Quicken 2012 Budget

Hello, all, I've tried searching this group by header, and then downloading and searching the bodies of messages with promising headers for an anwer to what what should be a simple question: What is a "rolling budget?" I undrstand Q2012 has one and that is different from what previous versions had (static budgets?).

I have been in search of a budgeting tool I really like for a long time, and Qucken seems to be just getting worse. I have a copy of 2012 but haven't installed it yet. I don't want to do it this weekend because I don't want to risk destabiizing finaincial processing right now. My wife asked me what was new in 2012 and I mentioned a rolling budget; she asked what's a rolling budget and I said, "Uh..."

I did find some clues in the Intuit "Live Community" that the budget is always 12 months from from where you are now (right?). I am gathering that there were significant bugs but they were fixed by R6. Do people here agree. Do you hate the rolling budget as much as the live community does?

Can someone help? Anything else good or bad in 2012 (I have 2011 now)? Both Deluxe.

Reply to
Jim Nugent
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"Jim Nugent" wrote

Hello, all, I've tried searching this group by header, and then downloading and searching the bodies of messages with promising headers for an anwer to what what should be a simple question: What is a "rolling budget?" I undrstand Q2012 has one and that is different from what previous versions had (static budgets?).

I have been in search of a budgeting tool I really like for a long time, and Qucken seems to be just getting worse. I have a copy of 2012 but haven't installed it yet. I don't want to do it this weekend because I don't want to risk destabiizing finaincial processing right now. My wife asked me what was new in 2012 and I mentioned a rolling budget; she asked what's a rolling budget and I said, "Uh..."

I did find some clues in the Intuit "Live Community" that the budget is always 12 months from from where you are now (right?). I am gathering that there were significant bugs but they were fixed by R6. Do people here agree. Do you hate the rolling budget as much as the live community does?

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I'm going to stay out of the "rolling budget" bru ha ha - too many different ideas about what it is and whether it's a good thing.

But I might be able to clear up a couple of items you mentioned.

The simple one: Q2012 R6 only intended to fix budget problems caused by R5 ... and R5 did not cause all the Q2012 budget problems.

There will be an R7 (hoped for this month, no guarantees). I have no idea what issues R7 will address.

As to "the budget is always 12 months from where you are now"; in a word: no. Despite the fact that several of us in Live Community have posted quite a few times to the contrary, this boogeyman continues to hang around.

Q2012 introduced a new idea for budgets: a "current budget" and an "historical budget". I'm not totally clear on the problem Intuit was trying to address, but it appears you can now keep the same named budget and alter its values for any year (in the past you've either needed to change the budget values for a new year, or create a new budget for the new year). Presumably then, you could run a Budget report for any period, using the same named budget, and Quicken would compare actuals to the budget values that matched the period you chose (assuming you had entered budget values for those months). I haven't tested that; just theorizing.

When you chose a budget in Planning > Budgets, you can elect to work with the "current budget" or the "historical budget".

When you have the "current budget" selected, and you are working in the "Advanced Budget", January is January of this year (regardless of what the display says). Even though the display shows January in the "future" and labels it "2013 January", it is for January 2012. You can change the amount for "2013 January", then run a year-to-date Budget Report and see that the new budget amount you entered is displayed for January 2012. [It would be nice to have this display improved, but I wouldn't count on it for Q2012; I understand more significant changes may come in Q2013.]

If you choose the "historical budget", then modify the value for January

2013 ... that amount will apply to January 2013.

To choose the "current" or "historical" budgets, you need to select a previous month on the first "budget" screen in Planning > Budgets (that screen is basically the old Spending Planner, come back to life). Then a new dropdown list appears to the right of the month, from which you can select "Use current budget" or "Use historical budget".

Reply to
John Pollard

Stick to Quicken 2011 The new budget tool is nonsense.

Reply to
Steve JORDI

Thanks for the explanation, John. Even though I'm a heavy user of Quicken's budget feature, I had no idea just how complicated this is.

I'm running QD2012 R5, and there's no update available beyond that. What is this R6 and R7? I just went to Intuit's manual update page, and the latest version is R5.

Anyway, I recently found a "bug" in R5's budget. I'm using the current budget. I didn't notice this bug till I ran a budget report.

As long as I use average amounts, expenses show as debits in the budget report. But if I use any "specific" expense amounts, those amounts show as a negative amount ("income") in the budget report, and this throws everything off. I haven't investigated further to see if income "specific" amounts show as a negative amount (and thus an "expense") in the budget report.

Frankly I wish Quicken provided the option of using the older "fixed" budget or the new "rolling" budget. ...And I'll have to re-read your explanation more thoroughly to help me better understand the new budget feature and get more accurate results when I run budget reports! :-)

Thank you!

Margaret

Reply to
Margaret

"Margaret" wrote

I'm running QD2012 R5, and there's no update available beyond that. What is this R6 and R7? I just went to Intuit's manual update page, and the latest version is R5.

Anyway, I recently found a "bug" in R5's budget. I'm using the current budget. I didn't notice this bug till I ran a budget report.

As long as I use average amounts, expenses show as debits in the budget report. But if I use any "specific" expense amounts, those amounts show as a negative amount ("income") in the budget report, and this throws everything off. I haven't investigated further to see if income "specific" amounts show as a negative amount (and thus an "expense") in the budget report.

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R6 for Q2012 is a manual patch only; not available as a download while running Quicken.

Here's a link to an explanation, which contains a link to the manual download.

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Q2012 negative budget amounts is a known problem. I don't recall if it was fixed with R6 or not. If the problem wasn't introduced by R5, then R6 almost certainly won't fix it.

R7 is due out later this month, if no problems delay it.

Reply to
John Pollard

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Thanks John! For some reason, I missed the announcement of this patch. Actually the notes for R6 say it fixes this very issue!

"Fixed: Resolved an issue where editing a budget amount for a category set to "Specific" would miscalculate your totals by subtracting the amount. For users who ran into this problem - the update will be fix the incorrect amount."

Thanks!!

Margaret

Reply to
Margaret

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