I believe that Quicken Online must provide some kind of budget capability to be worth while. I think you guys have the start of a great service, but its just not complete yet.
A zero base budget (starting with all monthly income and tracking every dollar spent) with the ability to add "virtual" categories such as "emergency fund" etc that do not link to any online transactions is critical, think of it as a "free" balance sheet which can import your category data (expenses) but doesn't have to if you want to manually enter them in.
None of your competitors offer this feature either, and really, the only services which do this, BUT do not integrate with your banks, are Dave Ramsey's and My envelopes, but which cost more per month than quicken and frankly, I worry about whether they will be around in three years.
But until quicken online does offer these features, I do not see any reason to extend my online trial, as I will just have to enter the data again elsewhere.
When you offer budgeting as part of your tool, I will return and gladly pay for a service which will save me a lot of time.
We want budget. I also will NOT extend beyond the free trial without the budget. This is not a true financial forward looking tool. It can only be used to audit what you have already done. Very dissappointed.
There is a lot of Quicken Online bashing going on, but let's face it, I've been waiting for this product for a long time. Quicken obviously wanted to be first (excluding free and non-reputable products) to market, and I can see the future of this being great. However, I agree, that I don't need a product that generally produces a personal balance sheet. While this is nice, and its convenient to see all info in one place (especially web-based, accessible from anywhere), I need the help in future projections--I need $8000 in the next two months to buy central A/C for my house. I have a variety of other bill reminders set up. But right now, I have no idea how to use QOL to budget or view future financial situations. This is by far the biggest issue Quicken needs to address. I see other people asking to sync with their desktop software, which to me is completely absurd. The goal is to throw that software away; the web IS the software and OS now. Please don't waste time on that--just ramp up QOL as fast as possible...you can see that it's only running at 50% capacity, but the future is extremely bright. I question whether it's worth the money now, but DEFINITELY worth it once the recurring payments and bills, and budgeting issues are addressed.
All, I wanted to let you know what's coming soon for Quicken Online. Over the next month or so, we have a lot of new features planned for release. In the next week or so, we'll be releasing functionality such as:
- Export to Spreadsheet
- An all transactions view
- Ability to search your transactions
Then, next month, we'll be releasing some major new features, including:
- Budgeting
- Recurring transactions and Real Balance Improvements
- New Email/Mobile Alerts and Reminders (high spending alerts, low balance alerts, etc.)
- Weekly Email Report (showing important details such as balances, recent transactions, and upcoming bills)
Thanks for continuing to use the product. As we roll out these new features, your feedback will be invaluable to make sure we can improve them.
All,
Thanks for the feedback, we're working on budgeting and should have it available in a few weeks. We look forward to your feedback on how we can improve the feature.
Thanks,
Barron Ernst
Quicken Online Product Manager
I agree. I will not be extending my trial unless the budgeting and the ability to enter my own transactions for reconciling exists. However, if I can get those features, I would be happy to pay for this on a monthly basis.
We're putting out budgeting with our release later today. Please check it out and let us know what you think. We're constantly iterating, and will take your feedback for future releases.
totally agree with this. i expected there to be much more budgeting capabilities, since that's probably the reason everyone uses this service anyway. all the info isnt helpful without it. i was however, very impressed with how easy the service is to use. super intuitive. but i dont really know if the serivce is worth it to me if there isn't better budgeting offered. i doubt i will use it beyond the trial period.
I totally agree. I need to be able to add together all of my goals (or perhaps a seperate budget amount for each category) and come up with my total budget amount. It should "zero out" so that all of my money is allocated to a category. I got very excited using this product until then. I was looking for simplicity.
A zero base budget (starting with all monthly income and tracking every dollar spent) with the ability to add "virtual" categories such as "emergency fund" etc that do not link to any online transactions is critical, think of it as a "free" balance sheet which can import your category data (expenses) but doesn't have to if you want to manually enter them in.
This budgeting capability, a method of creating a spending plan in looking forward and then including the actual transactions, is a combination of the envelopes functionality and automated record keeping. We need this!
Quicken team, would you please update how the zero-based allocation and envelopes functionality is going? What is the release date?
The ability to plan and predict future spending is a budget. Looking at what has been spent is history (which Quicken does very well).
I would like to see:
An area to add income from various sources (payroll, interest, dividends, misc.)
A way to plan in the budget for savings to different accounts. This would not be an expense account -- just another type of asset account (IRA, EF, College, savings)
Waiting until the 1st of the month to plan next month's budget won't work from OCD types that want to do next month at the beginning of this month.
Also, a way to print it out in Graph and $$$ form so we can hang in on the fridge and the whole family can see what we have left to spend.
There are 100's of add-ons that would make this a rockstar tool, but having income and forward looking would be best.
FYI - Zero sum budgeting refers to a budget where the income and expenses are equal. There is no money left over at the end of the budget period and there is no shortfall in the total budget. It's also called a CASH budget -- if you have cash you can buy it, if you don't you cant.
As a new user i find this to be a product that has a lot of potential, yet now its missing the mark ....
There has to be a way to plan a yearly budget and a monthly budget. Also there needs to be a budget that includes all the categories...its bizarre to plan a for a specific catergory when you cant see how it effects the overall budget...
Quicken is usually a very good visual tool and i want to be able to use this program to get my husband into a savings routine they way it is now it would not do the job
I know that u guys can arrange small additions these aren't things that are that far out...
hopefully it can get done before my trial is over, if not i dont think i will be using this product.
I just thought I didn't understand how to build a budget. So I agree there is need for an EASY BUGET BUILDING piece added Love what is here and learning to use the tools. Thanks for listening.
I am aware that this has been much-discussed however a rollover feature would be wonderful. Sometimes I have money left over in a category and sometimes I have to "borrow" against the upcoming month.
