Budgeting is here! The feature helps you set a budget for the categories you care about and makes it easy to do so by providing your monthly averages as a baseline.
Tell us how you're using the new budget feature, so we are able to customize it to your needs.
Where does it fall on a scale of "crazy simple" to "too tricky for me"?How many categories are you tracking? Did you pay attention to your monthly average to set your numbers? How frequently will you log back in to check how you're doing? Let us know.
Quicken Kathryn
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I have been wandering between Wesabe, Mint and Quicken Online as a replacement for MS Money for a while and last week I discovered that Quicken is offering features that matter to me.
My experience is that the Cash Flow feature of MS Money helps me the most to stay debt free and 'Goals/Plan your Spending' is offering great information for me.
I would like to see some detail improvement, though.
The progress bar shows Goal, Spent and Remaining, and a time line.
What I wish for is a prediction of my spending:
If my goal is $100 per month and I spend $75 in the first week, that might indicate a problem later in the month. I would like to see the result of a formula like:
progress = ((monthly goal/31)*today) - ((transactions/today)*31)
would give a better idea of the trend?
Since it's common to get paid weekly/bi-weekly, it would also be great to set goals on a weekly basis and get spending reports on a weekly basis.
I like the budget section and thought it was nice that it intuitively had categories already setup when I started using it. Now that I've toyed with it some I would like to have the ability to create a budget for upcoming months. For the most part my category goals will stay the same but for, say, utilities my electric bill is different every month so the goal changes monthly.
I currently have six categories - groceries, household, gasoline, dining, utilities, and insurance. (Before I put insurance and utilities together since all are fixed costs.)
I have tested out Quicken and Mint and can't use Mint because of the cash transaction issues, but I want Mint's budget feature :(
Mainly I am looking for an ability to roll over and set my own budget timeframe. In fact, if I at LEAST had roll over I can live without the ability to set my own budget timeframe for now. I don't have enough money to go on vacation EVERY MONTH, but want to set a vacation budget for say, the next 6 months. I'm willing to set my budget and divide it by 6 to give me a monthly budget if I had roll over ability.
I think I'll keep using Quicken because it's close but it's going to get annoying quickly.
Also is there no way I can just set all of my own categories or at least combine categories you have? There's health&fitness, medical, and health insurance...I'd want to combine health insurance and medical and then have health&fitness separately. There's a TON of categories that I don't want on that list, such as I don't have a car.
Perhaps, as with Mint, you can ask more questions like whether or not I have car, kids, or a pet, and then hide those categories accordingly?
I need to be able to budget on an annual basis. The desktop version of quicken has the ability to see your spending over the last year (month by month, by category) and set a budget for the next year (month by month, by category). In order for a budget to be useful to me, it needs to be able to extend 12 months and show my spending in each category for each month.
Others have posted this same request, so I'm just another vote to hopefully get it on the priority list!
I would like to be able to group categories. For example, if I want to budget $300 for food for a month, i'd like to be able to have dining and groceries within that category. Basically, I don't care which category gets the money as long as I am only spending $300 total on food. Thanks!
I like the budgeting feature. Is there a quick and easy way to make these amounts apply to ALL months? Perhaps because I am just starting, I'll have to wait and see next month if those same amounts just carry over!
Plus, could I budget using my income? For example, using an income of X, I would like to split those X dollars amongst the categories I choose.
I agree, this is useful, but it would be really nice to set the time period for your budget. I want to be able to see how my budget is doing year to date, etc. Often times you spend little on a category one month and a lot every once in a while, so viewing a longer term budget is key.
I like the budgeting tool, i really like how you can also track cash spent. Helps me track end to end. Up till now I have been tracking with a excel spreadsheet at home, needless to say it was tedious and time consuming to track everything and enter it myself. I would like to see monthly budgets rollover if you are over or under your budget. Also, to give the option of resetting your rollover. Similar to what Mint.com has. I saw pros and cons to both quicken and mint. Mint's big proble i thought was that it didnt track cash transactions like quicken did. Now that Intuit owns Mint, i am hoping the 2 technologies can merge their pros and eliminate their cons.
With MS no longer supporting Money I am looking to update to Quicken. One of the main features I use is the 'Forecast your cash flow' where by I can select any time frame, usually 3 pay periods for any account I have set up. It incorporates all actual spending for a selected account and forthcoming expenditure and deposits. This allows me to view how my month is going including the low point of how much spare money I have between paydays to budget for item I may be saving for. The graph is clear, easy to read in an instant and hovering the mouse over the graph show what is in the account on any particular day. I see nothing in Quicken which is even vaguely similar to this feature (am I missing something) without this very easy to use feature within Quicken I cannot see myself paying for Quicken. Can this feature be included please or have I just not looked in the right places?
Hi Dazzadog,
Quicken Online is a very basic version of financial tracking. You may want to check out Quicken desktop products for more advanced forecasting features, and the ability to transfer your Money data.
Signature - Please remember that this is a User-to-User community forum. If you come in to get an answer, see if there are any that you can provide. The more people who do that, the more likely you will get your answer.
To help others trying to answer your question, go to "Preferences/Profile" to the left of the page and and fill in those fields.
Intuit Employees using the forum can be identified by the name "Quicken" followed by an Intuit logo. Unless a poster has the above requirements they are not an Intuit employee.
I'm trying to figure out how to change one budgeted area without it recalculating all the other areas. Maybe there is a way and I haven't figured it out but it shouldn't change my rent amount that stays the same always, just because I changed the amount I want to spend on groceries.
I'm trying to figure out how to change one budgeted area without it recalculating all the other areas. Maybe there is a way and I haven't figured it out but it shouldn't change my rent amount that stays the same always, just because I changed the amount I want to spend on groceries.
I don't see budget items change, when I adjust my groceries item.
Then only amount that changes is 'Overall'.
All the items get reprocessed, though, after editing an item.
Also, there is no need to budget your rent, since it's a fixed amount every month. You would create a scheduled payment in the account that is used for the rent payments.
Budgets only make sense for irregular/flexible expenses, like gasoline/groceries/dining out, etc.
Is there any chance of adding a feature to allow for seperate budgets? For example: Household budget, personal spending, wedding, vacation, etc. I can't find this feature in very many places, but I am terribly tired of keeping seperate spreadsheets. If this doesn't work, how about an attachement ability on Quicken Online, so I can atleast save those spreadsheets on a secure site!
I am in exactly the same boat as the gentleman who originally posted this message. If you can tell me in no uncertain terms that there is a Quicken product that will allow cash flow forecasts as far out as a year then I will plunk down the cash for it right now.
I wish it WORKED!!!! I want to set my own values for the categories. I Edit a category value to one of my choosing but later when returning to checkup on things the value has returned to the calculated average. How do I get the values I enter to hold?
I do like the fact that it is here and it would be SIMPLE if it actually held the hand entered values!
I like the feature, but I wish it let you set up a broad budget (how much you plan to spend per month/ week, without having to select categories.) Also is there a way to budget by week? I am a college student so am really looking for a simple way to keep track of incidental spending. I have been using mint.com but like the 'real blance' feature of your site.
Thanks!
I'm using Quicken Online right now (just started the other day) and I must be blind, but I can't see the Budgeting feature. How do I find it?
HOWEVER I think I just found what I was trying to accomplish anyway in the TRENDS tab, and clicking on the "6MO" button that shows me how it's going to be for 6 months.
What I actually expected to see is a day-by-day calendar like in Quicken Deluxe.
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