We Want Your Feedback! Help Us Improve Budgeting in Quicken

Quicken Janean

We’re always looking for ways to make budgeting easier and more effective for you! We're conducting a quick survey to learn more about how our users approach budgeting and how you feel about using Quicken's budgeting features. Your insights will help us continue improving Quicken to better meet your needs.

In addition to the survey, we’re also offering the opportunity to schedule a call with our team to discuss your experience using Quicken for budgeting. We’d love to hear directly from you about what’s working well, what could be better, and any suggestions you have for future improvements.

Click the link below to take the survey and learn more about how to schedule a call. Your feedback is valuable to us and will directly influence future updates and features!

Thank you for being a part of our community and helping make Quicken even better!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RFWHHKF

JayBugs

Good survey with a variety of answers as well as room to add your own details. Given the questions, it does look like the Quicken team is still at the start of revising the very old, often lacking, budget section of the Mac version, but at least it is getting some attention now. Another year or three and we should have something great!

jacobs

Anyone who has posted requests in the Product Ideas section for budgeting over the years should take advantage of this opportunity to contribute your input into the next generation of budget functionality in Quicken Mac. Hopefully the development team will read through all the prior posts and comments, but they may be more focused on current responses to this survey — so make sure you do the survey and speak up about the budgeting features most important to you. I just took the survey and agree with @JayBugs that it is relatively comprehensive, and most importantly, allows you to enter your own comments/explanations in multiple places.

Quicken Mac budget users — and would-be budget users — this is your chance to be heard!

Quicken Janean

@jacobs I posted the link in a couple of the ideas threads as well. 😉

jshaf

Great survey but may be too late, at least for me. Been waiting for on quicken for 10 years to add key budget features. I started really searching yesterday for a good alternative and found Monarch Finance. Excellent design, modern, easy to work and best of all…. has budget rollover, multi-year budget.

186kmph

There is no ability add expenses or income into the budget to align with the Bill & Income series setup for each account for future amounts  Without this feature, it is very difficult and manual to create an accurate budget that aligns with the established series for many accounts.  Please add a feature to add on top of a Zero based budget the Billing and Income forecasted series so I can obtain an accurate budget without doing calculations and manual updates that are already present in the Quicken File.

jacobs

@186kmph This thread asks Quicken Mac users to take a short survey about budgeting features. If you do so, you will be able to mention this feature.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RFWHHKF

Adding the comment here won't get to the development team; the survey will.

Additionally, there are a number of "Idea" topics in the Product Ideas > Quicken for Mac > Budget & Planning Tools section of this Community website where individual budget ideas can be proposed, voted on and commented on. There is one specifically for what I believe you're asking for:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7894122/include-scheduled-transaction-amount-when-viewing-entire-budget-year-budget-q-mac

I'd encourage you to click on the View Post link above and add your vote for the feature. (In the yellow box under the first post, click the black up arrow to add your vote.) You can also add a post in that thread to add your point of view.

I believe they created the survey because there are lots of Budget Idea requests, some going back many years, and they wanted to get current-day feedback about what users are looking for as they redesign the budget portion of the program. So to you, and anyone else reading this, please take a few minutes to take the survey (if you haven't already) to express your wishes about budgeting features in Quicken Mac. The development team only infrequently asks for direct input like this as they are planning new development work, so it's a great opportunity for Quicken Mac users to talk to the developers directly about the features and functionality you want.

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Quicken Janean

Hi all, the survey is now closed.Thank you!

Gasport

Savings Goals in the Mac version would go a long way towards helping manage a budget. Why it has never been added is beyond me as I used to love it in the windows version…

jacobs

Savings Goals in the Mac version would go a long way towards helping manage a budget. Why it has never been added is beyond me

@Gasport Like most of the features missing in Quicken Mac which exist in the Windows version, it's simply a matter of time and manpower. The very small Quicken Mac development team has been working for more than a decade now to build the features and functionality in this second-generation of Quicken Mac, and they still have a long to-do list. For the various Idea topics switched to "Planned" status about a year ago, it seems apparent that they intend to dig into building up th planning tools available in Quicken Mac, and as always, we don't know what will be completed and released when. But this survey seeing user input about budget features is as clear indication as we ever get that they are in the planning and design phase of a revamped budget/planning section of the program.

Savings Goals remains one of the features most-requested in the Ideas section of this forum, currently with 375 votes, so it's certainly on their radar. The developers have marked related Ideas, such as Envelope Budgeting, as "Planned", so it's unclear whether they plan to eventually replicate the Savings Goals feature the same as it works in Quicken Windows or plan to offer alternative ways to help users manage their savings goals.

newcastlelinda

I don’t know how I missed this survey and opportunity, but I would very much like to sign up to meet with the developers about budgets. Please send me a new link so that I can sign up for a phone call time.

newcastlelinda

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20460564#Comment_20460564

I tried this link and it failed. I’d really really like to talk to the Product Designer about budgets.

Quicken Janean

Hi @newcastlelinda, We are no longer accepting interview calls, however, please feel free to share your feedback here in the comments section. The product development team can view them here. Thanks!

newcastlelinda

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20461206#Comment_20461206

HI Janean, well there is too much to say to put here in comments. When I had my User Research meeting yesterday with the Quicken for Mac team, they said they would like to talk to me also about Budgets. I'll have to wait and see if they contact me separately, but perhaps you could check in with them?

mrpaley1

Feature request: I would like a "share transaction" option for downloaded transactions from within Quicken.

jacobs

Feature request: I would like a "share transaction" option for downloaded transactions from within Quicken.

