Downgrade from Business & Personal to Deluxe, what happens to Business Categories?

matttramat

Quicken Mac lifer. Been on Deluxe for many years.

I'm considering an upgrade to Business & Personal but my needs are pretty much just invoicing, so I'm not sure I'll stick with it. The tutorial explains migrating any existing categories used for business to some new form of business categories only in Business & Personal.

What happens to those categories and transactions if I downgrade back to Deluxe?

MontanaKarl

@matttramat PS. I missed your questions about Categories. All categories - including those of type Business Income and Business Expense categories remain after downgrading, with any transactions using those categories as before. But, while in Business, you can change the type of any category from personal to business and back … you cannot change the type in a lower tier subscription. You can use the business categories like any other category though. Behind the scenes, the default business (if you have more than one) will be entered as the associated business for a business category transaction… and so would have to be edited if you migrated back to Business edition and had more than one business to track.

(You can track your businesses with tags when in Premier or lower … but if you upgrade to the Business edition, you'd have to do batch changes to find those tagged transactions and modify the Business entity field.)

The Client field for any transactions entered in Premier and lower will be blank… unlike the Business field which will be populated behind the scenes with the default business.

NotACPA

In QWin, and I'd expect the same for QMac, the business specific functions such as invoicing would no longer be available, but your data file (including all of your categories and the non-business reports) would remain intact.

Any business-specific accounts, such as invoices, become regular non-business accounts.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20508066#Comment_20508066

Yeah, but the BIG question is what will Quicken Mac do. Other than if Quicken Inc has tested this internally, I don't think anyone here knows the answer "yet".

MontanaKarl

Yes, @Chris_QPW , this has all been tested as the Mac beta lets testers select any of the multiple versions of the product to see what is visible when downgrading.

@matttramat All business functions - invoices, lists of customers, lists of billable services etc, register fields for business, customer, business reports - will all become invisible but are retained in the data file. If you later upgrade again, they will reappear just as they appear prior to the downgrade. Because there is no function like accounts receivable or unbilled items / mileage - you should be sure to resolve all of those before downgrading as you will have no record of any outstanding payments owed to you… or of any taxes that you have collected that are payable to a tax agency (all tax agency info will also become hidden).

NotACPA

@MontanaKarl In QWin, an "Account Receivable" becomes just another asset account. Does that not happen if one downgrades QMac B&P?

The AR dialog goes away, but the data remains if one downgrades QWin.

MontanaKarl

@NotACPA Unfortunately, not. "Undeposited Funds" becomes an Asset account (under Property) - but the accounts receivable just go away… as do the sales tax collected and payable accounts. Hence, they all need to be zeroed out before dropping down to a lower level of subscription. I'd be OK with that if there was a warning screen that summarized what would happen with the subscription change. But there isn't. The accounts just become hidden.

PS. The Undeposited funds account also becomes a little meaningless as the Business and Client fields become hidden - thus with multiple undeposited entries in there (in my beta file) from various customers and businesses - you would have no idea where the funds came from. Business/Client "could" be automatically added to the Memo/Notes field upon downgrading - but the team has other fish to fry - so if for any reason someone downgrading doesn't want to deposit those funds first, they could manually enter notes in the Memo/Notes field before the downgrade.

Nonetheless, best to clear out all business accounts to zero by collecting payments, depositing funds, and paying collected taxes before downgrading.

NotACPA

@MontanaKarl, WOW! I'd call that a SERIOUS shortcoming of QMac.
But I'm not sure if such should be called a "bug" or a "design flaw". It's certainly not proper in either case.

MontanaKarl

@matttramat PS. I missed your questions about Categories. All categories - including those of type Business Income and Business Expense categories remain after downgrading, with any transactions using those categories as before. But, while in Business, you can change the type of any category from personal to business and back … you cannot change the type in a lower tier subscription. You can use the business categories like any other category though. Behind the scenes, the default business (if you have more than one) will be entered as the associated business for a business category transaction… and so would have to be edited if you migrated back to Business edition and had more than one business to track.

