Feature Request: Bill Reminder "Estimate Amount for Me" Enhancement

varandian
varandian Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
edited October 2023 in Paying Bills, Online Billers & Reminders
The "Estimate amount for me" feature in bill reminders should include "Credit Card Balance as of X date". While most credit cards have a due date, there's usually a 30 day grace period before the payment is due. For example, the payment due on 3/15/2022 is the balance that was present on 2/15/2022. That "Estimate amount for me" should have an option of something like "the amount from 30 days ago" which would be a much more accurate estimation.
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  • Quicken Anja
    Quicken Anja Moderator mod
    Hello @varandian,

    Thank you for taking the time to reach out to the Community with your request.

    I went ahead and changed your post to an Idea so other users who have the same or a similar request can vote on your idea by clicking the up arrow (see below).


    Ideas are also reviewed by our Development and Product teams in order to improve Quicken and implement new features requested by customers.

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  • Melt
    Melt Quicken Windows Subscription Member
    I think this is a great idea. Statements seem to come out around the same date every month so just being able to put a date in the reminder's "estimate amount for me" would be helpful. Not sure how much coding that would require but a good idea none the less.
  • bhata
    bhata Quicken Windows 2017 Member ✭✭
    I also would like an option "Balance as of X date" for credit card payment estimate. However the date should be based on the day of month for the "Closing Date".

    For the past year, I have using Bill Reminder with an Automatic Entry comment of
    "---- Chase End-of-Month ----"
    This way I know how much I will have to pay for the month, but having the option for the estimate would be ideal! :)
  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I can see how setting an "as of" date for the estimated credit card balance due would be helpful after the cutoff date, but what should it use as the estimate prior to the cutoff date? If it uses the current balance, that would lead to a low estimate, especially shortly after the bill has been paid.

    For credit cards, I generally set the estimate to use the average of the past 3 months' payments. This can be thrown off by major expenses, but it is usually pretty good.


    QWin Premier subscription
  • Javier S
    Javier S Quicken Windows Subscription Member
    Adding this feature would really improve the accuracy of the Projected Balances tool. For people who pay their credit card balances in full on autopay, setting a bill reminder based on full balance is inaccurate, but as @Jim_Harman mentions, using the average payment for the last 3 months is easily thrown off by major purchases.

    I thought linking to an online bill would fix this issue, but it seems like what it does is provide an accurate bill reminder for the next due credit card payment, but not the following one which would contain the remaining balance accrued after the last statement closing date.
  • JohnB4Dawn
    JohnB4Dawn Quicken Canada Subscription Member ✭✭
    Can't seem to vote for this but I completely agree with Melt. This would be extremely helpful. Otherwise the estimate is quite inaccurate and virtually useless. Just setting an "estimate on date" would give exactly what my upcoming credit card bill will be. I download all the transactions daily and the cutoff date for the next billing period is early in the month, while the payment is due at the very end - there can be a lot of transactions over almost 4 weeks that throw the estimate off on the due date.
  • Liberty Prime
    Liberty Prime Quicken Windows Subscription Member

    I also need this enhancement for the bill reminder estimate. The current estimates don't get anywhere close to the actual bill amounts. So, I too want the "the amount from X days ago" option.

  • briang_simi
    briang_simi Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    An up vote from me!

    If Quicken can make use of my next closing date instead of my next due date for the estimated payment amount, I'd even be happy to manually adjust that closing date when I know what it is, if I had to.

    Come to think of it, I'm already using "Auto enter x business days in advance" in my Bill Reminder, so perhaps the estimate could make use of that date for the estimates? Not sure if that would work for everyone, but I'm pretty sure it would at least make things better for me.

    Best if Quicken could just get, adjust and reflect that information automatically in the estimating - much more sophisticated than it is now, but much more accurate and useful.

    For example, I know my credit card closing date is typically the 21st or 22nd of the month, something like "at least 20 business days before next payment, except weekends and holidays…", so I'll typically schedule any big credit card payments to post on the 23rd or later, just to give an extra month to pay off (e.g., leave my money in my savings account an extra 30 days / wait for an additional paycheck or two instead of pulling from savings).

    Let's use the example of my statement closing on April 22, payment due on May 17, and big charges (e.g., annual insurance) posting on May 1. Quicken is including those big May 1 charges in my estimated payment for May 17 even though they won't actually be due until my June 17th payment.

  • BK
    BK Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 7

    voted. And here is kind of a similar one I recently posted before finding this.

    https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7965763/add-day-of-the-month-option-to-bill-reminder

    - Q Win Deluxe user since 2010, US Subscription
    - I don't use Cloud Sync, Mobile & Web, Bill Pay/Mgr

  • Don406
    Don406 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭

    To me, adding this feature is a no-brainer as it's essentially foundational functionality. The existing options for Bill Reminder are fine for many scenarios, but not for credit cards where the balance gets paid off each month. Having the option where you can select the balance based on a credit card's statement closing date provides a much more accurate cash flow representation.

    Case in point: today I was looking at the Bills & Income tab and it showed a Visa payment due in 2 days (Dec 12) What!!?? How did I miss that?? It turns out that a payment is actually not due on Dec 12 but actually is due on Jan 12. I have the Bill Reminder set to "Current credit card balance" - the closest option to being accurate, but not really good enough. I had one large charge on that Visa account that occurred after the statement closing date (16th of month) and before my normal payment date (12th of month). Instead of showing $0 (closing date balance), it shows the amount of that charge (current balance).

    So, adding a 5th option to reflect closing date and show the balance as of that date would nicely round out this feature set.

    BTW - I have been using Quicken for ~30 years. This a feature I have wanted for most of that time.

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