Reward Points

bjones9942

I would like Quicken to allow tracking of reward points. Ideally, you would be able to auto-update the more common ones (airline miles, etc.), but manual entry would be acceptable. This would require that you allow categories that are neither income or expense, but are only for tracking purposes. There are work-arounds, but they are clumsy. Having this ability would greatly increase the worth of using Quicken for me.

NotACPA

The fundamental problem I have with this request is that reward points have no intrinsic value. Today if might take 2000 points to fly to a particular destination while tomorrow could well be an entirely different value.

Other than valuing all points at, say 1 penny, how is Q supposed to keep track of this? And since the point granting companies aren't financial institutions I doubt Q would ever sign contracts with them to allow downloads.

You might try doing a Google search for sites/apps that do this for you. I believe that Yodlee (don't know if that still exists) used to handle this and I also vaguely recall another desktop app, but I don't remember it's name.

RalphC

A simple spreadsheet would work.

CaliQkn

Reward points have a dollar equivalent. Usually it's .10 per point. I have set up accounts for reward points and update them once a month. I divide the points I earn each month by .10 and update the balance.

By converting point to dollars I can include rewards programs in my overall net worth.

bjones9942

NotACPA - They do have value, however I would not be tracking them as such - which is why I clearly said a new category option that didn't relate to INCOME or EXPENSE would have to be created.

RalphC - Sure, but it wouldn't download the transactions, and it wouldn't have my info all in one place.

CaliQkn - I don't want there to be an impact on my net worth, my expenses, nor my income. The values are both de minimus and transient. I just want a means to (preferably) have them auto-update and display in the same computer program as my financial information.

Tripit does allow point tracking, but frequently requires intervention and setting the download process back up. It also is a separate program - which is not my ideal.

UKR

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away there was a program called Microsoft Money. It supported Flyer Miles and similar tracking pseudo-account registers.

To me, this feature wasn't of much usage.
Airline Flyer Miles are/were too infrequent and expired before I had enough to use them.
Credit card Rewards Points, 1% here, 2% there, etc. … it's impossible to record these amounts correctly for every purchase and my credit card accounts often don't have tracking detail on their websites. I just have to trust their computers to get it right.

I'd rather the programmers spend their valuable time on fixing more urgent issues.

bjones9942

And UKR, you are welcome to your opinion. Perhaps you should request a NEW FEATURE that the programmers don't pay attention to any new feature requests until you are personally satisfied that there aren't any 'more urgent issues'.