Add an option to re-order accounts in the sidebar (Q Mac) (+1 Merged Vote)

Mike Cockayne
Mike Cockayne Member ✭✭✭✭
edited October 2023 in Display/UI
Add an option to re-order accounts in the sidebar
A small request but I believe quite valuable too many users.
55
55 votes

Under Consideration · Last Updated

Submitted for review Feb 2022 - QMAC-16843 Development team is considering allowing re-ordering accounts within their subgroup only; groups and subgroups cannot be re-ordered.

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Comments

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    edited December 2023

    [UPDATED] There was an older Idea post — which had more than 100 votes but is now archived and not visible except to moderators — which asked for the option to control account order/grouping/sorting in the sidebar. The developers originally marked as "Under Consideration" with a note that "the team is working on possible custom grouping in the future." This was then changed to "Planned", and then changed again to "Not Planned" due to unexplained complexities. This Idea thread is essentially a resurrection of the request to allow users to control the order of accounts in the sidebar.

    This Idea has not been nixed as "Not Planned", but the most recent note from the developers above states that they are only considering a limited sidebar customization option to allow reordering within each sub-group, but not custom account groups. (Users can currently achieve reordering within sub-groups by simply adding numerical prefixes to account names, so implementing such a limited change would be positive, but fall short of what many users have previously asked for.)

    Nonetheless, since the future is uncertain, I think anyone who wants flexibility/control over how accounts are grouped in the sidebar should vote for this Idea post. And then add any comments you have about how you would like to see this implemented. (But add your vote above first!) Even Ideas marked as not planned can possibly be resurrected in the future base don customer demand and/or changes in the underlying technology.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    @jacobs currently Quicken Mac has no way for you to change the order of the account names?
    If not, what order do they appear in?
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    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Chris_QPW Correct, there is no way to manually re-order or re-group anything in the left sidebar of accounts. They appear in alphabetic order within each subgroup of accounts:

    Banking
        Cash
            checking and cash accounts
        Savings
            savings accounts
        Credit Card
            credit card accounts
    Investing
        Brokerage
             all non-retirement investing accounts
        Retirement
             all retirement accounts
    Property & Debt
        Property
             asset accounts
        Debt
            loan and other liability accounts
    Hidden accounts
    Separate accounts

    The only thing some of us to do have some limited control is to rename certain types of accounts with numerical prefixes, to put them in the order we want:
        1-Hilton Amex
        2-Capital One Visa
        3-Lowes credit card
        4-Apple Card

    The group and subgroup headings do appear and disappear dynamically, which is good (e.g. if you don't have any savings accounts, you won't see the Savings subheading under Banking. 

    But you can't put an account into a different group or sub-group, and you can't create your own groups or subgroups; accounts show up under the appropriate group heading based on the account type. 

