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 completely agree with mariamaria15 about the "Rollover" option. It would provide more of a "Big Picture" budget for the year and help with planning for upcoming planned and emergency expenses.
Is there any Bugeting feature for Quicken Online. The only thing I see is the Goals section, and that resets all goals everytime I change a single goal. It's not really the same as a budget.
The only thing I see is the Goals section, and that resets all goals everytime I change a single goal.
I've seen this claim made several times, but I have yet to be able to reproduce it.
If I change the Goal for a single category, that also changes the "Overall" goal ... because the Overall Goal is the total of all other Goals. But only those two Goals change.
If I change the Overall Goal, all Goals are changed, proportionally. Given the fact that the Overall Goal is the total of all other Goals, how else could it work?
Goals definitely is not a full fledged budget: it's a way to track your spending for specific categories against goals you set for spending on those categories.
How to ask a question.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
I like this budgeting feature but it seems only useful for one month at a time. What I think would be a nice enhancment would be to allow the user to track their deficit/surplus over time based on their budget. For example, I'd like to know, since 01/2009, have I saved any money? Some months I may have saved and some months I may have over spent. Today I'd have to go thru month by month and write under/over amounts down on paper and then tally.
Budgeting Feature Suggestions May 08, 2009 08:47 am
A few suggestions:
1) allow changing/adding of previous & historical months budget goals
2) It seems that Budget goals need to be RE-CREATED each month? Why not provide user with the ability to make a one time budget template(s) that is used against future months by default
3)There could be two budget views, one that compares actual against a set budget (template as mentioned above), and one that compares to previous year's historical average (or some other time period).
I agree 100% with YoungChilelian. It is very easy to use and the averaging "concept" is fantastic. I would use it at least 3x/wk if it would automatically track all categories and factor in the income averages as well.
1 - The budgetting feature needs to be available by any of the time periods available. Drop down select like in transactions.
1a. - Additionally users should be able to look back in time by selecting the start date for the budget. This would be most usefull in determining if the budget was met in the prior budgeting period. In case the user does not check on the last day of the budget. A more user friendly implementation would be to always offer a current prior button. The prior display would be based on the currently selected time period in 1 above.
2 - When adding or removing categories to budget. it would be way quicker to offer a list of all categories with checkboxes next to them to that all selections can be done at once instead of select, scroll down to bottom select again.
2a. Additionally visually indicating which categories are already scheduled in the upcoming transactions screen would be excelent.
Since these are fixed expenses that really don't need to be monitored, like utilities. There is probably a more elegant solution here.
- the idea is to create a (preferably daily) scheduled transaction in the schedule transactions list that would reflect the budget for all non scheduled expenses. This would allow one to get a very good projection of future expenses.
2b. Along those lines it would be way usefull to allow the display of more than two future paychecks on the main projection chart.
3 - The maximum number of categories that can be tracked should be increased by 15.
3a. The hight of each budget bar and the space in between each could be greately reduced to save on scrolling down.
4 - Default categories should be able to be marked as inactive so that no costs are automatically assigned to them and they don't display on the list. Costs would be flagged as 'uncategorized' if they match an inactivated cost.
I would LOVE to see the budgeting feature allow for accumulated unspent money to roll over. I guess this is called a sinking fund or an envelope or what have you. If Quicken Online did this, I wouldn't have to take my record-keeping anywhere else to finish the job.
I would like to see a budget forecasting purchases up to a year or more in advance. I used a spread sheet that had my budget for the whole year in it before this. With it I could see how much money I had rolled over from month to month, and could decide when I could make a large purchase such as air fare for a vacation, or some professional landscaping for the house, or a new piece of A/V equipment for the home theater setup, etc. etc. Only being able to look at a month at a time is not very useful.
I started using quicken online because I wanted to receive text messages updating me of my budget goals which this program does adequately. However, there is one thing I would like to see in the way of budgeting goals.
The Overall category should be able to be used to set a percentage of your overall income, or a percentage of "real income" based on what consistent bills or trends that are not tracked in the budget thermometers under the budget tab
This will allow professional quality budgeting strategies that will be easy to maintain and less time consuming than any professional software to date due to the already fluid and intuitive categorizing and payee naming software you are already using.
I think that the service you are providing now has given me more than enough reason to continue using your software and recommending it to all of my friends and co-workers but taking the extra step to provide every budgeting tool that one could ever need into one simple to use secure online service is going to make your customers more money and there by make your company more money in the future because this free software is putting more money in to the hand of consumers who do not yet have the spare cash to buy your more costly products and softwares.
I am testing Quicken online to see if it's a fit. The number one thing I look for is forecasting my budget. This consists of entering all of my recurring transactions (bills and budgeted spending) into the system, entering all projected income, and seeing a graph of my account balance projected out as far as I would like.
Normally I like to project 30 to 60 days out, but frequently will view 180 days or more out, in order to ensure I am covered when big expenses hit, etc.
This really helps stay away from living check to check and encourages good budgeting, making it easy to visualize how changes now will affect the balance much later on.
Quicken online seems to stop at two weeks out, and even this is based on actual and not planned transactions. While this is better than nothing, by using actual transactions to predict, and with no control over this by the end user, I will never see what I need to see. For example, I will pay extra on my credit cards, or budget for clothing, or receive a bonus, etc....by looking at the actuals, quicken online will always give me this sort of "average" view, but I need to know brass tacks. The only way I can see what I need is to have full control, by entering my recurring transactions in a list, and using them to forecast.
Having been forced by MS to look over alternative financial programs, I find this very frustrating. Did you, by any chance, ever look at MS Money? If not, you should. The way that program handles budgeting is exactly how it should be done... including the "crazy easy" part.
FWIW, I have seen nothing so far (two weeks of lurking) that would cause me to consider Quicken. And this only adds to the evidence against such a move.
I Like the goals section for budgeting. I would really like to see something that ties my overall income into it. Maybe a bar at the very top for Overall Income. Then I set that and it shows me the bar with how much of that has come in and how much has not. Or something that shows how much of that income is left after Overall Expenses are deducted. and/or a combination of all of the above. showing a comparison of income versus expenses, etc.
I have GOT to agree on this. I have used MS Money for years, and the best part of it was the cash flow chart and analysis, which quickly gave you at a glance for the next year, whether you would ever be out of money based on your inflow and budgeted outflow. It was great, and it ensured that my bank accounts / funds were always in shape.
This is so simple. I think Quicken online should be able to build on this graph - what we have now is a really terrible simplistic graph on the main page.
Quicken - can you mirror the Cash Flow function of MS Money? If you can come up with this in any Quicken product - I will buy your product immediately regardless of any of the other issues.
I just started using it and am still getting used to it. I have glanced through the other comments and would like to see these included in the product; especially allowing more categories, sub categories and current balance of specific accounts. Also, I get paid 10 times per year and would like the option to see my income averaged over a 12 month period.
Thank you
I would also like to be able to customize the date ranges for budgeting. Being able to choose the categories I want to monitor is helpful, but the timelines are not.
Also, I need to be able to project at *least* 120d out for all Upcoming Transactions. It's the quarterly expenses that are difficult to categorize. Annual would be ideal, but I really need to see the quarterly.
Thanks,
Elizabeth
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?
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