this helps!

UKR

As far as I can determine, the problem with future credit card payments not showing in the Projected Balances view is:

If the reminder is set to Estimate amount for me: "Current Credit Card Balance" then you're OK for the next payment instance.
But what is Quicken supposed to use for future credit card balances, 2 months of more into the future? The crystal ball appears to fail here.

If you really need to show an estimate amount for 2 or more months into the future, set the reminder to
"Estimate amount for me: Previous payments, last [x] payments." where you set [x] to something like 3 or 6 (or any number 1 … 12), depending on how variable your monthly payments are and if you're always paying off the entire balance every month or not.

Adience

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20456362#Comment_20456362

oh interesting. where do I set the"estimate amount for me" feature? I don't see it

nmestanas

@Adience You need to edit the bill reminder. Remember to select "this instance and all future instances"

Under Optional Settings, select "Change" on "Estimate amount for me" (should show off).

Then drop down the list box to pick "Previous Payments". This field might show "Fixed" for things like Netflix, rent, etc. This is the setting for my fixed, manual bills.

Once you select OK, and accept the "update" notice. A different value will appear in the amount. Since there is a value there now, it should appear in the projected balances (it does on mine).

One thing I noticed that is unlinked them to the online bill. I went ahead and relinked them to see if the actual bill updates the estimate.

nmestanas

@UKR Do you know if the estimated amount will update to the actual amount once the online bill updates? I had to relink the ones I changed to estimate (see image in previous post). Those bills have not updated yet for the new period and will be about a week before they do.

UKR

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20456399#Comment_20456399

No, sorry, I don't know if a reminder linked to a biller will update when a new statement is made available. You'll have to wait and see.
The Tools / Manage Bill & Income Reminders feature predates the Online Biller feature. I don't use any of that new Online Biller stuff. Almost all of my recurring bills are set to Autopay by the biller and will automatically debit the money from my checking account or a credit card. When I receive the new statement, I record the reminder, even if it's 3 weeks early, to show the money is about to be gone. So there's really no need for me to link bills and all that other stuff.

BTW, thanks for answering @Adience 's question. Couldn't have done it better myself.

Adience

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20456397#Comment_20456397

Hi, first of all, thanks all for the replies. If I am understanding this correctly, this is only good for 1 specific expense, not for a monthly credit card bill that can vary greatly from one month to the next? I get why this might not be easy for a software to do since how people want to treat each credit card statement can change from month to month. But given the software can pull issued statements, it should give users the option to project balances by estimating "If I pay off X% on every statement" X being user input.

What I have been doing is, I took the sum of all my expenses going onto credit cards over the last 3 years, divided by the total number of months to get number Y. Then I put in a fixed amount biller for Y recurring every month indefinitely attached to my checking account. That way at least I know if I will run low on cash in my main checking account say 8 months from now, if I suddenly has a higher than average monthly spend (such as a $5k vacation that I am going on this week).

nmestanas

When I switched to the "estimate", I toggled between 3 months and 12 months. The amount did change quite a bit as it accounted for large expenses that occurred outside of the prior 3 month period. I have them all set for 3 months right now. I did notice that some will allow "time of year". One option under my CC's are "current credit card balance." I have my AMEX set for this.

What I don't know, and asked UKR above, will the "estimate" change to the actual once the bill does update. None of the ones I changed are due soon (they were just paid last week) So I'll have to wait and see.

In my case, the projected balance, and to some extent. even the reminders themselves have marginal value for me. I sync Quicken daily, reconciling and categorizing as I go along. That way I always have a good picture of where all my accounts are and can easily project when my checking account needs replenishment without the use of the graph. Of course, YMMV.

I do find having the PDF statements downloaded with the online bill very useful. I can review any statement directly in Quicken rather than logging in to the individual sites.