    Thus this feature request to give users control of order/grouping of accounts in the sidebar. This isn't a significant problem for me personally, but some users have many, many accounts.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭
    Thanks @jacobs.
    Signature:
    This is my website: http://www.quicknperlwiz.com/
  • Mike Cockayne
    Mike Cockayne Member ✭✭✭✭
    > @jacobs said:
    > There is an Idea post which originally asked for the option to sort accounts alphabetically in the sidebar. The developers have said that they do not plan to implement an alphabetic sort, but "the team is working on possible custom grouping in the future." That sounds like what is being asked for here, so this is probably a feature request which could be marked as "Under Consideration" or "Planned". Nonetheless, since the future is uncertain, I think anyone who wants flexibility/control over how accounts are grouped in the sidebar should vote for this Idea post.
    >
    > If you have thoughts about how you would like to see this implemented, add comments below. (But add your vote above first!) 
  • Mike Cockayne
    Mike Cockayne Member ✭✭✭✭
    Many thanks for your comments.
    Upon further thought I would like to see the accounts grouped as they are, but sorted numerically by account number the way ones sees it on the bank's site.
    On my screen I have quicken open sitting next to my browser with the bank online web site open,
    it would be nice to have the ability just to glance over and compare balances in order without continually looking up and down lists.
    Mike
  • Mike Cockayne
    Mike Cockayne Member ✭✭✭✭
    > @jacobs said:
    > @Chris_QPW Correct, there is no way to manually re-order or re-group anything in the left sidebar of accounts. They appear in alphabetic order within each subgroup of accounts:
    >
    > Banking
    >     Cash
    >         checking and cash accounts
    >     Savings
    >         savings accounts
    >     Credit Card
    >         credit card accounts
    > Investing
    >     Brokerage
    >          all non-retirement investing accounts
    >     Retirement
    >          all retirement accounts
    > Property & Debt
    >     Property
    >          asset accounts
    >     Debt
    >         loan and other liability accounts
    > Hidden accounts
    > Separate accounts
    >
    > The only thing some of us to do have some limited control is to rename certain types of accounts with numerical prefixes, to put them in the order we want:
    >     1-Hilton Amex
    >     2-Capital One Visa
    >     3-Lowes credit card
    >     4-Apple Card
    >
    > The group and subgroup headings do appear and disappear dynamically, which is good (e.g. if you don't have any savings accounts, you won't see the Savings subheading under Banking. 
    >
    > But you can't put an account into a different group or sub-group, and you can't create your own groups or subgroups; accounts show up under the appropriate group heading based on the account type. 
    >
    > Thus this feature request to give users control of order/grouping of accounts in the sidebar. This isn't a significant problem for me personally, but some users have many, many accounts.
  • Mike Cockayne
    Mike Cockayne Member ✭✭✭✭
    Many thanks Jacobs, I have implemented your idea 👏
  • Wbrehm
    Wbrehm Member ✭✭
    That would be great if we could control the grouping of our accounts.
    Thanks. I voted
  • mlbarle123
    mlbarle123 Member
    I like the idea of arranging items the way the user sees fit.
  • fulwild
    fulwild Member ✭✭
    wanted also
  • brian85
    brian85 Windows Beta Beta
    Any update on adding an option to manually reorder the accounts in the sidebar? It should be pretty easy and quick to write the codes needed for it.
    Quicken for Windows recently updated the "Rearrange Accounts" feature with drag and drop.
  • Brian97
    Brian97 Member
    I would like to see this functionality as well. A use case would be allowing me to create a 'Rental Investments' category and then having the ability to move any rental investment accounts under this category in the sidebar, whether it was associated rental savings, checking, loans, or individual property values.
  • jess8887
    jess8887 Member ✭✭✭
    edited August 2022
    Look at Banktivity, they've done it correctly.  The sidebar is completely "user" customizable.  The user can create groups, sub-groups, can drag-and-drop accounts between groups/sub-groups, rearrange accounts in any sequence order the "user" wants, not some developer who thinks they know best.  Just my option... and, it's the single reason I'm not renewing my subscription.  I'm sure my comment will be deleted, but sometime the truth hurts!!
  • prine2020
    prine2020 Member ✭✭
    I'd like to have the FREEDOM to move my Cash Management Account (brokerage) to the Banking Group. I don't understand the group restrictions at all.
  • Brad L Vandermoon
    Brad L Vandermoon Member ✭✭✭
    The current groupings as noted above are: 

    > Banking
    >     Cash
    >         checking and cash accounts
    >     Savings
    >         savings accounts
    >     Credit Card
    >         credit card accounts
    > Investing
    >     Brokerage
    >          all non-retirement investing accounts
    >     Retirement
    >          all retirement accounts
    > Property & Debt
    >     Property
    >          asset accounts
    >     Debt
    >         loan and other liability accounts
    > Hidden accounts
    > Separate accounts

    It would sure be nice to allow me to customize those groupings.  Here's what i'd like to do: 
    > Banking
    >     Cash
    >         checking and cash accounts
    >     Savings
    >         savings accounts
    >     Credit Card
    >         credit card accounts
    > Investing
    >     Brokerage
    >          all non-retirement investing accounts
    >     Retirement
    >          all retirement accounts
    >          Roth 
    >               all retirement roth accounts
    >          Pretax 
    >.              all retirement pretax accounts     
    > Property & Debt
    >     Property
    >          asset accounts
    >     Debt
    >         loan and other liability accounts
    > Hidden accounts
    > Separate accounts

    i'd also like to display some brokerage accounts to the Bank/Cash grouping as that is how those accounts are operating.  

    seems like there is quite a bit of interest in this feature.  is this on the quicken backlog?
  • Wbrehm
    Wbrehm Member ✭✭
    I agree. I would like to move my Fidelity Cash Management account under the Banking heading with my other checking accounts
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Brad L Vandermoon Unfortunately, Quicken never answers what it is working on or planning to work on. The closest we get to that is if/when an Idea thread like this is changed to a status of "Planned" — and then we still don't know when it is planned for.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • As many before me have said. Desperately looking for way to move Fidelity Cash Account to Bank Account. It is NOT used as an investment account, rather as a cash account. Need to categorize spending same way I would cash, check or charge. It seems like more and more banks and people are using these accounts this way. Why hasn't Quicken made this possible? It doesn't seem like it would be that big a deal to let the user CHOOSE how they want to record an account. Please work on ASAP!
  • Qso
    Qso Member ✭✭
    Would love to be able to set my own categorization groupings and sorts and have those labels/groupings show (not just with a 'line'). For example showing "Checking", "Savings", Credit Cards, Business checking, Business Savings, Business Credit Card, Brokerage Accounts, Employer-Provided Equities (i.e. ESPP, stock options, RSUs, Performance Units, etc.), 529 accounts, 401k / 457b / 403b Accounts, Roth IRA, tIRA, HSA, etc. Instead of grouping them all as "investing" brokerage and retirement. I would even be ok with additional "lines" but labels would be so much better.
  • Brad L Vandermoon
    Brad L Vandermoon Member ✭✭✭
    this feature has been requested in many other threads.  here's a thread on this feature request: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20323055.

