Add TAG filtering to Dashboard cards

jfishsun
jfishsun Quicken Mac Subscription Member

Hi, I appreciate the Dashboard and have become more comfortable using it. I think it has a lot of potential so encourage you to keep improving it.

What would make it much more useful for me is to add the ability to filter by Tag in each card. I see others have asked to filter by Category but I believe that an even more useful first improvement would be to filter by Tag. The advantage of filtering by Tags vs. Category is that a Tag can be applied to any Category, and can be assigned to a transaction within any Account. A tag can also be attached to either income or expense transactions. It is the most efficient method to give users like me the flexibility to remove certain transactions (and even Payees through rules) from these cards.

As an example, I use Tags as the best method to remove expenses that were reimbursed to me. If I paid for a work expense that was reimbursed for instance, I don't need to see this in my "Spending by Category" card. I could change the Category but it is useful for my expense reports to know that a charge was for a hotel, etc. so I'd like to keep that. Another example is to remove something like a property tax payment from my "Top Spending Payees" card. I have seen others ask about removing the tax Category but from my POV, adding the ability to Tag such one-off payments with a tag like "No Dashboard", then filtering out this Tag from the cards, would be easy and effective, and would still allow me to keep other tax items in the card view.

Hope that makes a compelling case since I believe this would be a great improvement. Thanks.

1
1 votes

Reviewed · Last Updated

Comments

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    @jfishsun said: As an example, I use Tags as the best method to remove expenses that were reimbursed to me. If I paid for a work expense that was reimbursed for instance, I don't need to see this in my "Spending by Category" card. I could change the Category but it is useful for my expense reports to know that a charge was for a hotel, etc. so I'd like to keep that.

    I'm curious how you're recording the purchase you made and then the subsequent reimbursement. Do you use a Category like "Work Expense" when you make a purchase for work? Then when you get reimbursed, don't you record the deposit as accredit to the same Category? In other words, the expense would only be visible in your dashboard during the period between your purchase and reimbursement; then it would zero out/ Of course, if the expense was in one month and the reimbursement in the next month, the would affect the values of the Dashboard graph for both months.

    A better way to record these transactions, if you have them with any frequency, is to create an Asset account for "Work Expenses" or "Work Purchases" or "Work Reimbursements" or simply "Exchange". When you make a work purchase, the transaction would be entered as a Transfer to the asset account. When you receive your reimbursement, you'd enter a deposit in your bank account with a Transfer to the asset account. This approach has a few advantages. First, neither the purchase nor deposit is an expense, so it won't affect your Dashboard or reports on categories of expenses. Second, it gives you an instant way to see the balance of reimbursements owed to you in your sidebar. I've always used this approach. In the asset account, when payment have been received, I go through and mark the money out and money in transactions as cleared, so I have a record of which specific transactions are yet to be reimbursed.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993