The purpose of this thread is exclusively to share info on shortcomings in Quicken software for FWF-style "power users"--that is, people who:

-use many more accounts than quicken is optimized for;
-track many more transactions than average;
-use them to track gift cards, or similar items;
-otherwise need or want to "push the envelope" on what quicken provides.

Having used it or MS Money for about 12 years, I am currently working with Quicken 2007 Home and Business to try to track everything we do. I'm also in the midst of updating everything in order to simplify records for my spouse should I meet an untimely misfortune. And I'm finding it a big PITA to work around all quicken's limitations. I've found that Quicken's own support forums tend to be of little help on issues like this, as the focus is on performing more standard personal and small business recordkeeping without incident.

I have more questions than answers at this point, but I'll certainly update this thread with any answers I find.


Questions and Answers:

Q: Is there a more efficient way to reorder accounts other than moving to the "manage accounts" list, then moving them one...notch...at...a...time...while...quicken...reupdates? When you have something like 40 checking accounts and want to, e.g., move the most active/important ones to the top, it can take 5-10 MINUTES of fussing for EACH ACCOUNT, since they will only go up or down one notch. In 2006, I could at least push the "move up" button 5-6 times and then do something else for a minute or so, then come back...but even that rudimentary little "trick" doesn't work in 2007.

A: a (very) partial workaround: use the "Move Groups" function By moving an account from one group to another, and then back, you move that account to the very bottom of the list. It just a little bit better than nothing. I'd really like to find a better solution to this one.


Q: Is there a way to scroll through a long account list much more quickly than using the up and down arrows at the top and bottom of the accounts column? This also meant long, tedious periods. Happily, the answer here was easy, I'd just overlooked its introduction sometime during the last couple of versions:

A: The thin line at the far left (by default) is a scrollbar that will do just this. I discovered this entirely by accident one day, and felt pretty silly for missing it.


Q: How do you track gift card purchases, and other similar cash equivalents?

A: One account per vendor, with discounted purchases. The thread I linked above has a method I still use without much trouble: making a quicken "account" for each vendor, and "spending" 80 cents for each dollar of gift card value. I'm sure there are other good strategies though, and would love to hear about them.


Q: How do you all use the calendar function? Any way to make it a useful "alarm" for BT payoffs and the like?I haven't messed with the calendar functionality much, and from what I can tell it seems pretty limited to things like sticky notes that you manually tape on to remind yourself that you need to do something.


I hope that's enough to give everyone an idea of what I'm looking for, and to get us started...TIA for your questions and tips!

I handle gift cards purchases by doing a transfer of the total gift card purchase to a petty cash account. When the x% bonus is credited to a credit card, I record it in a "Gift Card Bonus" category. Then, as I use the gift cards, I just enter the transactions in the petty cash account, categorized appropriately. If I've used only PART of a gift card, I keep it in a separate envelope from the untouched gift cards.

In other words, as far as I'm concerned gift card transactions are just cash transactions AFTER the accounting is done for the gift card purchase itself. I don't have a need to track separately each gift card or each vendor for which I have gift cards.

I also put the GCs into separate cash accounts by vendor, or sometimes by group (i.e. restaurants). The 20% credit on the credit cards goes into a bonus sub-category by either vendor or group.

To be a little inconsistent, I place all the 20% credits for HD & Lowes under a subcategory of my house building expenses.

I would like to be able to keep separate husband/wife accounts within one quicken file, with transactions occurring between accounts and with the ability to toggle a quick view of one set of accounts and then another set of accounts. I don't believe there is a way to do this?

You could define macros to hide/show his/her accounts. They work very fast.

I like Macro Express ( http://www.macroexpress.com/ )

No, I don't use it much for Quicken. Quicken lets me memorize regular transactions, and I use the scheduling function to enter those automatically. Probalby would have used Macro Express for that if the Quicken functionality wasn't there. My finances aren't routine enough or repetitive enough or complex enough to be helped much by a macro. Probably that's a good thing!

It is a great program, though. I've been using it for years. Helped me max out the BofA Keep the Change promotion by paying off my cable and phone bills in $1.01 chunks...

DaveHanson said:
Q: How do you all use the calendar function? Any way to make it a useful "alarm" for BT payoffs and the like?I haven't messed with the calendar functionality much, and from what I can tell it seems pretty limited to things like sticky notes that you manually tape on to remind yourself that you need to do something.


I haven't looked into it much either but as far as I looked, that's it. You add notes to events and that doesn't help much.

There are two things that are more useful for me. First, the scheduled transactions. They show upcoming ones on the upcoming events list in the default view. If they're actual transactions, you can set them up directly or if they're reminders only, you can just make bogus one-time transactions and simply delete them before the take effect on the account they're setup for.

The second feature is the alert center under tools. For cash flow, it has min/max/limit balance alerts that could be useful. It has a bunch of default alerts which lack customizability but one thing I like is the option to change the alert method.

Instead of just a note in the alert list (such as for scheduled transactions due soon), you can select there to have it be an urgent pop-up dialog box. That's made a big difference for me on visibility of those alerts. I can miss an alert text message in the list but I can't dismiss a popup that I have to click away to get rid off.

For me the most useful alerts there are scheduled transactions, minimum balances for cashflow accounts, credit card limits in cashflow, maturity date (for CDs, bonds, bills) in investing section and insurance re-appraisal for our various insurances.

As far as BT payoffs are concerned, usually the BT amount I float in a short-term interest account. So I use maturity date alert for that if it's a CD or bill/note. If it's in ING/ED savings account, I use a scheduled transaction alert from account I'll pay the BT balance from.

I guess that doesn't help with how to use the calendar but as far as I've looked, it's just that the calendar itself isn't very useful for doing those alert things.

Bump for new ideas.

For my IRA CDs, I'm wishing that I didn't have to chose between "bank" accounts, which work with one-step update at my credit unions, and "investment" accounts, which would let me more efficiently and accurately characterize my asset allocation.

For gift cards, I use a credit card account with a negative balance rather than a cash account. I like the fact that you can reconcile the credit card account, which doesn't work for a cash account.

DaveHanson said:randian, could you elaborate about how you "reconcile" gift cards as credit card accounts? Without being able to download the information, I'm not sure what that gives you...
All I really do is check the card balance from time to time, and if it matches my Quicken balance I reconcile the account.

Does anyone have a good solution for how Quicken tracks transfers between accounts?

For some reason when I transfer money between accounts it is marked as both income on the target account and debit on the previous account. This throws off all the default graphs until I customize it to "Ignore all transfers" in graphs. Is there any way to make this setting the default for all graphs instead of "Ignore internal transfers?" Or at least how do I get my transfers between accounts to be recognized as internal transfers?

Its really annoying to see that I spent and received XXXXX money when it was just money moving between my online savings accounts.