Include scheduled transaction amount when viewing "Entire Budget Year" Budget (Q Mac)

jshaf
jshaf Member ✭✭
edited October 2023 in Budget and Planning Tools

Currently, the scheduled transactions are not totaled in the future months of the budget. So, the amount +/ - on the left only takes into account YTD and so it is difficult to know how much each category truly has remaining without considering the scheduled transactions. Quicken for windows has this.

12
12 votes

Reviewed · Last Updated

Comments

  • MoMoney99
    MoMoney99 Member ✭✭✭
    I was considering subscribing to Quicken For Mac, but if I'm understanding this correctly, you're saying that scheduled transactions do not show up in the Budget as a deduction or cash outflow at all? Meaning, you'll have to re-enter all those scheduled amounts manually on the budget screen? That's insane! This should be a no brainer feature.
  • jshaf
    jshaf Member ✭✭
    Not entirely. The budget only shows totals for transactions that are posted in the register. I have my recurring bills and income programmed into the scheduled transactions. But, when I look at the budget it only shows those that are posted. So, for instance. The scheduled transactions for Oct-Dec do now show in the budget screen for actual vs budgeted. The result is that is does NOT show how much money I have left to spend because it shows the total budgeted for the future months rather than subtracted the scheduled transactions. I hope that makes sense?? The bottom line is that it does not show the amount left to spend in a budget reflecting the future scheduled transactions.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    MoMoney99 said:
    I was considering subscribing to Quicken For Mac, but if I'm understanding this correctly, you're saying that scheduled transactions do not show up in the Budget as a deduction or cash outflow at all? Meaning, you'll have to re-enter all those scheduled amounts manually on the budget screen? That's insane! This should be a no brainer feature.
    To add to what @jshaf wrote above, I just wanted to clarify that you don't need to "re-enter all those scheduled amounts manually on the budget screen" unless you want future scheduled transactions to show up in the Actual columns of your budget. Since you technically haven't incurred the expenses or made the income deposits in scheduled transactions yet, they aren't showing in a future month as actual income or expense. But as you get to that month, and you click the Paid/Deposited button to post the scheduled transactions, they will then be part of your actual income or expenses in the budget.

    On the other hand, if what you're expecting is for Quicken to incorporate scheduled transactions into your Budget values, then no, that doesn't happen. And think about why. When you set up a budget for a year, it's based on your prior year actuals as well as whatever changes you make in your expected income and expenses. Quicken can't somehow incorporate scheduled transactions into the budget values, because the budget values are already based on last year's actual or the values you entered; it has no way of knowing that in some cases, you perhaps entered a budget of zero and want Quicken to incorporate your scheduled transactions for that category into the budget. Or that you want to replace last year's actual as the value in your budget and replace it with the value from your scheduled transactions. 
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • jshaf
    jshaf Member ✭✭
    @Jacobs The windows version does this and it provides great insight to see if you are over spent or underspent. Here is how I look at my budget. My scheduled transactions I have to pay but outside of that its discretionary. If I over spend then I may not have what is needed to pay the scheduled later in the year. Again, windows does this and updates the remaining amount left based on what has been spent and what is scheduled to spend. Its a simple formula, quicken for windows does it and probably the feature I use the most. If its not moved to the Mac version I will most likely switch back to the windows version.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    @jacobs said:
    And think about why. When you set up a budget for a year, it's based on your prior year actuals as well as whatever changes you make in your expected income and expenses. Quicken can't somehow incorporate scheduled transactions into the budget values, because the budget values are already based on last year's actual or the values you entered
    I think you are misunderstanding the request.  It isn't the budget numbers that are changed, they stay the same.  It is the future actual values that are changed.

    Example (property tax) first with reminders not included:

    Now with reminders included:


    This of course also affects the balance column.  Note that for future months this is quite easy, but it tends to be harder (programming wise) for the current month which is a mix of "real actuals" and "reminder actuals".

    Balance without reminders:

    Balance with reminders (actuals match budget):


    BTW the reports in Quicken Windows don't support including the reminders, so there is that gap even in Quicken Windows.  Only the budget "views" support this.
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • jshaf
    jshaf Member ✭✭
    @Chris_QPW great visual explanation. But, I'm not sure if your agreeing the windows version does this or not? I do recall using this in windows version up until I switch last year to the Mac version. The windows budget "future" would show the scheduled values and it did +/- in the current month as well.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2021
    jshaf said:
    @Chris_QPW great visual explanation. But, I'm not sure if your agreeing the windows version does this or not? I do recall using this in windows version up until I switch last year to the Mac version. The windows budget "future" would show the scheduled values and it did +/- in the current month as well.
    Yes the Windows version does it, those screenshots are "real".  As for the current month I was just pointing out it is a bit harder to program, but the Windows version does do it (not shown in the screenshots though).

    But the budget reports don't include reminders, only the budget views (Graph and Annual) do.

