The Community Meetup- January 2025 Edition

Quicken Janean

How to See Your Finances Clearly
By Janean Comfort

A Personal Financial Health Dashboard is a powerful tool for gaining a clear, real-time snapshot of your financial well-being. By consolidating all your accounts, budgets, spending, and goals in one place, it provides actionable insights that help you make smarter financial decisions. This
dashboard allows you to monitor key metrics like net worth, spending trends, and debt reduction progress, making it easier to spot potential issues early and stay on track with your financial goals. Creating one is especially beneficial during life transitions, such as starting a new job,
planning for a major purchase, or preparing for retirement, as it simplifies complex financial tracking and encourages accountability. Whether you’re seeking better control over your money or aiming to achieve long-term goals, a financial health dashboard is an essential first step toward financial clarity and peace of mind. Another benefit is it can be created in both
Classic Quicken for Windows and Mac. So, let's get into how to create the
dashboard in Quicken.

Steps for Mac Users

Step 1: Set Up Key Accounts

1. Add Accounts:
   • Go to Accounts > New Account.
   • Choose the account type, such as Bank, Credit Card, Loan, or Investment, and follow the steps to add your data.
2. Ensure you’ve added all financial accounts to create a complete view of your financial situation.

Step 2: View and Organize the Dashboard

1. Access the Overview Page:
   • Open the Home tab, which serves as your default dashboard.
   • This page automatically includes widgets like Net Worth, Spending by Category, and Cash Flow.
2. Focus on Key Metrics:
   • While the dashboard is not fully customizable, you can click on individual widgets (like Spending or Cash Flow) to view more details and refine reports within each section.

Step 3: Use Reports for Additional Insights

1. Go to Reports > Net Worth or Reports > Spending.
2. Customize reports by setting time frames or focusing on specific accounts.
3. Save frequently used reports and revisit them from the Reports menu for quick access to additional dashboard-like metrics.

Step 4: Set Up Savings Goals

1. Navigate to Planning > Savings Goals.
2. Create savings or debt reduction goals and track progress over time. While savings goals don’t appear directly on the dashboard, they provide essential data for your financial health.

Step 5: Enable Notifications for Financial Alerts

1. Go to Quicken > Preferences > Alerts.
2. Set alerts for budget thresholds, low account balances, and upcoming bill payments to stay informed about critical updates to your finances.

Steps for Windows Users

Step 1: Set Up Key Accounts

1. Add all your accounts:
   • Go to Tools > Add Account.
   • Select the account type (e.g., Bank, Credit Card, Loan, or Investment) and follow the prompts to connect or manually input data.
2. Repeat this process for all accounts, ensuring all financial data is centralized in Quicken.

Step 2: Customize the Home Tab

1. Navigate to the Home tab in Quicken for Windows, which serves as your financial dashboard.
2. On the right side of the screen, locate the Settings icon (a gear-shaped icon).
3. Click the gear icon and select Customize from the dropdown menu. This will open the customization options for your dashboard.
4. In the customization menu:
   • Choose which widgets (cards) to display, such as Net Worth, Spending by Category, Budget Overview, or Investment Performance.
   • Arrange the order of the widgets by dragging them to your preferred positions.
5. Save your changes to display the customized dashboard.

Step 3: Set Up Goals

1. Navigate to Planning > Budgets or Savings Goals.
2. Create a new goal for things like emergency funds, retirement, or debt payoff.
3. Monitor these goals directly from the dashboard.

Step 4: Utilize Reports for Deeper Insights

While reports in Quicken for Windows can’t be pinned to the Home tab, they offer valuable details for tracking financial health. Here’s how to access and use them effectively:

1. Access the Default Net Worth Report:
   • Navigate to the Reports menu at the top of the screen.
   • Select What Am I Worth? under Easy Answer Reports.
   • Select the Year to Date and then Show Report.
   • This report provides a comprehensive view of your total assets minus liabilities over a chosen time period.
2. Run Other Key Reports:
   • Go to Reports and choose from categories like:
     • Spending for detailed spending analysis by category or payee.
     • Banking for transaction summaries.
     • Investment Performance to monitor portfolio growth.
3. Save Customized Reports:
   • Once a report is tailored to your needs, click Save Reports and give it a meaningful name.
   • Access saved reports later by going to Reports > Manage Saved Reports.
4. Export Reports for External Use:
   • Click the Export button to save reports as Excel or PDF files. This is useful for sharing data with financial advisors or analyzing trends outside Quicken.