(You can track your businesses with tags when in Premier or lower … but if you upgrade to the Business edition, you'd have to do batch changes to find those tagged transactions and modify the Business entity field.)

The Client field for any transactions entered in Premier and lower will be blank… unlike the Business field which will be populated behind the scenes with the default business.

matttramat

@MontanaKarl Thanks, that's just the info I'm looking for. It's only 1 business and actually very few clients.

I'm currently using a set of categories I created that are "BizName:Income:*" and "BizName:Expense:*", which I assume I'd put through the migration process explained in the on-boarding. I'm not using tags for the business, but I think the categories will cover it.

As long as they remain present and usable in a possible future downgrade, it seems pretty safe.

Thanks again!

jacobs

@MontanaKarl, WOW! I'd call that a SERIOUS shortcoming of QMac.

@NotACPA I wouldn't characterize it as "a SERIOUS shortcoming". Someone who has purchased and used Business & Personal features and now wants to downgrade to Premier or Deluxe presumably doesn't want to pay for the business features because they no longer need them. That means the business(s) no longer exist, or the user has figured out how they want to track their business activities without the Business & Personal features (and cost). I would think that someone downgrading from Business & Personal with still-active unpaid invoices is a pretty rare situation. And because such a downgrade in subscription occurs passively outside the operation of the program, I don't think I'd fault the developers/designers for not investing time into devising detection of such a change having occurred and making active changes to the data when it's detected.

I'd be OK with that if there was a warning screen that summarized what would happen with the subscription change. But there isn't. The accounts just become hidden.

@MontanaKarl I was going to agree with you about that suggestion, but I'm wondering how it would actually work, because the change in subscription level occurs outside the program. The program shouldn't make any changes to the accounts because the subscription downgrade needs to be reversible. It would need to keep track in the data file that the previous launch occurred under a Business & Personal subscription and the current launch with a Premier or Deluxe subscription needs to trigger a full-screen warning to inform the user of the impact of the subscription downgrade — and probably ask if they want to continue with the downgraded subscription or to quit and upgrade back to Business & Personal. It seems doable, but not trivial. Perhaps there a FAQ/Quicken Support page detailing what happens if a Quicken Classic Mac Business & Personal file is downgraded to a Deluxe/Premier subscription would suffice?

NotACPA

@jacobs, ANY hiding or eliminating of user data simply because of a product change seems pretty serious to me.

Removing functionality is one thing, removing data is another.

And, even if the business is closed and the functionality is no longer needed, the data should still be available for historical purposes.

Does Q anywhere even warn users of what I would consider to be an inexcusable, nearly fatal, flaw?

MontanaKarl

@NotACPA Just to clarify… no data is ever removed… only hidden. If upgrading back to Business edition, all hidden stuff reappears just as it was.

NotACPA

@MontanaKarl Thanks for the clarification, but to my thinking any hiding of user data is tantamount to removal and should never be done.

jacobs

@NotACPA But isn’t this the way Quicken Windows and Mac have always worked with different levels of subscription/product? In Quicken Windows, if you downgrade from Business & Personal to Deluxe, are you saying that all the invoice and rental property screens and fields remain visible after the downgrade?

NotACPA

In QWin, after a product downgrade (which I did several years ago when I had purchased Deluxe, upgraded to H&B and then had to re-install Deluxe and re-upgrade) ALL of my data remained intact and available after the reinstall of Deluxe.

The business oriented accounts became regular (asset or liability) Q accounts … but they were all there and usable as regular Q accounts.

Nothing was hidden. All of my Q data was available and usable.

Only the special "business" dialogs/screens were unavailable until I re-upgraded. Other business functions, such as mileage, were removed … but even the Mileage DATA remained.

jacobs

And in Quicken Mac, as has been mentioned, all the data is maintained when you downgrade; if you upgrade in the future, all the data — such as mileage — is still intact.

I think we’ve probably beat this to death at this point. 😀 I think the original question has been answered and the potential ramifications of a downgrade adequately covered.