Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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CROCKD
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by CROCKD »

As I wrote on this thread on Wed. Oct.20,2010

Re Mint.com:

Do you really want this detailed level of your financial life stored in some remote server?

Risks of putting digital life in cloud

How the look and feel of the product is designed to seduce and trump intrinsic value.

Silicon Valley’s star designers push aside programmer nerds
For fledgling startups, it’s even more critical to understand how design affects user behavior, said Dave McClure, an angel investor who cited the example of Mint, an online tool for managing personal finances acquired by Intuit in 2009.

Jason Putorti, the startup’s designer founder, lent the Mint interface “much more warmth,” which was crucial for a startup that dealt with sensitive information, Mr. McClure said. Design, he added, “made the app feel trustworthy, comforting, functional.”
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

Today I was balancing my bank account on Quicken. My opening cash was identical to the bank's. My closing on Quicken was $50.00 high. Everything reconciled perfectly except for the missing $50.00. No sign of it in Quicken nor in the bank statement. I did a journal entry to eliminate the $50.00 and everything is fine. What could that be?
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by AltaRed »

Since Quicken does not make up data, you either missed an entry or had a data entry error... or the bank computer failed to compute correctly. It is easy to make a mistake and not be able to identify it. Have a fresh set of eyes reconcile your Quicken entries with the bank statement.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

my views as well, but I did it twice and hi-lited the entries. Nothing omitted. Oh well, all is now okay.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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AltaRed wrote:Since Quicken does not make up data
Well it doesn't make up actual entries, but it can get completely confused while doing a reconcile. (I have the 2011 version.) It seems to occur if I reconcile in the wrong order and do the most recent statement before an older statement. However if I add in the unwarranted adjustment that Quicken suggests at the end of the reconciliation, and then delete that bogus adjustment right away, it seems to get everything square again.

Other times that I've run into reconciliation problems it's been due to Quicken's handling of the R column when I've been copying an existing transaction to save time with a new entry. IIRC, with brokerage accounts it preserves the reconciled status on the pasted entry, and with bank accounts it doesn't. Those "pre-reconciled" entries can make things very confusing.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

I am using 2002 version. Two months ago when I went to reconcile, it told me that I needed help to reconcile. However, the last month's total was exactly right, and the final amount was correct, except for this last mentioned error which I have corrected.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Bylo Selhi wrote:
adrian2 wrote:Now that I'm fully migrated to Quicken 2011...
You don't find the user interface buggy beyond usability? :shock: ...

I find these sorts of situations intolerable. They've rendered Q11 unusable for me. I'm surprised that you apparently haven't encountered this sort of stuff or if you have, don't seem to mind it.
Update.

I reinstalled Q11 and tried again. This time I found a Preference, Navigation and unchecked "Use Classic Menus." Although I don't see any difference in the menus, now the effects described above seem to have stopped and the software is usable if not user-friendly, let alone intuitive as Intuit might intuit.

One more thing I did to make the software work better. As I've said before I've been using Quicken since the early DOS days in the mid to late 1980s. My main data file (QDF) was over 25MB in size. It contained some 40,000 banking and investment "transactions" spread out over several accounts, many of them now inactive and hidden. As a result performance was very sluggish, especially with US$ accounts. After installing Q11, instead of importing all this from Q09 I decided to start anew. This was a bit laborious because I had to manually recreate accounts and securities. Then I started adding stuff (cash balances, securities, etc.) as of 01May12. It was possible to Add security positions using the ACBs reported by Q09 so that when I was done all the numbers, including cost and market values, were identical to the penny between Q09 and Q11. Amazingly Q11 performance changed from annoyingly sluggish to blindingly fast. The QDF file size dropped from 25MB to 1.2MB.

As far as I can tell the only thing I'm losing by doing this is the ability to report portfolio returns. I can live without that. Actually I don't even have to. If I rename the Q09 files from, say bylo.xxx to bylo.30apr12.xxx, then import into Q11, I can have the old stuff available for the few occasions when I might need it.

Q11 is still an awkward product that does lots of things but few of them well. At least now the software is usable and I've got another two years of online updates.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by sunkenradish »

I realize I'm resurrecting an older thread here but I recently bought Quicken 2012, having been an MS Money user since 2004.

