Has Quicken finally come up with a Quicken version for Mac that allows year end copy?
Hi @karenoden,
Thank you for reaching out.
At this time, the Year-End Copy feature is not available in Quicken for Mac. This feature is currently available in Quicken for Windows only.
That said, there is an active Idea post requesting this functionality, and it is currently marked as Planned. While there is no estimated timeline for implementation, you’re welcome to follow the Idea thread for updates, as any future progress will be posted there.
Please feel free to reach out if you have additional questions.
Be careful what you ask for. Quicken for Windows offers this, and it is problematic at best. There are many reasons that complicate whether this "feature" can work successfully.
And for all the people who request this feature (usually because they think it improves data file "performance" (which it doesn't), we field at least 50 questions each year with users who broke up their data and now need to reassemble it. It's a nightmare trying to keep all those older year files up to date/migrated to latest data file format.
I respect the desire for this feature, but unless you really have a need to do so, we recommend most users don't break up their data. It will cause more headaches.
Agreed. The primary use, and the actual title of Idea is "Save a Copy", with the primary intention for situations like wanting to start a fresh file but not lose a lot of setups, like memorized reports, memorized transactions, scheduled transactions, categories, payees, QuickeFill rules, etc, breaking up a file to share with a child as they grow, relationship breakup (though does no account for reunification,😉 ), etc.
I agree with @John_in_NC that this type of feature should generally NOT be used by people who think they have too much data and think it will improve performance; it mostly will not impact performance. Or reliability of the modern Quicken Mac database.
However, I think there is a valid reason for this feature for people who have had "life events" that make them want to do some major cleanup of their Quicken Mac Payees, Categories, or Tags. Good example include things like post-breakup/divorce or kids being grown and out of the house — changes where there's a valid need to get rid of a lot of old Payees or categories or tags which are not only no longer relevant, but might be triggering to repeatedly see.
And therein lies the rub: the Year End Copy rarely works as "cleanly" as people expect it would as stripping out older transactions can be problematic. Do you keep old payees/tags/categories? Investment accounts and cost basis? Price histories?
When you start examining what each person means by "year end copy", it becomes complicated. And I have seen it cause more trouble than worth as the people always come back wanting to put Humpty back together down the line.
The program deleting old transactions prior to a specified date should be pretty straightforward. Investment accounts should not be touched. The only part not as straightforward is unlinking transfers between an investment account and banking account where one side of the linked transfer is being deleted and the other side remains. (Unless Quicken's cloud syncing, if enabled, causes any issues.) I would expect any cleansing of old Payees, tags and categories would be optional manual operations by the user after old transactions are removed.
And yes, it should be made clear that there is no way to merge old data files together or back into a current data file!
I have been using Quicken Classic Deluxe for over 20 years. The first 12 years on Windows and used the year end copy every year. Then I finally switched from Windows to Mac and noticed that this feature is not there for Mac. For me it is just annoying that after a few years on Mac, I always have to sort by Date descending because whenever I start it up, it has the oldest transactions on the top. That's why I was asking. Thank you everyone for your quick response, I appreciate you!
