Custom asset classes Quicken Mac
It is impossible to understand why I can no longer create my own asset classes in Quicken! I always did it in the past but this feature appears to be gone in the last few years. How can anyone track their asset allocations properly with only a few REALLY basic asset classes available? This seems to be a feature that most users would surely appreciate and employ! PLEASE GIVE US THE OPTION OF CREATING OUR OWN ASSET CLASSES TO TRACK OUR ASSET ALLOCATIONS FOR INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS A.S.A.P! Thank you
Best Answers
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Greg, Superusers such as jacobs and myself are just users like yourself. We have no special insight or privilege for knowing Quicken's development plans. Lately, improvements in program have focused on the business features. Once that phase passes, if I had to guess, improvements in investment features may be next. Given that the Idea referenced above is "under consideration", it's a good guess that it would be included (or at least strongly considered) when investment feature improvements start rolling out. But again, that's just a guess with no special access to their plans.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
@gregwardson First, I'm just a fellow Quicken user like you; I don't work for Quicken, and I have no way of knowing when any feature will appear.
Second, I only mentioned the history because you wrote "I always did it in the past", and I wanted to clarify that no functionality had been removed from the program, and that it simply hasn't been built to include this functionality over the more than 10 years since the re-written program debuted.
Third, to register your desire for this feature, you should do so in the "idea" thread @RickO posted above. Idea topics here are they way users can at least somewhat influence the priority of what features get developed, and in what order. Add your vote; add your comment. It may or may not help, but it certainly can't help. The developers read the Idea threads, but they won't see your comments in this thread. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of feature requests we users have thrown at the developers, and while they do kick them off one at a time, the development team is small and the pace of change is slow. Making it even harder is the fact that we all use Quicken differently, so what's crucial to you with asset classes may not matter to someone whose main concern is budgeting features, and vice versa — so determining which features would have the largest possible impact on the largest number of users is an imprecise science.
As for the complexity, I don't know, but I feel it's not as simple as just allowing user to add to a list of asset classes. First, they'd have to insure assigned asset classes for a security add up to 100%. Currently, asset classes are tied to downloads from whatever source (Morningstar?) Quicken uses to pull in allocation breakdowns of mutual funds and ETFs. I don't know if there are places in the code where the asset classes are hard-coded and would need to be re-written; asset classes show up in both the Portfolio view by Asset Class and the Investing > Dashboard Asset Allocation card, both of which allow drilling down to see the securities comprising an asset class. It doesn't seem to me to be a major issue to allow custom asset classes, but it does touch a number of areas in the code, and the complexity involved in enabling custom asset classes likely depends on whether any parts of the existing code were written without the ability to handle and expanded list of asset classes.
Some users have also stated they would like to be able to download or enter additional dimensions of asset allocation which Quicken doesn't provide. (I think this is true of Quicken Windows as well, but I'm not sure.) Some investors want to break down stocks into the typical 9-quadrant grid: large, medium and small cap versus value, blend and growth. Or for bonds funds: short, intermediate or long term versus high, mid or low quality. Some investors want the added dimension of sectors analysis: energy, financial services, healthcare, industrials, real estate, technology, utilities, etc. I have no idea if adding that functionality is in Quicken management's long-term plans, but if it is, the Quicken Mac team might be waiting for an opportunity to address this all at once rather than piecemeal.
In any case, please add your vote and voice in the Idea thread for custom asset classes… and then sit back, cross your fingers, and wait. 😉
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931
Answers
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You may want to visit, vote for and comment on this long running Idea post that covers this topic:
The good news is that it is listed as under consideration, so it may eventually make it into the program.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
Just for clarity, the modern version of Quicken Mac, which first came out over a decade ago (in 2014), has never had the ability for users to define custom asset classes. Nothing has been removed or changed with this in recent years. (If you previously used Quicken Windows or the legacy Quicken Mac 2007 and earlier, asset classes were user-definable, but that functionality has not yet been built for modern Quicken Mac.)
