6.5.1 update - Asset Allocation

@Carefree I’m curious how asset allocation goals work in Quicken Windows. At what level do you set goal percentages: for each account, for retirement and non-retirement accounts, or for all investments? Do you see actual versus goal in the dashboard, the portfolio, or as a report?

Thanks for sharing the screenshot; it's from an old version of Quicken, but it's about what I imagined it would be. I'd only add to this discussion that building target allocations into Quicken Mac will be more than a trivial amount of work; there have to be screens created for entering/editing allocation goals/target, an update to the database structure to store the allocation goals/target values for accounts and account groups, as well as the screen for comparing actual values to target values. It's not rocket science, but it's a lot more than a quick tweak.

I think the top priority here is having them fix the Portfolio screen to accurately report asset allocation; aside from being inherently useful, that screen can be printed or exported for additional manipulation in a spreadsheet. Once that is complete, then adding target/goal values and comparison would be a good next addition, in my opinion.

@Carefree Fixing the Portfolio screen means being able to show a meaningful asset allocation on that screen. Currently, almost all mutual funds are labeled as Asset Mixture, so the Portfolio Asset Allocation screen is pretty much worthless. (Currently, my Portfolio Asset Allocation screen shows only Large Cap Stock for the stocks I own directly and Asset Mixture for all my money in mutual funds, including bond funds, S&P 500 funds, etc.) It needs to be able to apply the same rules it is using on the Dashboard screen here on the Portfolio Asset Allocation screen. 

But as you point out, it's not a simple thing to fix because the Portfolio screen allows you to dig down to the security level and then to the lot level. Adding securities which appear under multiple asset classes make it even more complex. The Quicken Mac product manager said this last month:
I'm not sure exactly how they're tackling this. What I hope for is that I can go to the Portfolio screen as I do now, select to view either one/selected accounts, an account group like Brokerage, or All Investing accounts, filtered to Group by Asset Class, and see the list of asset classes as rows with the existing cost basis, market value, and gain/loss by various time frames columns. Then each asset class could be expanded, showing which securities comprise that class and the dollar amounts they contribute to the class total. (So a 60/40 balanced fund would show up under the class for Large Cap Stocks with 60% of its value and under Domestic Bonds with 40% of its value.) It gets pretty complex if you could then drill down into lots within that, but I guess it's all just math the program could do. Or maybe when viewed by asset class, drill-down by lots could be disabled? 

They need to do this in the Portfolio screen, because that screen is already built to be printed and to be exported, for those users who want to massage the numbers further. 

In short, the Portfolio screen filtered by Asset Class should by default show the same asset classes as the Dashboard asset allocation screen does, and the same dollar values for each asset class — but with the columns to show gain/loss over time and and expandable rows to show to components making up each asset class. That's what will make it usable for rebalancing a portfolio. If my asset allocation shows I have 45% Large Cap Stocks, and my goal is only 40% Large Cap Stocks, I want to be able to see which securities comprise that 45%, so I can identify what I might want to sell to reduce my holdings in that class and increase them in a different class.