Quicken for Mac v5.18 Released

Quicken Marcus
Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
Quicken for Mac v5.18 has a number of new features and enhancements that improve budgets, bill pay and reports.

Budget Transfers

In a recent customer survey, the ability to budget transfers was ranked in the top 20 features requested.  This is an important feature for a number of situations. For example, you can use it to track deposits to savings and retirement accounts when preparing for retirement or to track withdrawals coming from retirement accounts once you have retired. You may also use it to track transfers to an account used for a specific purpose, such as to a vacation account or to a child's account that you do not otherwise track.


In the budget category picker, you'll find new Transfer In and Transfer Out items so you can choose what specific transfers you want to track. 

Quick Pay and Check Pay Under Updated Bill Pay tab

We've updated the old Online Payment tab in the register and renamed it Bill Pay.  It used to work only with Bank Bill Pay but we have enhanced it so it also supports Quick Pay and Check Pay.  This should make it easier to pay your bills from within Quicken.


New Bills & Income Activity View

Under Bills & Income, we've had a Recently Paid and Recently Deposited section that appeared on the right side of the screen.  Sometime this view would get hidden and customers couldn't find a way to make it reappear or on small screens, it took up too much room so one couldn't see the bills they wanted to pay.  To solve this we've created a new tab called Activity where you'll find all recently paid bills and scheduled deposits to your accounts.  Now there's a single, easy to use,  location to review your paid bills.  A blue dot appears on the tab if there's something new to check out. 


Please Hide My Hidden Accounts

In the last release, we added the ability to group hidden, separate, and closed accounts on the sidebar.  This was to allow people to continue to search for transactions in closed accounts but getting them out of the way so you didn't have to see them all of the time.  It also allowed one to designate an account as Separate so it didn't get included with one's personal accounts if you also oversaw your kids or elderly parent's accounts.  A number of customers expressed an interest to go back to the old design where a hidden account was really hidden so we've added Account Display options in the sidebar preference menu.  Just click on the three dots and select which type of accounts you want to hide or show.   Note that this is a Mac-only setting and, if synced, these accounts will still appear as hidden or separate on web, and mobile.


New Report Enhancements

We continue to work on improving reports.  In a previous release, we adopted the model where one could customize the disclosure triangles in a report to show or hide specific sections of a report. When Quicken printed or exported the report, it would honor the disclosure triangles and only show sections if they were expanded.  This gave people greater control over how they wanted a report to print or export but also made it hard to reset the display back to a default state.  Now we've added a new Table Options button that gives you the Expand All and Collapse All feature to make it easier to expand or collapse the disclosure triangles.

Also new in reports is a report description that provides more information on what the standard reports are tailored for and what elements make up the report. You can also add custom descriptions to your own reports.

If you find issues in this release, please put a comment in this post.  We'll be monitoring the comments in this specific article for a couple of weeks so we can move quickly to fix any problems that come up. If you're seeing connectivity issues, it is most likely not related to this release.  Please contact support or search notices about bank outages. We didn't change anything in that area of the product in this release.

Thanks,
The Quicken Mac Development Team

UPDATES

9-22: Quicken for Mac v5.18 is in limited release.  If you're interested in trying it out now, go to the Quicken menu and select Check for Updates.
9-25: Quicken for Mac v5.18.1 in limited release.
9-29: Quicken for Mac v5.18.2 released to all customers.
«1

Comments

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    edited September 2020
    @Quicken Marcus Another release with meaningful updates for Quicken Mac users -- thanks to you and the team for some of these long-in-development features.

    Two small small problems I've noticed with the new Report Collapse/Expand feature: (1) Making changes in the expand/collapse/disclosure settings alone does not enable me to Save the report. Save is grayed out until I click Customize and then OK. (It isn't necessary to actually change anything in the Customize pane; just opening it and clicking OK somehow triggers the app to recognize a change has been made.) If I open a report and make changes to collapse all, expand all, or set individual disclosure triangles the way I want, I can't Save the report because Save remains gray; changing those settings should enable the Save button. 

