Add Comments field to Edit Budget (1 Legacy Vote)
Hi: I was just wanting to suggest an improvement to the Quicken for Mac Software. In the "Edit Budget" screen (Where you can see the entire Budget for each month and the year) could you make it possible to have the ability to right click on a budget number so that it would open up a comment field. Then a person could put a short note/comment there. Most budget amounts are straight forward and are the same month to month. However, some have various items in them that are unique to a certain month, or for that year. This would help to be able to see what those particular anomalies are. Thanks.
Comments
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To create more meaningful budgets it would be extraordinarily helpful to provide the ability to open new lines in a category to add a specific expense that will occur in a given month. The budget category should still show "Auto expenses" but the budget should give me the opportunity to populate monthly fuel expenses, occasional maintenance expenses, and quarterly insurance payments. Without this detail I forget what's behind a number for any given month.1
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Are those expenses -- fuel, maintenance, insurance -- not subcategories in your Quicken? If yes, you can include these sub-categories in the budget. If not, you might want to use Quicken's default sub-categories under Auto & Transport for these expenses, or add your own custom sub-categories.
If you'd like to see a capability to add notes to your budget, you should vote for this topic above, and add your comment about how/why such a feature would be useful to you, which can help the developers understand the feature request.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
As I build a 2022 post retirement budget, I want to make comments on income and expense line items so that I know what my assumptions are. I add my vote for this feature!Quicken user since 1997 when Dollars and $ense died.1
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[Sorry for adding my comment to a fairly old thread and if I'm not finding a newer thread. ]
I've been asking for a Notes spot in Budget screens for over 15 years, basically ever since I the budget functionality! I find it fairly useless without that option-- I'm not gonna have an electronic database where I have to keep a notepad of assumption notes. Good grief! PS- I have many categories & subcategories and have used quicken for over 25 years.
I digress.. I think a text field on the 'Edit Yearly Budget' dialog box would go a long way to solve the problem! Or something which would open a dialog box for each budget month on that dialog box.
Example of where a Notes area would be helpful: Let's say the budget line being worked on is category "Auto-Maintenance". You have budget items of $40 for oil changes (Jan, May & Dec) / $100 replace brake pads (May). Obviously, it's easy to input the budget number: Jan-$40, May-$140, Dec-$40. And, I'm guessing I can remember that $40 is for oil change (since is it is a recurring event). However, I'd love to be able to put a note about the brake pads (since a unique expense) so that 5 months after I set my budget (aka in Jan) I will know what the extra $100 in May is for!
Another example: "Auto-Fuel". In setting your budget, you apply an average of last year's actual fuel amount (ends up $100/month). Perfect. Now, I'm hoping to take a driving trip to Yosemite in June. So you input another $350 for June fuel budget. Easy. But again, 6 months after making my budget, will I remember my dream of a June road trip? A nice little Note spot for documenting the thought of why June has fuel budget of $450 would be SO HELPFUL!
Okay Quicken gods, hear my voice.
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Yes please - just now doing my budget for 2022 and once again find I have to use an excel spreadsheet to supplement the Quicken budget functionality. I am sure I am not just among 8 upvotes that would love this functionality - many would find it very useful.0
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[Sorry that I can't figure out how to edit my entry above... Oops! ]
No Budget Notes function STILL NOT Available. Drat! -- SOLUTION
I have a fairly simple solution until Quicken helps us with a software change.
For example: Let's say I have category AUTO. In that, I have expenses for Fuel (monthly- $60) and Buy New Tires ($1000, March 2022). <-- I would like a way to make note of why March budget amount is $1060.
SOLUTION: I created a 'CASH- Budget Notes' account to document my one-off budget items. This gives me an easy place for making note of all the expenses I might forget. The account entries show as Budget Actuals and all the 'notes' remain in one easy-to-read and modify/delete place!
TIP: When creating the rows in the cash account, I use a unique 'Payee' so that it's easy to tell it's from the Budget Notes account. For example from scenario above: 'b Van Tires' as payee, not 'Bob's Tire Shop'.