@mrpaley1 Could you elaborate on your request. I don't understand what you mean by sharing a downloaded transaction.

GreggNiemi

Budgeting works best when you have accurate records of past transactions. That requires being able to categorize and split transactions. That is very difficult to manage when you cannot enter bill payments into Quicken for transmission to your bank. So the best thing for budgeting would be to FIX THE DIRECT-CONNECT protocol with the banks, like Regions Bank, where YOU BROKE IT!!!!!

jmk19

Are there any options for customizing budget reports, as I’ve encountered a couple of challenges that I’d like to address:

1. Copying/Exporting the Entire Budget (Without Actuals):When I attempt to copy the budget to the clipboard or export it as a CSV file, the data includes the actuals. However, I would like a download or export option that provides only the entire year's budgeted amounts, without the actuals. Is there a way to customize or filter this export?
2. Changes in Transaction Reports by Category Formatting:Previously, transaction reports by category included more user-friendly formatting that helped me quickly organize and summarize data. However, recent changes have made this process cumbersome:
   • Extra dashes are now present in the reports.
   • Main categories are no longer repeated for each subcategory entry.

Since the budgeting features are somewhat limited, I currently use a self-created Excel spreadsheet with various formulas to achieve the summary I need for sharing with family members.

Is there a way to revert or customize these transaction reports to be more like the previous format?

I’ve attached a file showing a comparison between the previous and current transaction report formats for reference in a "food" category.

Thank you.

Quicken Reporting.pdf

jacobs

@jmk19 You posted in a thread form several months ago which was started because the Quicken Mac developers are working on changes and improvements to budgeting in Quicken Mac. Since they were surveying an interviewing users just three months ago, it's likely that the designing, coding and testing of those new features is still a work in progress, but we should expect to see some significant changes to the budget part of Quicken Mac sometime later this year. In the meantime, your options are pretty limited.

When I attempt to copy the budget to the clipboard or export it as a CSV file, the data includes the actuals. However, I would like a download or export option that provides only the entire year's budgeted amounts, without the actuals. Is there a way to customize or filter this export?

No, there is no such option to customize the export. That said, when you open the CSV file in your spreadsheet of choice, it should taker only a few seconds to delete the Actual and Difference columns for the 12 months so you have a budget-only spreadsheet. It's not as ideal as being able to select that as an export option, but it's not too hard to work around.

Previously, transaction reports by category included more user-friendly formatting that helped me quickly organize and summarize data. However, recent changes have made this process cumbersome: Extra dashes are now present in the reports. Main categories are no longer repeated for each subcategory entry.

I was confused that you talked about transaction reports by category. I'm not sure what recent changes and previous format you're referring to, as the reports have been largely unchanged for years now, and even the old Category Summary report didn't repeat the main category with each sub-category; they were just indented, similar to the current reports. There is no additional formatting control over the reports available than what you see, and there isn't a way to go back to an older format. I'm not sure what you mean by "extra dashes are present in these reports". I see each category, and if there are sub-categories, each one under the main category. Where are the dashes you're referring to?

Ah, but then I looked at your attached PDF, and it appears you are talking about an exported budget, not a transaction report by category? Is that what you meant? The export format of Quicken Mac hasn't changed since budgets were added to the program in 2016. Are you contrasting the current Quicken Mac with the old Quicken 2007? If so, the short answer here is that there is no way to alter the format of an exported CSV budget. I don't know if there will be in the future enhancements to budgets the developers are working on, but for now, it is exactly what you see, and any manipulations need to be made in a spreadsheet.

Mark Heritage

Hello,

Unfortunately, the budget feature is reliably broken (at least on Quicken Starter for Windows) and has been for years. There has always been an issue of budget category values resetting to 0 or becoming a seemingly random number, as opposed to the number that the user sets for their budget category. This has been an issue for at least 6 years and has never been fixed.

The common refrain has always been that mobile & web sync was altering the budget numbers, but my mobile & web sync has now been disabled for years, because of this, and it still happens about 20% of the time I use Quicken. To make this point clear, I do not and have not use(d) Quicken (for YEARS) on anything other than my desktop, which is fairly inconvenient, and I still can't avoid this rudimentary but hugely impactful bug. I have reported it over and over again and nothing has changed.

I will be abandoning Quicken if I experience this bug again. It's too frustrating, it has wasted days of my life, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. It made me want to pull my hair out years ago. I can not understand why Quicken won't address this issue. There has also been no dark mode support for Windows, and no one button transaction sync for Tangerine for years, even though the community has asked for it time and time again. I have very little remaining faith in Quicken.

Quicken Anja

Hello @Mark Heritage,

Thanks for reaching out! However, please note that you posted this in a Quicken Classic for Mac thread.

We ask that you please create a new post in the proper Windows category for better visibility and to receive relevant responses. Doing so will also assist us with better tracking ability.

In the meantime, your response here will be redacted shortly as it is off-topic from the current Mac discussion.

Please be sure to include a description of the issue, as well as the version of Quicken you have currently running (Help > About Quicken). The more information you are able to provide will help the Community to better understand and assist.

Thank you!