Do a real budget forecast and make Quicken more useful

Dennis6@

I budget in detail and, I believe, the ability to see a real forecast would make Quicken much more useful for any of your users that do the same. Currently, the closest thing I can find is under the PLANNING tab, selecting ANNUAL and DETAILS. The year end summary column shows BALANCE which is not useful. BALANCE is useful in a specific month or "To Date" but not in the year end summary. That should be a forecast. If it was, the user could always see what the yearend will look like across each budget item and in total. That would allow moving things around in future months to stay within budget making this a much better tool. The simple way to do a forecast is "Actuals to date and Budget going forward". When I do this on a spreadsheet, I have three year-end columns, Budget, Forecast and Difference (Delta). This allows me to see exactly where I am by line or in total and if I have to make an adjustment to get back on budget, I can see all my options remaining for the year. You only have one column for the year end summary so, if you don't want to add two more, you could just put the forecasted Delta to budget for the year in that column. If you see a zero, all is good, if you see a plus or minus number you know what you have to do to get back on budget. Again, because you can see every budget line for the year forecasted out, you can move future money around on any line to make the total work. With this, you can really manage your budget at a working level. You are so close, this should be easy, and it would make your product much better for serious budget managers.

PS: In the current system, as I said, the yearend balance column is not useful. I would add that the balances on the total lines don't make sense to me even if I apply your current balance approach.