    (2) Closing a report after changing the disclosure settings, the report just closes without the ability to save it -- but the report is actually, unexpectedly, saved with the changes. This is true of both custom reports and the base reports, which I didn't think were ever supposed to change from their base settings. (Open a base report, such as Transactions by Category. Click Collapse All. Close the report. Open the same report. Note that it is fully collapsed, even though the Edited column doesn't show it was ever edited.)
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    Nice update. Happy to finally be able to budget transfers. Is there any intention to eventually have transfers show up under categories? I think most people hope to be able to budget their mortgage payment and have the principal payment show up under the mortgage category instead of TO Mortgage Company.
  • John_M
    John_M Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    @aaron From an accounting standpoint, a payment to mortgage principal is not an expense. It is a reduction in a liability. The liability account is the mortgage balance owed. When a payment to principal is made, the liability goes down.

    I guess people may want to think of a debt payment as an expense category, but it's not really. The only part of a debt payment that is considered an expense is the interest portion.
  • Shing
    Shing Mac Beta Beta
    I agree with @John_M from an accounting perspective. Users when setting up their Quicken file should decide whether to classify loans and credit cards as “expenses” or follow formal accounting rules and classify them as liabilities. With the ability to now include transfers on reports and in budgets, the liability option is more viable.
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    personal finance doesn't follow business accounting principals. a majority of people want to be able to budget cash flow. every other personal finance product budgets like this. people like to pull up a budget or report and see what percentage of their monthly income went to their mortgage or car note, how much of their income is going to savings. the spending by category pie chart on the home screen and the spending tab in registers do a good job of this. reports and budgets, not so much.
  • John_M
    John_M Member ✭✭✭✭
    Quicken lets you include transfers in the cash flow report. The way to do this is when in a report, click on the "Customize" button and choose the second radio button under Transfers "Include only transfers with accounts outside of report."

    I see your point, but allowing transfers as a category is the way Quicken Mac used to have it and they eliminated the option a few years ago. I doubt they'll go back.
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    Yes but the transfer still shows up at the bottom of the report as TO Mortgage Company instead of under the mortgage category. So if I want to see how much I spent on my mortgage this month I have to pull out a calculator and add the mortgage category and the transfer. It’s better than before and I appreciate the work it took to make it happen. I don’t know how the Home Screen and spending tab on registers are able to include categorized transfers in a category but budgets and reports can’t. I feel that capability is what a lot of people are looking for though. The last few updates are a huge step in that direction.
  • Mike_jMGS
    Mike_jMGS Member ✭✭✭
    Monthly income going to mortgage principle is savings, not so much for a car loan.
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    Yes, it increases your net worth, as does paying down the car loan. Most people don't budget net worth per month though. They budget cash. People also like to be able to see where their money is going easily. Its nice to run a report and see how much I spent on my mortgage so far this year. The Payee Summary report will show the amount I paid to my mortgage company but the Category Summary won't show me how much I paid even though I have my principle payment categorized as Mortgage>Principal. Im not sure why transfers can't be included.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    The point of this change is to allow people who want to view their budget on a cash basis to do so, without violating the rules of accounting.

    @aaron, the developers have previously said that they will not support categorization of transfers going forward, because that does violate the rules of accounting. I understand why you'd like to change the order or placement of the loan payment transfer in the budget, but this at least lets you include it in your budget.

    You can do the same thing with a category report. Just don't use the report called "Category Summary" (with a gray colored icon in Reports > Other Reports). That's one of the old reports that hasn't yet been removed from the program. It doesn't use the modern reports engine. Instead, use Transactions (or Summary) By Category. Go to Customize > Advanced and select the Transfers option to "Include only transactions with accounts outside report", and click on the Accounts tab and make sure your Loan account is not selected. With those settings, your transfers to your loan account wil now be included in the report. As with the budget, it will be under transfers, not your mortgage category -- but it's included in the bottom line, which is most people's goal.  
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Zoolook
    Zoolook Member, Mac Beta Beta
    The Bills / Payees / Activity tabs are a mess. If you have something as a Bill and is in the scheduled payees list, it will post to your register twice. Not only that, but the actions on each screen are different.