    one very valid example of where this would be very useful is some currently categorized brokerage accounts are really cash accounts (fidelity cash accounts), so it would be nice to be able to display them under the "Banking/Cash" section.  

    however, this request is to allow a person to display the account as the user defines.  For instance, i would like to show some of my accounts as "Investment/Retirement/Managed".

    please consider for future release.
  • dan.greenberg.ct
    dan.greenberg.ct Member ✭✭✭
    Add the ability to group accounts for specific needs rather than limited to account types. For example, I have multiple student loans per year and multiple loan servicers. It would be beneficial to see a sub-total by servicer so that I can reconcile the total per servicer and manage each separately. Similarly I would like to see my brokerage checking account listed under investments rather than Checking without having to change the account type.
  • MontanaKarl
    MontanaKarl Member, Mac Beta Beta
    I just converted my QWin data to QMac with over 50,000 transactions and many dozens of accounts.

    In trying to compare each account to QWin to verify the data, it is super frustrating because this wish has not been implemented.  Quicken Windows allows accounts within each group (e.g., Banking) to be dragged into whatever order you like.  I have my most-used accounts at the top of each group (cash/bank, credit card, etc) there... but all accounts in each group are sorted alphabetically in QMac.

    I can get used to the QMac alphabetical listing... or rename all of my accounts so that they sort how I want them .... but adding this feature to let us manually re-order accounts within a type-group - one that has been in QWin for many years - would be really helpful.

    Quicken user since 1990, MacBook Pro M2 Max on Ventura 13.6.5 • Windows 11

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @MontanaKarl For what it's worth, the developers originally said on a separate but similar Idea thread that they planned to implement some user re-ordering of the sidebar; then in a rare about-face, they backtracked and said they had determined that "after more investigation, this type of sorting would be very difficult to implement, and may cause other issues. The team is working on possible custom grouping in the future."

    It's not clear whether this Idea post will hit the same dead end or not; it's currently got only 31 votes and hasn't been officially submitted by the moderators to the development team. Users want a variety of different things, from re-ordering accounts and groups to being able to move accounts to different groups to being able to create custom groups. whether the developers are working on, or plan to work on, any of these user customization functionality requests is currently unknown.

    That said, 
    the only thing some of us to do have some limited control is to rename some of our accounts with numerical prefixes, to put them in the order we want (within their pre-assigned account groups):
        1-Hilton Amex
        2-Capital One Visa
        3-Lowes credit card
        4-Apple Card
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • Brad L Vandermoon
    Brad L Vandermoon Member ✭✭✭
    Sorting is helpful but does not address concern here. I want to move my accounts to different sections and create new sections. As a software developer, the feature would not be difficult to implement using tags. 
  • MontanaKarl
    MontanaKarl Member, Mac Beta Beta
    Thanks, @jacobs.  Yeah, there are other things that I want more urgently.  Will use prefixes as you suggest 👍🏻

    Quicken user since 1990, MacBook Pro M2 Max on Ventura 13.6.5 • Windows 11

  • Eric
    Eric Member ✭✭
    I have several banks and entities, it would be nice to at least group them by bank or company in the sidebar. As it stands now I have no idea how Quicken for Mac decides where to place a new account in the sidebar. It almost seems random. I sure would like to put them in a user friendly logical order.
  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    @Eric Quicken places accounts in the sidebar based on the account Type, which is specified in the account's Settings. The accounts appear in alphabetic order within each sub-group of accounts in this order:

    Banking
        Cash
            checking and cash accounts
        Savings
            savings accounts
        Credit Card
            credit card accounts
    Investing
        Brokerage
             all non-retirement investing accounts
        Retirement
             all retirement accounts
    Property & Debt
        Property
             asset accounts
        Debt
            loan and other liability accounts
    Hidden accounts
    Separate accounts

    The sub-groups are dynamic, meaning they show up if you have an account of that type, and disappear if you don't.

    You can't change where an account appears, because it is locked in according to the account Type. Within each sub-group, though, you can control the order by using a prefix such as numbers to change the alphabetic sorting. For instance, within the Credit Card sub-group, you could order your accounts

        1-Hilton Amex
        2-Capital One Visa
        3-Lowes credit card
        4-Apple Card


    @Brad L Vandermoon Why have you created this new Idea thread with the same title as an existing Idea thread? Normally, the site moderators will merge these threads together, so before that happens, I wanted to ask in case there's something you think is different and unique about your idea. As I read it, you're just highlighting that you want to be able to create custom account groups, an idea which is mentioned by several people in that existing thread.

    It's generally in everyone's best interest to merge the ideas, because the goal is to reach a higher vote total in order to get the feature request pushed to the developers, and then to have everyone's thoughts/wishes about the feature request collected together for the developers to review. 
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • tcolyer
    tcolyer Member ✭✭

    Manual re-ordering within account categories is allowed in the Quicken for Windows product. It is quite useful in my experience. I don’t understand why the Mac product wouldn’t offer it too.