Does Quicken Mac actually have Hierarchical tags?

Chris_QPW · October 31

In this thread:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7966659/the-community-meetup-october-2025

It makes it sound like Quicken has Hierarchical tags. Quicken Windows certainly doesn't have them. It isn't clear if this was talking about only Quicken Mac or all versions of Quicken, so it begs a question if Quicken Mac does.

You can certainly do enter tags like House:Basement in Quicken Windows, but this isn't Hierarchical.

This is just the syntax to show that both the tags House and Basement are on the same transaction.

If this was a category which is Hierarchical then House:Basement would be a separate category different from either House or Basement.

Jon · October 31

I don't think so, no. If I create the following set of tags in Quicken Mac:

House
House:Maintenance
House:Furnishings
House:Utilities

and then create transactions for each of the supposed sub-tags, none of those transactions will appear if I filter a report on the "parent" tag House. There doesn't appear to be any connection or relationship between any of these tags even though they all contain the word House.

Also, each of those four is a single tag - you can have multiple tags on a transaction but this isn't the syntax for doing it.

Using a colon to indicate a parent-child relationship is how you do it in Categories but it doesn't work in Tags.

John_in_NC · October 31

I have not seen Tags in a Parent:Sub hierarchy.

I don't know what they are referring to other than possible future feature that I haven't seen tested.

Jon · October 31

I don't think so, no. If I create the following set of tags in Quicken Mac:

House
House:Maintenance
House:Furnishings
House:Utilities

and then create transactions for each of the supposed sub-tags, none of those transactions will appear if I filter a report on the "parent" tag House. There doesn't appear to be any connection or relationship between any of these tags even though they all contain the word House.

Also, each of those four is a single tag - you can have multiple tags on a transaction but this isn't the syntax for doing it.

Using a colon to indicate a parent-child relationship is how you do it in Categories but it doesn't work in Tags.

Chris_QPW · October 31

Thanks. So the colon in Quicken Mac is treated just as another character in tags.

That means neither Quicken Windows or Quicken Mac have Hierarchical tags.

Frankly I believe that if tags were hierarchical that would defeat the main purpose of tags.

Jon · October 31

I personally wouldn't find hierarchical tags useful since I primarily use categories for grouping transactions, and only use tags to flag tax-related transactions by tax year. And I'm not sure how hierarchical tags would be any better than just using multiple tags, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if someone could make a case for it.

John_in_NC · October 31

The only way I can see QMac having a "hierarchy" for tags is if you consider the ability for that app to apply colors to the tags. And I think that is something only QMac does. That does add a third dimension in a sense.

And I do use it that way: all my hardware devices one color, housing, vehicles another, etc. I like my colored tags.

Perhaps there was some confusion between color and colon for the person writing this up.

Chris_QPW · October 31

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20518741#Comment_20518741

I hate to say it because it was a Quicken employee, but I believe they made the same mistake I have seen described in the Windows threads where they put in something like tag1:tag2 for a filter for a report and think they will get only transactions that have both tag1 and tag2 on them. Or when they complain that they entered the tag1:tag2 and in places Quicken displays tag2:tag1.

jacobs · November 1

@Quicken Janean Calling your attention to this thread and the Community Meetup post you made stating that Quicken Mac has hierarchical tags:

Pro Tip: Quicken Classic for Mac also supports hierarchical tags using colons (e.g. Home:Renovation), which is great for grouping sub-projects.

As users have noted in this thread, Quicken Mac does not, in fact, support hierarchical Tags. A user can put a colon in a Tag name, but that does not make it function as a sub-Tag of a parent Tag. Could you please confirm this and correct the post? (Perhaps instead you could note that users can assign multiple independent Tags to a transaction, such as Spouse and Travel.)

smayer97 · November 1

BTW, the closest thing to this concept DOES exist in QM2007 when the precursor to tags were called Classes. In QM2007, it is possible to have hierarchical Classes. The syntax was [category:subcat]/[class:subclass]. The key disadvantage is/was that you can only assign one class to a transaction line, vs multiple tags today.

During the migration from QM2007 to QMac, subclasses are converted to separate tags.

Chris_QPW · November 1

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20518891#Comment_20518891

That's really interesting. Quicken Windows had "Classes", but they were literally the same as tags. At a certain point they just changed the term from class to tag, nothing more.

smayer97 · November 3

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20518946#Comment_20518946

Interesting too… I always assumed that QWin Classes back in the day worked the same as QM2007, ie. being heirarchical.

Quicken Janean · November 3

I updated the newsletter. Thanks!

Does Quicken Mac actually have Hierarchical tags?

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