    My Amex bill (which I scheduled via Quick Pay) shows in my register twice. Under bills it says "Due in 14 days" and "Scheduled" and the option to "Mark as Paid" on the far right box (should I do this, is it paid, or should I wait until it's actually paid?) Whereas under Payees where it also shows as Scheduled, the available action is "Pay with Bank Bill Pay" - it doesn't seem to know I've already scheduled the payment.

    A check I pay to the building maintenance on a scheduled basis shows as "Delivered" in the activity tab, but "due in 7 days" in the bills tab and in the payees tab it just says "paid". Perhaps the columns could have "last paid" and "next due date" as dates, so it's clear when a status refers to the last payment or the next due payment.

    I think you should unify the bills and payees sections so you don't accidentally pay the same bill twice.
  • Zoolook
    Zoolook Member, Mac Beta Beta
    jacobs said:

    @aaron, the developers have previously said that they will not support categorization of transfers going forward, because that does violate the rules of accounting. I understand why you'd like to change the order or placement of the loan payment transfer in the budget, but this at least lets you include it in your budget.

    I've seen this posted a lot across this community and it's misleading. In accounting ALL cash movements are essentially transfers and they can, and usually should, be categorized. The issue is really that Quicken counts categories as 'external accounts' rather than accommodate payees (which is really the external 'account') and therefore Quicken itself violates many accounting rules because of this. This may be pedantry, but the idea you should not be allowed to organize your transfers in a taxonomical manner (which is essentially the definition of categorization) is somewhat odd.

    I categorize almost all of my transfers, partly to work around the shortcoming of Quicken's lack of including transfers in reports, but also because categories allow an aggregation point to see the bigger picture. If I am contributing money from several accounts (via transfers) to an investment strategy, or paying down a debt, or funding some longer term goal, being able to categorize those disparate transfers under one umbrella would be useful. Sure I could do this with tagging, and may actually do that at a later date, but there are different issues with tagging (lack of hierarchies for instance) that cause other issues.
  • Quicken Marcus
    Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
    Zoolook said:
    The Bills / Payees / Activity tabs are a mess. If you have something as a Bill and is in the scheduled payees list, it will post to your register twice. Not only that, but the actions on each screen are different.

    My Amex bill (which I scheduled via Quick Pay) shows in my register twice. Under bills it says "Due in 14 days" and "Scheduled" and the option to "Mark as Paid" on the far right box (should I do this, is it paid, or should I wait until it's actually paid?) Whereas under Payees where it also shows as Scheduled, the available action is "Pay with Bank Bill Pay" - it doesn't seem to know I've already scheduled the payment.

    A check I pay to the building maintenance on a scheduled basis shows as "Delivered" in the activity tab, but "due in 7 days" in the bills tab and in the payees tab it just says "paid". Perhaps the columns could have "last paid" and "next due date" as dates, so it's clear when a status refers to the last payment or the next due payment.

    I think you should unify the bills and payees sections so you don't accidentally pay the same bill twice.
    Zoolook, I think something might be set up incorrectly in your scheduled transactions, or possibly we have a bug because I've never seen what you're describing. Bills show you scheduled transactions that have yet to be marked as paid.  Activity will only show you scheduled transactions that have already been paid.  A single instance of a scheduled transaction will only show up in one place and not both.  Could you accidentally have multiple scheduled transactions for the same payee? If you look under Projected Balance you will see all your scheduled transactions in a single place.  Do you have multiple scheduled transactions for the same payee?
  • Quicken Marcus
    Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
    Zoolook said:
    jacobs said:

    @aaron, the developers have previously said that they will not support categorization of transfers going forward, because that does violate the rules of accounting. I understand why you'd like to change the order or placement of the loan payment transfer in the budget, but this at least lets you include it in your budget.

