Actual vs. Budgeted Reports: customize date range and get comparisons (Q Mac) (13 Legacy Votes)

@NorthernExposure There have been additional signs that major changes are coming for budgets. Last year, there was a survey asking for user input on budget features as they apparently moved through the design stage; I think it's reasonable to expect that we'll see at least some new budget functionality later this year — and a functioning budget report should be be first out of the gate.

The problem with exporting to a spreadsheet is that you have to do the trimming and create the formulas each time. The formulas to sum the columns across is pretty quick, but the vertical summing is tricky because you have to avoid including both a category and its subcategories in your totals. So it's helpful to build a budget template with all the formulas, and then each month do an export, open the .csv file in a spreadsheet, copy-and-paste the exported values into your template, and blank out the months after the most recent one. At one point a couple years ago, when I was helping my parents and they wanted a monthly budget-vs-actual report, I built a spreadsheet template where I could paste in the Quicken export in one sheet, and in another sheet just enter in one cell the the number of the latest month, and it would generate the year-to-date report. (But that takes a bit of spreadsheet skills to get right.) Hopefully, the Quicken developers will make this all unnecessary by delivering a budget report in the months ahead.

Yes, this is one of the most significant omissions in Quicken Mac, and one of the longest-running feature request from users. The developers are aware of the shortcoming, and have stated they plan to address it.

That's the good news. The bad news is we don't know when it's coming. There have been several planned initiatives to add new budget functionality which so far have not materialized. My understanding is that the budget code is extremely complex, and any changes they make are fraught with difficulty. But I still expect to see this functionality added within the next year. (But I've said that before and I've been wrong!)

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@tim.rohrer1 Unfortunately, there is never a status update from Quicken on a future feature. The moderators here have no insight on what the product development team is working on, and even if they did, they don't provide any updates or ETAs because plans frequently shift. All we know is that this was marked as "Planned" by the developers more than two years ago, and last year they conducted a survey and some one-on-one interviews with users about budget wishes. But since then there's been nothing further… and likely won't be until someday we open an update and see they have acted on it.

@tim.rohrer1 If that’s all it takes… squeak, Squeak, SQUEAK, SQUEAK!, S Q U E A K ! !

🤣

I think there are a number of significant hole or shortcoming in Quicken MacBook, but I think the absence of a simple actual versus budget report for a time period specified by a user is the biggest/worst omission.

My reply above was simply to state that while the developers are aware of the need for this functionality, and have stated that they plan to address it, they never, ever share more about the working status or expected delivery timeframe for new features.

Companies that want to stay relevant will listen if enough people chime in and keep up the pressure. Two years on a Planned list isn't realistic imo.

@tim.rohrer1 The problem is the volume of feature requests, all competing for development time which is too scarce. You may find it surprising, or appalling, that there are actually 35 Quicken Mac Ideas which are marked as "Planned", and all but two of them have been in that status for two or more years!

Scanning through the change log (https://www.quicken.com/support/quicken-mac-release-notes/) the vast majority of new features are focused on business clients. 

One of the top-voted Ideas for many years was adding business features to Quicken Mac, similar to what long existed for Quicken Windows. Management decided to move forward with this major project more than two years ago, likely for a variety of reasons — including that adding such functionality carried with it additional revenue from subscriptions (unlike most other feature requests). I suspect this project consumed much more time and developer capacity than originally envisioned, and this is likely to continue for a while as they continue to build out some key missing business features. The need to completely revamp Quicken's bill payment system, which may not have been on the agenda two years ago, also likely consumed a lot of developer time.

While I think adding the business features to Quicken Mac was a good decision, I think it has diverted too many resources from adding crucial features for the large majority of Quicken Mac users who do not subscribe to the Business & Personal level. Too many of the 3 dozen Planned features have languished untouched for too long.

Not a single mention of "budget".

The previous Quicken Mac product manager once explained that the budget code in the program is very complex and requires significant revamping/replacement to address the half dozen or more budget-related feature requests. I think the plan was to wait and tackle this holistically with the code rewrite it requires, and that's why we haven't seen any small or piecemeal budget features added. Last year, the did a user poll and recruited users for calls with the developers as they planned the next-generation budget functionality. That seemed promising, but the lack of any new budget functionality now 15+ months later makes it seems something derailed those plans. It could be that top management prioritized the business and bill payment features, sucking up available developer time, or sometimes a member of the development team in charge of the budget revamp leaves for a different job and that sets a project back — we have no way of knowing what's going on behind the scenes.

I have to think budgeting, tracking income/expenses, and managing investments are core features. A lot of effort has gone into bill paying services (which makes Quicken money) but this is an area where users already had options; financial institutions will let you schedule automatic payments. I have no need for this feature. I need Quicken to provide aggregating features not found elsewhere.

Again, this is part of the problem with Quicken having a wide array of features which different users prioritize differently. Like you, I have never used and will likely never use Quicken's bill payment features; I find a combination of auto-pay for some bills and paying on a company's website to be fast, easy and failure-proof. But there are other users who undoubtedly tell Quicken that integrated bill payment is one of the core reasons they use Quicken.

Premier seems to be getting the attention of Investment features

This isn't surprising to me, and probably isn't misguided. As you note, Quicken Mac had almost no differentiation between Deluxe and Premier, and it makes sense to me that management wants to widen that gap so users who need more advanced investment tracking tools subscribe to Premier. This is how Quicken Windows has been for many years, and it makes sense for them to add features which require Premier in the Windows product to require Premier in the Mac product.

There are a lot of investment features on the Ideas list, and it will be interesting to see which ones are offered to everyone and which will require Premier. (If and when they implement them!) But circling back to budgeting, I think this is correct functionality which will likely be available to Deluxe users.