Creating a Personal Financial Health Dashboard in Quicken offers tailored benefits for individuals with diverse financial circumstances, such as small business owners, college students, and single parents just to name a few as an example.

For Small Business Owners: A financial health dashboard is invaluable for tracking both personal and business finances. Small business owners can monitor cash flow, separate business and personal expenses with tags, and view tax-deductible expenses in real time. The ability to integrate reports like profit and loss or cash flow summaries ensures the business remains financially healthy while providing clarity about how personal finances are impacted. This visibility helps entrepreneurs make informed decisions, plan for future investments, and maintain a balance between business growth and personal stability.

For College Students with a New Credit Card: College students, often managing limited funds and building credit for the first time, can use a dashboard to avoid overspending and track how much
of their credit limit they’ve utilized. Widgets like "Spending by Category"and "Budget Summary" help students understand their spending habits, ensuring they live within their means while setting aside money for emergencies. A credit card payment tracker reduces the risk of missing due dates, which is crucial for maintaining a good credit score. The dashboard serves as a financial education tool, encouraging responsible money and credit management from a young age.

For Single Parents: Single parents often juggle multiple financial responsibilities, making a financial dashboard a lifeline. It provides a clear overview of monthly income, expenses, and debts, helping prioritize essentials like childcare, education, and loan payments. Widgets for "Upcoming Bills" and "Savings Goals" ensure no payments are missed, while tracking student loan balances and progress keeps long-term financial goals in focus. The ability to project future cash flow helps single parents prepare for unexpected expenses, offering peace of mind and the ability to make smarter financial decisions for their family’s future.

In each scenario, the dashboard’s ability to centralize financial data, provideactionable insights, and promote accountability makes it a transformative tool for better financial management, regardless of life stage or financial complexity.

Question of The Month

What widgets do you use on your dashboard in Quicken and how do they help you keep your finances in order or show your financial health?

Latest Releases 

The latest Quicken for Windows release was R60.12, R60.14 and R60.15. Some highlights from those releases were:

• Tax Export now creates a single TXF file that combines Capital Gains with other tax information, and you can specify the tax year for the export. Quicken can also create a tax export file in the modernized TXJ format. You can still create separate export files using Tax Tools in the Planning/Tax Center tab.
• Updated tax rates for 2025. The new tax rates are effective January 1, 2025.
• Access to the "Collapse all graphs in reports by default" setting has been added to the Display dialog in reports.
• The Account Bar now displays totals for individual sections within main account groups.
• The Investment Asset Allocation report no longer includes sold or expired securities.
• You can now search for specific settings in the Preferences dialog.
• Transaction dates retain separator hyphens when using the (ddd dd-MM-yyyy) short date format (e.g., Tue 12-11-2024).
• Before you install any update, we recommend you perform a One Step Update. You should also make a backup of your data file. To see all the current releases for Windows, please visit this support article.

The latest release for Quicken Classic for Mac was version 7.10 & 7.10.1 (10/2024 & 11/2024).

To see all the current releases for Mac, please visit this support article. There were many new features and improvements made. Some notable changes were:

• Automatically backup your financial data and Quicken will keep it safe in case of hardware failure or other emergencies (available in v7.9.1 or later releases as a separate subscription)
• The new Capital Gain Estimator lets you create a stock sales scenario that works for you with an estimate of your net proceeds and tax implications
• Enhancements have been made to the Security Detail feature
• Use automatic Zillow updates to keep your property estimated market values current (only available in the Premier and Business & Personal tiers). For instructions, click here.
• 7.10 is the last release with support for macOS 11. For more information, click here.

December Top Posts

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Just told by tech support that the MAC version cannot reconcile a loan from a bank statement

Top Windows Posts

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Let us know your feedback on the recent Windows Quick Pay update

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