    I've seen this posted a lot across this community and it's misleading. In accounting ALL cash movements are essentially transfers and they can, and usually should, be categorized. The issue is really that Quicken counts categories as 'external accounts' rather than accommodate payees (which is really the external 'account') and therefore Quicken itself violates many accounting rules because of this. This may be pedantry, but the idea you should not be allowed to organize your transfers in a taxonomical manner (which is essentially the definition of categorization) is somewhat odd.

    I categorize almost all of my transfers, partly to work around the shortcoming of Quicken's lack of including transfers in reports, but also because categories allow an aggregation point to see the bigger picture. If I am contributing money from several accounts (via transfers) to an investment strategy, or paying down a debt, or funding some longer term goal, being able to categorize those disparate transfers under one umbrella would be useful. Sure I could do this with tagging, and may actually do that at a later date, but there are different issues with tagging (lack of hierarchies for instance) that cause other issues.
    Zoolook, Quicken does support transfers in reports now.  Have you given it a try?  Look under the Advanced tab in the Customize Report dialog. Quicken Mac theoretically does support transfers on categories but we're going to remove that capability in the not too distant future because it's not supported by the Quicken Cloud and Quicken Windows.  I can see your argument that it would be useful and Quicken Windows supports tax line items on transfer transactions to support tax reporting which is a kind of category on a transfer so there's a use case. However, the bottom line is the Mac product must line up with the rest of the Quicken ecosystem. This decision was made at the highest levels of our company so it's not going to be revisited.
  • Quicken Marcus
    Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
    jacobs said:
    @Quicken Marcus Another release with meaningful updates for Quicken Mac users -- thanks to you and the team for some of these long-in-development features.

    Two small small problems I've noticed with the new Report Collapse/Expand feature: (1) Making changes in the expand/collapse/disclosure settings alone does not enable me to Save the report. Save is grayed out until I click Customize and then OK. (It isn't necessary to actually change anything in the Customize pane; just opening it and clicking OK somehow triggers the app to recognize a change has been made.) If I open a report and make changes to collapse all, expand all, or set individual disclosure triangles the way I want, I can't Save the report because Save remains gray; changing those settings should enable the Save button. 

    (2) Closing a report after changing the disclosure settings, the report just closes without the ability to save it -- but the report is actually, unexpectedly, saved with the changes. This is true of both custom reports and the base reports, which I didn't think were ever supposed to change from their base settings. (Open a base report, such as Transactions by Category. Click Collapse All. Close the report. Open the same report. Note that it is fully collapsed, even though the Edited column doesn't show it was ever edited.)
    We've had a number of discussions about what constitutes a change that requires creating a custom report and what changes will automatically be captured by the default report.  We've landed but haven't implemented the idea that the presentation or look of a report should NOT be a change that requires creating a custom report as long as we give customers a quick and easy way to get back to the default state.  We will only force customers to customize a report if they "customize" the report in the "Customize Report" dialog.  The thinking is that our default reports become less useful if we force customers to always create a custom report with every little change. For example, if you simply want to make a column wider or add a memo column, why should you be forced to create a custom report. The presented data is still the same, the presentation of that data has just changed.  We will provide a way to quickly get back to the default state.  What do people think?
  • Quicken Marcus
    Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    aaron said:
    Nice update. Happy to finally be able to budget transfers. Is there any intention to eventually have transfers show up under categories? I think most people hope to be able to budget their mortgage payment and have the principal payment show up under the mortgage category instead of TO Mortgage Company.
    The way Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac, in the not too distant future, will handle complex loan payments is there will be a special "loan" payment option. This way you can budget the full payment but continue to have a split where the principal is a transfer to the loan account and interest and other costs are tracked as category expenses.  We realize this is one of the top reasons customers have expressed they wanted the ability to budget transfers but it's actually more complicated because of the split. This is a top feature priority.

