Mac reporting vs Windows

Cooch366 said:

Does the latest version give equal reporting functionality to the Mac version?

I've never used Quicken Windows, so I can't answer feature-by-feature -- but the answer is no. Reporting in Quicken Mac has improved a great deal over the past few years, and they're continuing to build out reporting capabilities. Reporting on things like income and expenses and net worth is now pretty robust. But there are some missing pieces, such as being able to specify multiple levels or sort order and subtotals. On the investing side, you can generate a reasonably good number of reports on your investing holdings and performance, but you currently have to create the with the filters in the portfolio view, so you can't save specific view as reports. We Mac users are hopeful a new set of investment reports will get added to the program in 2021, but for now, this is a weak spot in Quicken Mac reporting.

Some Quicken Mac users would tell you they can get what they need from reports, and others would tell you they miss some functionality -- but whether what's missing is a show-stopper will vary from user to user, because we all use Quicken so differently.

Cooch366 said:

If so, when upgrading, do your existing reports get converted?

Unfortunately not. I think the significant difference in the structure of the underlying databases, plus the differences in the way reports are built on the two platforms, plus the differences in capabilities and settings on each of the platforms, would make this difficult to create. Maybe some day…?

If not, what are the plans and timeframe on making the report functions the same on both Operating Systems?

There's no way to answer that. First, we're just fellow users here on this forum (plus a few Quicken moderators who help with support, but aren't privy to future development plans and schedules). Quicken almost never pre-announces future functionality. And in this case being "the same" between Windows and Mac versions is always going to be a somewhat subjective thing to measure.

From statements by the Quicken CEO, I think they have a goal of making Quicken Mac basically a par with Quicken Windows -- but it's clear they do not plan to exactly match every feature, option, checkbox and widget between the two. From statements by the Quicken Mac product manager, I think they are trying to make iterative progress on delivering the functionality Quicken Mac users most ask for and want/need. They have hundreds of feature requests from users, some of which require less than a day of work and some of which require many months of work, some of which add capabilities currently missing and some of which make current functionality easier to use.

I think the best way to judge where they're going is to look at where they've already traveled. when the modern quicken Mac program first debuted in late 2014, reporting was very rudimentary. The reports code was mostly inherited from the 2010 predecessor program, Quicken Essentials for Mac, and clearly didn't meet expectations users had for robust reporting in Quicken. So the developers undertook to build an entirely new and modern engine under the hood and new user interface for reports. They have been delivering those improvements to reports iteratively for nearly four years now. Reporting in Quicken Mac today is leaps and bounds better than it was in the 2015 product, and there have been many enhancements within just the past year. They're clearly not done (is software ever "done"?), but we don't know what new functionality is under development currently or on the future development roadmap. And Quicken users will have different takes on what is "good enough" to meet their need/expectations.

Sorry that's not the definitive answer you were seeking, but I hope it's of some help.