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Jacobs, I have been a Quicken Mac user since the early 90s. I kept using Quicken 2007 Mac for years after the 'modern' subscription version came out, but what difference does that make? I didn't write my post in search of clarity—the Custom Asset Classes feature is what I asked about. How complicated can it be: we can already easily create and edit Categories, so why not make it available in Asset Classes as well? When do you expect to make this a feature of Quicken Mac? Thank you
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Greg, Superusers such as jacobs and myself are just users like yourself. We have no special insight or privilege for knowing Quicken's development plans. Lately, improvements in program have focused on the business features. Once that phase passes, if I had to guess, improvements in investment features may be next. Given that the Idea referenced above is "under consideration", it's a good guess that it would be included (or at least strongly considered) when investment feature improvements start rolling out. But again, that's just a guess with no special access to their plans.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
@gregwardson First, I'm just a fellow Quicken user like you; I don't work for Quicken, and I have no way of knowing when any feature will appear.
Second, I only mentioned the history because you wrote "I always did it in the past", and I wanted to clarify that no functionality had been removed from the program, and that it simply hasn't been built to include this functionality over the more than 10 years since the re-written program debuted.
Third, to register your desire for this feature, you should do so in the "idea" thread @RickO posted above. Idea topics here are they way users can at least somewhat influence the priority of what features get developed, and in what order. Add your vote; add your comment. It may or may not help, but it certainly can't help. The developers read the Idea threads, but they won't see your comments in this thread. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of feature requests we users have thrown at the developers, and while they do kick them off one at a time, the development team is small and the pace of change is slow. Making it even harder is the fact that we all use Quicken differently, so what's crucial to you with asset classes may not matter to someone whose main concern is budgeting features, and vice versa — so determining which features would have the largest possible impact on the largest number of users is an imprecise science.
As for the complexity, I don't know, but I feel it's not as simple as just allowing user to add to a list of asset classes. First, they'd have to insure assigned asset classes for a security add up to 100%. Currently, asset classes are tied to downloads from whatever source (Morningstar?) Quicken uses to pull in allocation breakdowns of mutual funds and ETFs. I don't know if there are places in the code where the asset classes are hard-coded and would need to be re-written; asset classes show up in both the Portfolio view by Asset Class and the Investing > Dashboard Asset Allocation card, both of which allow drilling down to see the securities comprising an asset class. It doesn't seem to me to be a major issue to allow custom asset classes, but it does touch a number of areas in the code, and the complexity involved in enabling custom asset classes likely depends on whether any parts of the existing code were written without the ability to handle and expanded list of asset classes.
Some users have also stated they would like to be able to download or enter additional dimensions of asset allocation which Quicken doesn't provide. (I think this is true of Quicken Windows as well, but I'm not sure.) Some investors want to break down stocks into the typical 9-quadrant grid: large, medium and small cap versus value, blend and growth. Or for bonds funds: short, intermediate or long term versus high, mid or low quality. Some investors want the added dimension of sectors analysis: energy, financial services, healthcare, industrials, real estate, technology, utilities, etc. I have no idea if adding that functionality is in Quicken management's long-term plans, but if it is, the Quicken Mac team might be waiting for an opportunity to address this all at once rather than piecemeal.
In any case, please add your vote and voice in the Idea thread for custom asset classes… and then sit back, cross your fingers, and wait. 😉
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
The angry tone and punctuation/ all-caps yelling of your post about “no longer” being able to define custom asset classes suggested to me, anyway, that this was a newly discovered limitation. Jacobs simply relayed the info that this has been the case for 11 years, and RickO gave a link to a wish that you can vote on. None of us will ever know when something new (which was, in this case and many others, old) will arrive. All we can do is vote and see if the wish has changed to “planned” etc.
Quicken user since 1990, MacBook Pro M2 Max on Sequoia 15.3.1 (and Win 11 under Parallels Desktop)
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