    Great discussion about wanting to see a mortgage payment with a complex split in other areas of the product. I don't have an answer for you now but we'll give this more thought.
  • Shing
    Shing Mac Beta Beta
    > @Quicken Marcus said:
    > (Quote)
    > The way Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac, in the not too distant future, will handle complex loan payments is there will be a special "loan" payment option. This way you can budget the full payment but continue to have a split where the principal is a transfer to the loan account and interest and other costs are tracked as category expenses.  We realize this is one of the top reasons customers have expressed they wanted the ability to budget transfers but it's actually more complicated because of the split. This is a top feature priority.

    That will be great!

    I'm glad to see Quicken is moving towards parity between QWIN and QMAC.
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    I liked the way the reports kept your last settings in earlier versions to be honest. im not too keen on being asked to save a custom report any time I make a little change.
  • aaron
    aaron Unconfirmed ✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    "The way Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac, in the not too distant future, will handle complex loan payments is there will be a special "loan" payment option. This way you can budget the full payment but continue to have a split where the principal is a transfer to the loan account and interest and other costs are tracked as category expenses. We realize this is one of the top reasons customers have expressed they wanted the ability to budget transfers but it's actually more complicated because of the split. This is a top feature priority.

    Great discussion about wanting to see a mortgage payment with a complex split in other areas of the product. I don't have an answer for you now but we'll give this more thought."

    I think the ability to categorize transfers is nice and a feature that a majority of people want. why have the ability to track the various components of a mortgage payment but not have the total show up under "Mortgage" in a report/budget? maybe have a category type that is neither income nor expense as to not "violate the rules of accounting." transfers zero themselves out anyway if you have both the outgoing and incoming accounts in budgets/reports. if people want to see the transfers as an "expense" all they have to do is exclude an account from their budgets/reports and voila. there's other applications for categorizing transfers besides loans. I dont know why but it irks me to get on the quicken web app or run reports and not be able to see what my total take home pay for the year is because I have transfers to retirement accounts in my paycheck. yes, contributions to 401k are technically take home pay but I've got a lot of years left before I can touch that money lol.
  • Rich August
    Rich August Member ✭✭✭
    @Quicken_Marcus I appreciate all of the new features. I just wanted to express a comment/concern relating to the new system requirements which are updated from time to time. I'm currently running MacOS 10.13 High Sierra on an older Mac Pro tower, still holding out hope for an affordable new Mac tower from Apple someday. Unlike previous MacOS versions, High Sierra is a hard stop for many older Macs like mine. Those of us with less recent machines cannot upgrade to Mohave or newer OS versions. I'm hoping that you will take this into account in planning for future versions, and that once you take the next step and High Sierra becomes the minimum baseline for Quicken Mac you will be able to stay at that minimum requirement for a while. I'm sure that there are large numbers of loyal Quicken Mac users like me that won't be able to upgrade past MacOS 10.13. Many thanks.
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
      We will only force customers to customize a report if they "customize" the report in the "Customize Report" dialog.  The thinking is that our default reports become less useful if we force customers to always create a custom report with every little change. For example, if you simply want to make a column wider or add a memo column, why should you be forced to create a custom report. The presented data is still the same, the presentation of that data has just changed.  We will provide a way to quickly get back to the default state.  What do people think?
    I totally agree with this philosophy as long as one can always choose to initiate a custom report save manually if they desire to keep some changes in the column widths, etc.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • Shing
    Shing Mac Beta Beta
    > @Quicken Marcus said:
    > (Quote)
    > We've had a number of discussions about what constitutes a change that requires creating a custom report and what changes will automatically be captured by the default report.  We've landed but haven't implemented the idea that the presentation or look of a report should NOT be a change that requires creating a custom report as long as we give customers a quick and easy way to get back to the default state.  We will only force customers to customize a report if they "customize" the report in the "Customize Report" dialog.  The thinking is that our default reports become less useful if we force customers to always create a custom report with every little change. For example, if you simply want to make a column wider or add a memo column, why should you be forced to create a custom report. The presented data is still the same, the presentation of that data has just changed.  We will provide a way to quickly get back to the default state.  What do people think?

