Lifetime Planner IDEA: Export Plan Results Graph Data to Excel

Scooterlam
Scooterlam SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
edited October 2023 in Budget and Planning Tools
Over the years, there have been a number of requests to print out LTP results, from more formal reports to those that are geared toward formats conducive to analysis.   I recently added some color to an existing idea that was geared more toward a formal report, here:   https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7493442/printing-out-the-results-of-the-lifetime-planner#latest   If you like this kind of approach, please vote!


As an alternative to a formal report, I (and perhaps others) would get a lot of value from a more "analysis oriented format", as described in these threads.    Building this sort of report is tedious to say the least.  

The want.....At a click of a button,  export the entire LTP plan result data set to a spreadsheet, as illustrated below.   From there, you can see your entire plan (including your What-if Plan), in numbers, without formal report formatting, other than a well structured excel worksheet..... 

Additionally, add a tab in the workbook to include key plan assumptions or call-outs of key changes if your are exporting a "What-if" scenario.

What you see below, is an amalgam of exports, saves,  copy and pastes, and formatting....which includes all of the categories and figures found in my LTP plan result.  YMMV.   

Vote if you like it and want it.  Or, suggest improvements to make it better (then vote)!


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36 votes

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Comments

  • acferrad
    acferrad Member ✭✭
    Exactly what I am doing manually!
  • Dale Heller
    Dale Heller Member ✭✭
    edited November 2020
    Reporting is woefully inadequate by today's standards throughout the Quicken product. When I went for the subscription, I was hoping to find greater flexibility in the reporting. Now it seems every time I want to look at something not in the canned reports, I have to export to Excel.

    LTP is a case in point, I like the notion of this feature, but it is like a "black hole" and getting detailed information out of it is painful at best. I just tried to save the report to a file and Quicken responds by quietly crashing without any notification or cause displayed. Worse, it does this in a *.PRN format. Who in the world works with PRN files any longer. That output was retired by most software companies in 2008 !!!!

    PS: Yes, I am on the latest release.
  • Scooterlam
    Scooterlam SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
    Hi Dale,   If you haven't already done so, please vote on this idea and consider voting on a similar one here:  https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7493442/printing-out-the-results-of-the-lifetime-planner

    I agree that reporting out of Lifetime Planner is deficient. I've not used or evaluated a competitive retirement planner that doesn't provide some sort of tabular output and export capability.

    Inspecting results year by year in the Plan Summary dialog is tedious and inefficient, especially when trying to compare results from multiple scenarios.


  • Scooterlam
    Scooterlam SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
    FWIW:  For those interested in accessing Lifetime Planner raw data to export to Excel on your own, check out this IDEA post:   https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7904581/lifetime-planner-idea-enable-full-export-of-plan-data-create-portfolio-dat-file-in-appdata-dir

    While most of LTP data is accessible to export using this approach,  its still a workaround to the above IDEA post and still requires Quicken Inc to "do something".  Perhaps its a stepping stone to efficiently unlocking LPT data....?

  • hilman
    hilman Member

    I encourage the concept of exporting lots of detail re lifetime planner to excel or other data structure. I suggest that the Quicken team take a look at what Fidelity offers in their retirement planner for other ideas.

    Another issue I am thinking about is which accounts to take funds from in each year of retirement (taxable, tax free) to support routine spending. My thought is to manage brackets but am open to better idea. Also thoughts about how to model asset allocation as one progresses through retirement. Show withdrawal from various accounts and shifting asset allocation and the resulting spendable cash and how it varies if one chooses a different asset allocation approach. Also include RMD tables and model various alternatives related to that.

  • Scooterlam
    Scooterlam SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta

    @hilman If you have not already checked out this post, have a look and vote on the ideas you like. The post contains a lifetime planner curated list of ideas and bugs.