The Official Quicken Online Blog

We're looking into improving Quicken Online, and we want to get your feedback. Here's the question: If you were to re-design the homepage for Quicken Online, what would you want to see? What elements of the home page as it exists right now do you like? What would you remove? What would you change?

What other functionality or information would you like to see displayed? Feel free to include functionality or data that isn't in the offering yet (such as budgets, future transactions, etc.)

Additionally, if you'd like to draw your designs (on paper, photoshop, etc.) and send them in, we'd love to see them. Please send them to forumfeedback@intuit.com.

Just a quick note from legal, anything you send in is subject to the terms in section 11 of the Quicken Online EULA, which basically says we can use anything you send in to help us improve the product without providing compensation. Here's a link in case you want to read more: https://quickenonline.intuit.com/quickenweb/pages/license.html

We appreciate your help!

Barron

All, We just deployed some enhancements to the site. In addition to new features, we've been focusing on increasing the performance of the site, and we deployed some of that yesterday. As you're using the site over the next week, let us know if you're still experiencing any problems with site slowness.

Additionally, all of the popups on the home page are now editable, meaning you can categorize and rename transactions from there without needing to browse to the track spending or account activity pages.

We should have more updates to the product available soon - we'll keep you posted when they are available.

Barron Quicken Online Product Manager

All, We've added more investment and mortgage Financial Institutions to the list, including:

- Scottrade

- AIG Retirement

- Ameriprise

- Chase Mortgage

- Edward Jones

- UBS

- Vanguard

- Wachovia

- Washington Mutual Mortgage

If yours isn't on the list, please let us know and we'll look into adding it.

Thanks!

Barron Quicken Online Product Manager

When the economy starts to get a little rough it is pretty normal to start looking at your spending for areas to save. Everyone tends to look at 'discretionary' spending first, dining out, clothing, entertainment etc. You can find good savings in spending that is on autopilot, for me that's utilities.

The easiest way to see where you are with utilities spending is on the 'Track Spending' tab. Click on Utilities on the category in the bottom half of the page. The graph in the upper right shows you the spending over the last 4 months. The 4th month, current month, may not be that useful since if you are in the beginning of the month, you may have no spending. So the previous 3 months are what is really useful.



The first time I saw this graph, it was startling. My PG&E, Cable, Phone, Cell, water and garbage are all on auto pay. I also never add them up and look at them on a monthly basis, well until now. $650 on average per month in utilities, that's a big chunk. PG&E being the largest, and the one that I can make the biggest impact on.



So some experiments for me over the next couple of months to see if I can get my PG&E bill down.

-Change duration on front landscape lighting down to 2 hours after it gets dark, currently set to 6.

-Lower temp of hot tub 3 degrees (roughing it)

-Turn off my Mac Pro when not in use, I have been leaving it on 24/7

-Do a better job of turning off lights and electronic devices when not in use

Basic, I could have been doing them all along, but, I didn't understand the real impact of my utility spending. Now I know, so let's see what I can do about it. I will check back in a few months from now and give an update on what impact if any these changes are making.

-Jim

All, To show our appreciation for all our fans on facebook, we've launched a contest called Fanfare. To win, all you have to do is become our fan on facebook. Every week from now until July, we'll pick one winner of $350 and a free year of Quicken Online. It's that easy!

So become our fan on facebook - you just might be one of our weekly winners: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Quicken-Online/6539384817?ref=nf

All, We're currently working on some new features that we hope to get out over the next couple of months. Here's what's in the works right now (and we'd love you feedback or suggestions on how to build these pieces):

- Cash Expense Tracking (Ability to track your cash transactions and have them included in your overall cash spending)

- More mobile/email alerts and notifications, such as low balance alerts, bank overdraft alerts, high credit card limit alerts, and high transaction amount alerts

- Ability to export data from the product to a spreadsheet

Additionally, I know that budgeting has been asked about by a number of you. We are definitely working on budgeting, but we are building it as part of a larger set of features. It's something we're working on, and we appreciate your patience because we hope to deliver it as a feature that exceeds your expectations.