I gave Quicken a fair shake but ended up returning it for a refund. The fundamental flaw, at least in version 2012, is the apparent lack of ability to build a cash flow projection from budgeted items. I've blogged on this elsewhere so I won't repeat it here. Suffice to say: I'm back to using MS Money which is now a free download from Microsoft and still imports transactions from TD Waterhouse and my bank.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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CJOttawa wrote:The fundamental flaw, at least in version 2012, is the apparent lack of ability to build a cash flow projection from budgeted items.
I've been a Quicken user for 18 years (since version 4, remember those days when software was not versioned like car model years?) and I have never used the cash flow projection in Quicken.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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adrian2 wrote:I've been a Quicken user for 18 years (since version 4, remember those days when software was not versioned like car model years?) and I have never used the cash flow projection in Quicken.
Ditto, although I may have started at version 5. I've never used cash flow projections either but that doesn't mean to say some people do not find them worthwhile. A 12 month rolling forward historical look at income/expense gives me what I need.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by Bylo Selhi »

Tritto. Then again, I don't use Quicken to do budgeting or track spending. I only use the banking and investment tracking features.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

Quitto :thumbsup: Still using Deluxe 2002. :rofl:
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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Quicken Deluxe 99 8) - and it still downloads from TD :thumbsup: only :( .
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by triker »

Over in the MS Money thread:
AltaRed wrote:
triker wrote:Unlike Quicken, I can actually get prices for preferred shares.
I get prices for preferred shares just like common stocks in Quicken.
OK, I've definitely got to follow this one up. It's something that I've not been able to do in multiple vintages of Quicken over the years, and IIRC I also couldn't get exchange traded debenture prices to download back when I had some of those.

Which version of Quicken are you running?
Do you enter the stock symbols any differently than what TSX uses?

For instance in Quicken 2011, if I use the symbol MFC.PR.C on the Toronto exchange I get no price information downloaded. Plain old MFC works of course.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by fisab »

triker wrote:
For instance in Quicken 2011, if I use the symbol MFC.PR.C on the Toronto exchange I get no price information downloaded. Plain old MFC works of course.
For MFC.PR.C try MFC-C (TSX)
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by triker »

fisab wrote:For MFC.PR.C try MFC-C (TSX)
That works! Thanks.

And of course I have to ask how you knew that was supposed to be the symbol? Doing symbol lookup within Quicken uses the Globe Investor site which gives the actual exchange assigned symbol using periods - MFC.PR.C-T
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

triker wrote:Doing symbol lookup within Quicken uses the Globe Investor site which gives the actual exchange assigned symbol using periods - MFC.PR.C-T
IIRC, Quicken uses Yahoo! as the source of their quotes.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by fisab »

triker wrote:
fisab wrote:For MFC.PR.C try MFC-C (TSX)
That works! Thanks.

And of course I have to ask how you knew that was supposed to be the symbol? Doing symbol lookup within Quicken uses the Globe Investor site which gives the actual exchange assigned symbol using periods - MFC.PR.C-T
Unfortunately I do not remember (I bought preferred shares for the first time in 2007). :?
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by Shakespeare »

IIRC, Quicken uses Yahoo! as the source of their quotes.
Yahoo wants preferreds as MFC-PC.TO.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by $seeker »

I have just obtained Quicken 2012, and it is loaded and all accounts are downloaded from TD and looks fine.

I have a few questions crossing over from the Money posts.

Bylo Selhi mentions :

"I need to be able to download bank transactions because the banks keep transactions online for as little as a few months. That's hardly enough, especially for tax purposes. And if you close an account you lose online access immediately, even just read-only access to archived information. That too is unacceptable. "

Do people download transactions from the brokerage to Quicken and if so will the "download transactions" from the transactions register in quicken lead to the "activity" page to do this for TDWDB ? When I downloaded to Quicken from TDWDB I just obtained a list of my positions and values/balances etc and not the transactions in the "activity" page

Also, I need to enter the costs for position and am lead to an "enter missing transactions" prompt and wondered if I can complete this with several transactions for some of the positions that were picked up in different prices and times?
I did scan the posts but did not notice these particular questions. Apologies if it was addressed previously
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

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$seeker wrote:Do people download transactions from the brokerage to Quicken and if so will the "download transactions" from the transactions register in quicken lead to the "activity" page to do this for TDWDB ? When I downloaded to Quicken from TDWDB I just obtained a list of my positions and values/balances etc and not the transactions in the "activity" page
I said, "I need to be able to download bank transactions because the banks..." for a reason: TDW doesn't do transaction downloads.

IIRC Scotia's brokerage does or did. Dunno if that carries over to iTrade or to any other brokers. I don't trade much. The vast majority of brokerage transactions are dividends and DRIPs. That can be a pain. I wouldn't want to try to keep day-trading transactions using Quicken.
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by $seeker »

Thanks Bylo Selhi , I just wanted to make sure I was not missing anything. Cheers
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

I have been using Quicken 2002 for quite some time, but only for personal checking and investments. My son has started a small business, and I tried to see if my Quicken would work as a small business set of books and ISTM that it does not seem to do it. I am thinking of Receivables and Payables etc. I tried to google Quicken Business and the net info does not seem to answer this question either. Anyone using this?
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by westinvest »

What you want for business is Quickbooks, not Quicken. I use it for a small business and it works well
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Re: Miscellaneous Quicken Questions

Post by tedster »

Thanks, I will pass it on. (Gosh I hate this rule about 30 characters.) :twisted:
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