    EDIT I consider it a bug that the budget views and reports aren't consistent in Quicken Windows, the reports should be changed to allow including the reminders.
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    Chris_QPW said:
    I think you are misunderstanding the request.  It isn't the budget numbers that are changed, they stay the same.  It is the future actual values that are changed.
    Thanks, @Chris_QPW for showing examples from Quicken windows. (Always appreciated by us Mac-only users). But I did understand the request. Or rather, I was responding to the post by @MoMoney99, not the original post by @jshaf at the top of the thread. It wasn't clear to me that @MoMoney99 was talking about Actuals or Budget values, and was saying they'd need to re-enter all their scheduled transactions. That's why I asked whether the question was about including scheduled transactions in Budget or Actual values. For Actuals, I wrote that it wouldn't be necessary to re-enter on the budget screen, because the Actuals would update once the scheduled transactions were posted. I'm sorry if my reply on that wasn't clear or confused the issue. 

    Bottom line: as we've established in this thread, Quicken Mac does not include scheduled transactions in Actuals; they only show up once the scheduled transactions are posted. Quicken Windows has an option to include scheduled transactions in Actuals or not.

    Since this is an Idea thread @jshaf created, the best way to get such an option in Quicken Mac would be for users interested in this functionality to add their vote at the top of this thread. I'd note that it has so far received only two votes over the past four months, so it's not something that will be pushed to the development team unless it garners more votes. (Of course, it may already be on the developers' roadmap, as there are a number of enhancement requests related to budgets which they haven't yet tackled and will likely be tackled together.)
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    @jacobs, sorry, I misunderstood your statement.
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • MoMoney99
    MoMoney99 Member ✭✭✭
    Adding to what has been said above, @Chris_QPW is explaining exactly what I failed to explain earlier. I would love for my future scheduled transactions to show up as ACTUALS in the future budgeted months. Although these transactions have not yet taken place, it would be great see how much I would have left in my budget after accounting for those future scheduled transactions. It's clear I did a very poor job of explaining this.

    Also, the reason I mentioned the possibility of having to update both the budgeted amount and the scheduled transaction is that if my annual property tax differs the following year, I would need to update the scheduled transaction to reflect this new amount and then adjust my BUDGET column to reflect that. There are some categories in my budget that only deal with scheduled transactions.

    I'm trying to move away from YNAB as I've been finding the monthly envelope system unnecessary a lot of the times as my income has risen significantly over the past few years and it's very rare that I wouldn't have sufficient funds in my bank account to cover those off (yes, I realize, first world problems).

    Lastly, on an unrelated note, I cannot believe there is no support for AMEX direct sync without having to manually import the QFX file. All the other solutions I've tried support automatic importing of transactions. I'm in Canada - please tell me there is a way of doing this as the Amex Platinum card is the one I use most often.
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    MoMoney99 said:
    Lastly, on an unrelated note, I cannot believe there is no support for AMEX direct sync without having to manually import the QFX file. All the other solutions I've tried support automatic importing of transactions. I'm in Canada - please tell me there is a way of doing this as the Amex Platinum card is the one I use most often.
    Quicken has much more limited support for financial institutions in Canada than it does in the US.  For instance I don't think there is a "pure Canadian" financial institution that supports Direct Connect, only Express Web Connect and Web Connect.  American Express Canada is one that only supports Web Connect (the importing of a QFX file).
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • jshaf
    jshaf Member ✭✭
    Thank you all for the comments and voting for this. If you haven't voted to move this up please do so.
  • KillDash9
    KillDash9 Member
    It is interesting to see the different view points here. I would expect my scheduled bills and income to pre-populate as "budgeted" amounts for each category. E.g., if I have a reoccurring transaction to pay rent/mortgage.. then that value would be my monthly "budget" for rent/mortgage. By creating a reoccurring transaction - I have obviously "budgeted" for a specific amount each month. Same with other scheduled bills. They should all show up in the "budgeted" column, but with the ability to tweak. E.g., "electricity" will change month-to-month - so I should be able to override the value that was pre-populated from my bills. Same with income. Pre-populate with scheduled income - and allow overrides. I might be expecting a raise mid-year, which will increate the taxes I pay. I'd like to be able to budget for that. y updating the amounts for specific months. Or maybe after my raise.... I can pay a little extra principle off the car loan.. I'd like to budget that in. So for me.. it makes more sense to enter the scheduled bills and income as "budgeted".
  • jshaf
    jshaf Member ✭✭
    I can’t believe more people don’t want this
  • Quicken Anja
    Quicken Anja Moderator mod

    Hello All,

    The Community Support team regularly reviews long-standing posts and Ideas for relevancy and current interest. This Idea seems to have stalled and we would like to gauge the current interest in this request. 

    If you would like to see this idea implemented, please add your vote and a comment explaining how this idea would be beneficial for you. More information, including steps to vote and how to submit your own Ideas for future product features/improvements, is also available here.

    Thank you,

    Quicken Community Support Team

    -Quicken Anja
    Make sure to sign up for the email digest to see a round up of your top posts.