Thanks, Barron Quicken Online Product Manager

All, We added some new features to the product yesterday:

* We've added many popular investment and loan institutions to our list - We've added institutions such as E*Trade, Merrill Lynch, SalomonSmithBarney, Putnam Investments, T. Rowe Price Investments, TIAA-CREF Investments, Sallie Mae Loan, Fidelity NetBenefits, Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, TD Ameritrade, Countrywide, and AIG Retirement.

So, now you may be able to track investment, CD, mortgage, or loan accounts that you couldn't track in Quicken Online before. (For investment accounts, you won't be able to see every detail of your holdings in each security; you can only track some limited transactions and your balances.)

To find out if we added your institution, click Add from the Home page and search for your institution. We'll also be adding more investment institutions in the coming weeks.

* The My Accounts page does more and also got a facelift - There's a reason it doesn't look clunky any more: we added some new features to make it more truly the headquarters for your accounts. Now you can change an account's sign-in info, add accounts, delete accounts, change the name of an account, and navigate to the transactions in an account (click the account number).

* You can edit a bunch of transactions at once - Ever wanted to change all the transactions from a particular payee all at once? Maybe you want to shorten the payee name and also assign them all to the same category? Now you can do that. Your change affects future transactions, too.

Go to the Track Spending tab, select your widest date range and all your accounts, and then click Payee. You can select any payee's row and change the Payee name and the category. It's a huge timesaver.

Additionally, we apologize for any problems getting your latest data into the product. It's an issue we are aware of and that we are working hard to fix.

Keep the feedback coming and let us know what other features you'd like to see in the product.

Thanks, Barron

All, We're going to start recording a new series of podcasts soon, discussing retirement planning topics. Are there any specific questions you'd like to see answered on those podcasts? It can be about 401ks, IRAs, retirement planning, how to target a specific date and invest for that date, or anything else about the topic.

If you have questions you'd like answered, post in the comments or send an email to forumfeedback@intuit.com.

Thanks to everyone for their patience while we added Wells Fargo to the product. It is now available for use in Quicken Online.

A few notes about Wells Fargo. It works differently than other financial institutions you have in Quicken Online. Wells Fargo will require a manual refresh to get the latest data because you must supply your username and password each time you want to get the latest transactions and balances.

To do this, simply follow these steps:

1. Click on one of your Wells Fargo accounts (it can be any account held at Wells)

2. On the next page, click the "Refresh This Account" link in the upper right

3. A prompt will appear, asking you for your Wells Fargo credentials. Enter these and hit continue.

4. Wait for the refresh process to complete. During this time, we will update your balances and transactions for all Wells Fargo accounts linked to the username/password you entered.

Thanks everyone for your patience while we got this added. Please feel free to leave comments if you have questions.

Barron Quicken Online Product Manager

All, Many people have asked for advice on getting their upcoming transactions to better match as we download your data. I worked with Marko, the engineer who built the engine, to put together some advice on getting your transactions to match better. Here's some insight into how the algorithm works:

The matching works as follows: - Looks for a match by check #. If it finds a match here, it will automatically match the upcoming transaction. - Looks for a match by payee and amount, and date. Some important points here:

1. The date entered for the upcoming transaction must be before or the same as the actual posting date for the transaction

2. When entering in the payee for the upcoming transaction, use the payee match feature. As you are typing the payee name, pause after the first 2-3 characters and a drop down list will appear. If you select the payee from that list, the chances of matching are much higher.

3. The amount on the upcoming transaction does not need to be exactly the same as the actual transaction, but it definitely helps the matching process.

What other things can you do to improve the matching process? - If you rename your payees in Quicken Online, we'll save those payee names. If you use those names when you enter upcoming transactions (either by typing in the exact same name or using the autofill feature), then the matching will match your renamed payee names to upcoming transactions as well.

Please let us know if this works to match your payees better. This same advice also applies for the add bill reminders functionality - using the payee autofill should enhance the amount of times we're able to match those transactions as well.

Barron