    I like this idea. Hopefully the user has the option of saving a report where only presentation/look changes but it’s not forced by QMAC.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Quicken Marcus said:
    We've had a number of discussions about what constitutes a change that requires creating a custom report and what changes will automatically be captured by the default report.  We've landed but haven't implemented the idea that the presentation or look of a report should NOT be a change that requires creating a custom report as long as we give customers a quick and easy way to get back to the default state.  We will only force customers to customize a report if they "customize" the report in the "Customize Report" dialog...  What do people think?
    I think this could be okay, but it has to be consistent, and a few things would help that…

    A "reset" or "return to default", and possibly "revert changes" for all the default reports. Currently, once you make a change, even without clicking to save anything, the reports change -- and there's no way to go back to the previous state or default state. Let's say I carefully go through a category report, collapsing some categories and sub-categories and making it just the way I want. Sometime later, I open this report and inadvertently click Collapse All. Boom. The previous settings are lost, with no way to go back. That's why I'd prefer to be prompted whether to Save. I don't mind if I could just save changes to the built-in reports (e.g. no need to "save as" to create a new report) -- if you also add a way to reset a report to its default settings.

    I think it would also help if the Save button weren't grayed out after making any tweak. Currently:
    • some display changes -- adding/removing a column, changing column order, even changing the width of a column slightly -- are not automatically saved; they trigger the Save button to turn black, and a prompt to save as a custom report.
    • some display changes -- changing collapse settings -- are automatically saved, even though the Save button is grayed out and there's no indication this will permanently change the default report. 
    • After changing collapse settings, it is possible to save the settings as a new report without changing the default report -- but only if you figure out to click Customize, change nothing in the Customize window, click OK, and then you can click Save to save as a custom report.
    As you can see, this feels very inconsistent and non-intuitive. 

    I think the best option might be to make every change trigger a Save dialog box with three options: (a) Save changes to existing report, (b) Save As a new report, or (c) Cancel without saving changes. That feels very consistent with the way Mac programs work, and eliminates different rules for what does and doesn't get saved.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Rick2022
    Rick2022 Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    I noticed something the other day in v5.18 but thought it was just my imagination.  I saw it again today and I'm sure it occurred now.  I selected a single account and in the dropdown menu, I chose update the selected account but all accounts updated.  Can someone verify this new behavior?

    And I agree with the above post and would prefer the 3 options during a report save.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1994
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    By the nature of the connections, when you update any one Quicken Connect account, all Quicken Connect accounts update. When you update one Direct Connect account, all Direct Connect accounts  at that same financial institution update. It's baked into the connection technology and cannot be changes. Been that way pretty much forever.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • Rick2022
    Rick2022 Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2020
    So why is there a menu item "Update the selected online account" when it will update more than the one selected? 

    Maybe that should be removed?
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1994
  • RickO
    RickO SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Because a menu titled "Update the selected online account and all other Quicken Connect/Direct Connect accounts" would not fit in the menu bar.
    Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s
  • smayer97
    smayer97 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    jacobs said:
    Quicken Marcus said:
    We've had a number of discussions about what constitutes a change that requires creating a custom report and what changes will automatically be captured by the default report.  We've landed but haven't implemented the idea that the presentation or look of a report should NOT be a change that requires creating a custom report as long as we give customers a quick and easy way to get back to the default state.  We will only force customers to customize a report if they "customize" the report in the "Customize Report" dialog...  What do people think?
    ...

    I think the best option might be to make every change trigger a Save dialog box with three options: (a) Save changes to existing report, (b) Save As a new report, or (c) Cancel without saving changes. That feels very consistent with the way Mac programs work, and eliminates different rules for what does and doesn't get saved.

    +++1

    It keeps it intuitively consist with ANY OTHER software and even past versions of Quicken... ANY change has to be explicitly saved. Having a Revert to Default for canned reports also makes it consistent.

    Whatever the design, keep it simple, intuitive or obvious, and consistently predictable. So whatever the choice, it needs to be wholesale...not one behaviour for this report now, but update the other reports at another time...