PS- A Reminder or just any future account entry would also work. However, that is more clunky me. Plus I don't know the expense account I'll use for the purchase and I don't want budget notes intermixed with true reminders on the Bills & Income > Bills screen or in my true account registers. The CASH account is also easy to remove from Reports you run.0 -
@Wind_Woman I believe that you need 50 profile points in order to be able to edit posts. You currently, as of a moment ago, have 31. This is an anti "spam/delete spam" function" and can't be changed.More posts gets you more points. You can view your profile by clicking on your icon/name
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP0 -
Meanwhile, for anyone reading this who thinks having thew capability to add budget notes would be helpful, be sure to go to the top of this thread and add your vote (in the yellow box under the first post, click the little black arrow under the vote counter; if the arrow is gray, you've already voted for the idea). This hasn't attracted a lot of votes this far, so more votes would increase the odds that this idea gets put in front of the developers.
@Wind_Woman It sounds like you're using Quicken Windows, based on your comment about wanting this feature for 15 years, and that's what your profile indicates. If so, I wanted to point out that this particular Idea thread is in the Quicken Mac product suggestions area — but there's a similar thread for Quicken Windows as well; you should visit this thread to add your vote and your comments.Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
Thanks Jacob always so many great comments and help with things, thanks for being so active. As you may know and this is my frustration and thankfully biggest remaining beef is that adding these subcategories gets all trucated in Quicken. You have very limited charecters and even changing the preference to short names (which I don't like) doesn't help how Quicken truncates these making them not useful to quickly budget and see what is happening.
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@mybank2002 Seeing your screenshot, I understand your problem. I’m sure the developers never anticipated someone making all their categories be sub-categories of sub-categories the way you have. While doing so technically works, it creates the consequences you’re left dealing with.
Do you really need to have a main category of “Expenses”? In reports and the budget, Quicken knows which categories are income and which are expenses, and separates them accordingly, so why do you feel you need them all grouped under a main category of “Expenses”?
But if you don’t want to get rid of your hierarchy of a main category of Expenses and a sub-category of Discretionary Expenses, you might consider using very short names like “Exp” and “DiscExp” or “Disc” or “DE”. It doesn’t matter if they’re a little odd; the abbreviations only need to be understandable to you. And getting all those prefix characters pared down will make your categories all or mostly visible in all the places you use category names.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19931 -
Thank you, @jacobs. I love your responses because, unlike those who defend software, you don't say "that is a dumb/silly way to do it" or "why you would want that" but say things like "yes, the blank space doesn't make sense and to have all that screen space not utilized that it doesn't expand with your window" and, "here are some workarounds in the meantime."
The funny thing is I was thinking the same thing about the Expense category and didn't even realize I didn't need that category. It has been there since Quicken 2001 on Windows, and it got ported over when I finally made the leap to Mac (after years of Virtual Windows), and I thought that was part of Quicken's doing. That is, in part, why I felt so baffled seeing how this gets truncated so quickly and wondered if they used subcategories and the budget.
I will implement your suggestions now. I, of course, still very much hope to see these expand and adapt to the screen size and be able to choose how wide the invisible columns are, perhaps even indent them when they are subcategories to see that a little easier.1 -
Hello All,
The status of this Idea has been changed to Under Consideration as it has reached enough votes and has been submitted to our Product and Development team for further review.
Thank you!
-Quicken Anja
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The ability to add Notes to budgets needs to be added to the Mac version of Quicken for all the same reasons it was added to the PC version. Please, please add.
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It looks like this is an old string, but I would also like to request that a comments field be added the budget function. I see that some people are requesting that comments be allowed on individual line items, which I agree would be helpful. However, I also think it would be helpful that a globabl comment filed be added that would appear in the overall header for the budget. This would allow me to add notes about why one year's budget has different target values than previous year's budgets without having to record this information elsewhere.
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