Is this a Quicken Windows only feature ? If not available for Mac version, why not? If it is a Mac feature as well, how do I configure?
Hello @Eric,
Thank you for asking this quiestion.
Yes, this is currently a Quicken for Windows feature. The Quicken for Mac and Quicken for Windows softwares are not identical and don't offer all of the same features.
To request this feature to be added in the future, what you can do is create an idea post. This way other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea. Our Development and Product teams frequently use our idea posts in order to improve Quicken and implement new features requested by customers. I hope this helps!
@Eric @Quicken Levetta This is a long-requested feature for Quicken Mac. Please do not create a new Idea thread for this, as it already exists:
Better still, is is marked as "Planned" by the developers, so it it is on the development roadmap. We never know what the timeframe is for Planned features, but we at least know it will be coming in the future.
Too late. How am I supposed to know it is “planned”. Your problem is with Quicken Levetta. I was merely following their advice. This feature should have been there already. It is ridiculous to have 2 different code base for the same product.
The point of my post was to inform you that there is an Idea thread for what you're asking for which was created a long time ago, which received many votes from Quicken Mac users over time, and which is now marked as "Planned" by the developers. Feature requests which are denoted as "Planned" are moderately good news for users, because it means the developers have received the idea, evaluated it, and agreed to implement it. Of course, we would all love to have such features implemented tomorrow, if not yesterday, the status gives us definitive hope for the future.
This feature should have been there already.
I can point you to dozens and dozens of other feature requests users feel that way about. The reality is that the Quicken Mac development team is small, some features require a lot of time to code, and the result is that a relatively small number of requested features get implemented each year. We can all wish otherwise, but that's the practical reality.
It is ridiculous to have 2 different code base for the same product.
There is a long, twisted, multi-decade history of how and why things evolved the way they have, but it sounds like you're not interested in all the background. The bottom line is that Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac are each built using tools and frameworks built into and specific to their respective operating systems; a common code base would have required re-writing both products from scratch, eschewing features built into the operating systems, which would greatly lengthen the development process, make the code more complex, and potentially affect performance. That decision was made decades ago when the company was under different ownership and management. Today, it seems clear that Quicken views its newer, cloud-hosted and browser-based Simplifi product as the future for the company, in part because it runs across platforms and devices with a single code base. Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac (e.g. "Quicken Classic") users like us will likely continue down the current path for years, for as long as the products generate the revenue the company needs to continue to invest time and money into developing these products.
@Eric do you really need an investment account with a linked checking account setup on Quicken. What would you need it for? How would you use it. Please take a look at this thread, and weigh in -
Refractory does not require re-writing both versions from scratch. I would simply take the Windows version and replace the OS dependent functions. It would cost some initial investment, but the savings in maintaining two versions would be worth it. Is Simplifi as good as Quicken Classic? Perhaps I should try it?
Actually, I would rather just have my Fidelity CMA listed as a Checking Account, done. It functions like a checking account, but Quicken only allows it to be a brokerage account. I only need a “linked account “ to work around this restriction. It is really not a linked account, just a simple checking account.
Would you be able to simply set up a separate checking in Quicken for this purpose? That is what I have done in Quicken Windows. And it works much better than a linked checking account. I am not sure how it works in Quicken Mac.
The basic problem with this idea is that completely different transaction data is sent for a checking account and a investment account. And it is the financial institution that decides what to send. And there are two reasons I can think of why the brokerage firm might choose not to send the checking account transaction data instead of the investment transaction data.
The first is legally a brokerage can't really have checking accounts. That is why they aren't called checking accounts even if to you the behave that way. But in truth that wouldn't stop them from sending the transaction data to Quicken in a checking account format since that is really part of any law. So that takes me to the second part. Developing the code to send in the checking account format would take time and resources that they just don't want waste on Quicken.
But you might be saying "but if Quicken Windows already has linked checking accounts clearly they know how to translate from the two different formats of data.". And yes that is true, but it was code created to get around Quicken Windows limited investment registers. To break it out would be yet another feature that would have to be added to Quicken. You can certainly purpose that, but that is a hard hill to climb.
For good or bad the Quicken Mac developers have agreed to put in the linked checking account feature in Quicken Mac so that is the more likely "solution". Personally., I think that is a mistake.
I'm going to loop back here to report what I learned in the other thread posted above where I wanted to understand the reason for a linked checking account in Quicken Windows.
I originally thought the only reason Quicken Windows had this is because of the limitations of its investment register.
In fact, I now believe the primary reason for a linked checking account is because of a limitation of the information that the financial institutions are providing.
By law a brokerage firm can't have a checking account. So, how do they have check writing? They either contract with a separate bank and it is that bank that holds the checking account and they sweep the funds in and out of that account OR there are a few financial institutions that have been authorized to act as both a broker and a bank. For the second case even though it stays in the same financial institution the setup is still the same.
So, ideally what should have happened is the financial institutions should have presented the checking account to Quicken as a separate account because that is in fact what they are. But they didn't. They instead, decided to just send the transaction as if they were in the original investment account. And it this that forces Quicken to create a linked checking account that actually mirrors what is going on in the real world (but slightly hidden by the brokerage firms).