    Have Questions? Help Guide for Quicken for Mac
    FAQs: Quicken MacQuicken WindowsQuicken Mobile
    Add your VOTE to Quicken for Mac Product Ideas

    Object to Quicken's business model, using up 25% of your screen? Add your vote here:
    Quicken should eliminate the LARGE Ad space when a subscription expires

    (Now Archived, even with over 350 votes!)

    (Canadian user since '92, STILL using QM2007)

  • glennmacc
    glennmacc Member ✭✭✭
    Zoolook said:
    The Bills / Payees / Activity tabs are a mess. If you have something as a Bill and is in the scheduled payees list, it will post to your register twice. Not only that, but the actions on each screen are different.

    My Amex bill (which I scheduled via Quick Pay) shows in my register twice. Under bills it says "Due in 14 days" and "Scheduled" and the option to "Mark as Paid" on the far right box (should I do this, is it paid, or should I wait until it's actually paid?) Whereas under Payees where it also shows as Scheduled, the available action is "Pay with Bank Bill Pay" - it doesn't seem to know I've already scheduled the payment.

    A check I pay to the building maintenance on a scheduled basis shows as "Delivered" in the activity tab, but "due in 7 days" in the bills tab and in the payees tab it just says "paid". Perhaps the columns could have "last paid" and "next due date" as dates, so it's clear when a status refers to the last payment or the next due payment.

    I think you should unify the bills and payees sections so you don't accidentally pay the same bill twice.
    Zoolook, I think something might be set up incorrectly in your scheduled transactions, or possibly we have a bug because I've never seen what you're describing. Bills show you scheduled transactions that have yet to be marked as paid.  Activity will only show you scheduled transactions that have already been paid.  A single instance of a scheduled transaction will only show up in one place and not both.  Could you accidentally have multiple scheduled transactions for the same payee? If you look under Projected Balance you will see all your scheduled transactions in a single place.  Do you have multiple scheduled transactions for the same payee?
    For me what is confusing is the "payment status" under "Bills".  This shows the most recent (already completed) payment for the payee, but to me that is confusing as "Bills" is supposedly showing the next payment for a payee.  If you right click, you can uncheck this column (which I did), but I still think the title "Payment Status" is confusing.  Perhaps "Last Payment to Payee" would be clearer?
  • Quicken Marcus
    Quicken Marcus Employee ✭✭✭✭
    @Quicken_Marcus I appreciate all of the new features. I just wanted to express a comment/concern relating to the new system requirements which are updated from time to time. I'm currently running MacOS 10.13 High Sierra on an older Mac Pro tower, still holding out hope for an affordable new Mac tower from Apple someday. Unlike previous MacOS versions, High Sierra is a hard stop for many older Macs like mine. Those of us with less recent machines cannot upgrade to Mohave or newer OS versions. I'm hoping that you will take this into account in planning for future versions, and that once you take the next step and High Sierra becomes the minimum baseline for Quicken Mac you will be able to stay at that minimum requirement for a while. I'm sure that there are large numbers of loyal Quicken Mac users like me that won't be able to upgrade past MacOS 10.13. Many thanks.
    Hi Rich,

    We're looking at lots of factors before we make these system requirement changes. At a high-level, we ideally want to match Apple and most other software developers and to support 3 OSs including the latest version that Apple supports which in theory means we would drop High Sierra when Big Sur shipped. We don't have any current plans to drop High Sierra but I wanted to state our official stance. Apple doesn't distribute security updates for these older OSs so we also don't really want to be running on versions of macOS that may be vulnerable to security attacks.  With that said, we also realize the points you bring up regarding High Sierra and Apple hardware. We've got analytics data that tells us how many people continue to run using these old systems and how many people are running hardware that, in theory, can't be upgraded to a newer OS and we'll be making decisions about when we can drop support for an OS based on certain thresholds. I also want to make clear that if you're on an unsupported macOS, Quicken will continue to run but you won't be able to upgrade to a newer version of the app so there are some downsides but you aren't locked out.
This discussion has been closed.