quicken question

[livingalmostlarge]

How do you guys get quick to reconcile your spending? Is it better than mint? or Personal capital?

I find it a pain with the reconciling CC payments and downloading all CC statements.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

DW gets on a tablet/laptop and reads me summary data from the CC statements. I type the summary data in and like magic it agrees. Takes less than one minute per statement. So we can do one year of bank and CC statements in less than an hour. Since we download data into Quicken, we rarely have an outage. Most are timing differences where the cc charge came to Quicken as a last day of the statement transaction, but the statement shows it as the first day of the next month's statement. Again this is rare. Overall, pretty painless.

 

[Kings over Queens]

We use an excel worksheet.

All receipts are categorized and proved to the credit card statement. Those amounts are entered into quickbooks when we create the payment. Each amount has its own account, and my chart of accounts includes Food, Gas, Medical Bills (HSA/Non-HSA), Housewares (consumables) gifts, house maintenance, insurances, personal expenses. My wife made me add a booze account during covid. Things kinda got outta hand. There are other accounts as well.

I'm a bit nuts with quickbooks and run my house expenses like I did when I owned a business. It's a bit OCD but has served me well. We review P&L and Balance Sheet quarterly.

This is all done manually. I don't download any statements or banking transactions into quickbooks. I'm still using an older version resident on my PC. I'd probably have to start paying for a subscription for on-line service, but this works pretty well.

 

[SecondCor521]

I pay for a Quicken Deluxe subscription and use One Step Update and Password Vault. I type in one password, and in theory, it downloads all of my information for all of my accounts. I download and accept transactions every few days. I reconcile every so often (maybe once every few months on each account), either to the statement balance or to the online balance, whichever I feel like.

It's pretty seamless. There are some accounts that don't work in One Step Update very well and some that don't support Quicken at all (like the 529s).

I reconcile all accounts to the penny at the end of each year, which catches any small errors that might have crept in.

Works well enough for me to not mess with Mint or PC. I've heard more negative comments about Mint and PC than about Quicken. But I've also used Quicken for close to 30 years, so I'm probably set in my ways that way.

 

[Montecfo]

How do you guys get quick to reconcile your spending? Is it better than mint? or Personal capital?



I find it a pain with the reconciling CC payments and downloading all CC statements.

I download them. It is a bit of a pain, but much easier than pre-Quicken.

And I have never found an alternative to doing so. But, you could download and not worry about coding, or do coding by vendor.

Of course lots of folks do none of this. But I think a larger proportion of us here use Quicken or some similar approach to have a really good handle on spending than do so in the population at large.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

What I do not do is use it to track investments or put records in the cloud. I do not find I need to track investments in that detail or duplicate what I can get from my broker.

But many folks here do. No issue with that.

 

[Gryphon]

I reconcile all accounts against statements every month. It is a bit of a hassle, I made it a bit easier by setting all my credit cards to issue statements the first few days of the month. That way by the 4th or 5th I can download all the statements, reconcile everything, pay the credit cards, and then I'm done with all that until next month.

 

[pb4uski]

I pay for a Quicken Deluxe subscription and use One Step Update and Password Vault. I type in one password, and in theory, it downloads all of my information for all of my accounts. I download and accept transactions every few days. I reconcile every so often (maybe once every few months on each account), either to the statement balance or to the online balance, whichever I feel like.

It's pretty seamless. There are some accounts that don't work in One Step Update very well and some that don't support Quicken at all (like the 529s).

I reconcile all accounts to the penny at the end of each year, which catches any small errors that might have crept in.

Works well enough for me to not mess with Mint or PC. I've heard more negative comments about Mint and PC than about Quicken. But I've also used Quicken for close to 30 years, so I'm probably set in my ways that way.

I could have written this. Virtually all financial accounts are linked to providers in Quicken. Periodically run One-Step Update, review and accept transactions. Reconcile every other month or so. 15 minutes a week.

 

[JBTX]

I could have written this. Virtually all financial accounts are linked to providers in Quicken. Periodically run One-Step Update, review and accept transactions. Reconcile every other month or so. 15 minutes a week.

What’s to reconcile? Quicken downloads the balance each time as well as the activity. As long as the quicken register balance equals the downloaded balance you are good to go.

Occasionally you get a variance because quicken sometimes mistakenly matches a downloaded transaction to a prior transaction of the same amount to the same vendor.

 

[SecondCor521]

What’s to reconcile?

Reconciliation, at least as I understand the term, means that I keep my transactions and account records, and the bank or investment firm keeps their records, and periodically I check theirs against mine to make sure they match, and investigating and resolving any differences. It's an old school way of doing things that was perhaps more useful when financial stuff was less automated and there were possibly more errors.

Yes, you can just trust whatever the bank or credit card company says, but mistakes still happen, and fraud still occurs. Mistakes and fraud are easier to catch if you do it the old school way.

It's debatable if the juice is worth the squeeze.

 

[pb4uski]

What’s to reconcile? Quicken downloads the balance each time as well as the activity. As long as the quicken register balance equals the downloaded balance you are good to go.

Occasionally you get a variance because quicken sometimes mistakenly matches a downloaded transaction to a prior transaction of the same amount to the same vendor.

Update works well but not perfectly and occasionally transactions are not imported. Most of the time it is selecting the Reconcile function, inputting the statement date and Quicken comes up with the transactions for that period, need to check transactions in the prior period that were not on the prior statement and uncheck transactions in this period that are not yet on the statement ( timing differences) and usually you are done. It often takes less than one minute to do a period, but if during that period Update had a glitch and failed to import one or more transactions then it takes a while. There is also a reconciliation function for brokerage settlement accounts within investments.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I do a one step update and reconcile at least once per day. It makes it easy to make sure the spending categories are correct and I figure I would catch any fraudulent transactions quickly. Only takes a minute or two and all accounts connect automagically except one 457, but I can d/l those few transactions in Quicken format. But I don’t take time to track cash very closely any more since cash is rarely used these days.

 

[JoeWras]

I enter everything manually. It is slow, but it reinforces to me all my interest/dividends and spending. I can keep a good finger on the pulse by doing it this way.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I do not do any reconciliation to my account statements. However, I generally download my transactions every day (except when out of town). And I sign into my online accounts every day. I look to make sure that all transactions in the online account match up to what is downloading. Since I do this daily, I don't feel the need to do any monthly statement reconciliation. Every transaction in Quicken gets looked at to make sure it's assigned to the right expense/income category. This means my overall spending is nicely categorized and viewable in the charts and graphs that Quicken provides.

This is just part of my morning routine and has been for many, many years.

 

[sengsational]

Nowadays I transact a lot of stuff while I'm at my desk, so enter the transaction right then. I also take the opportunity to do a screenshot or two, which I have automated. That makes it easy to look up the deal I was seeing before committing. And I still collect paper receipts when out, and enter them when the statement comes. I press the reconcile button and it usually takes just a minute to tick off each. Juice ain't worth the squeeze if you don't like to fiddle with stuff like this, but I like the ability to search and report on random stuff.

 

[Montecfo]

I do not do any reconciliation to my account statements. However, I generally download my transactions every day (except when out of town). And I sign into my online accounts every day. I look to make sure that all transactions in the online account match up to what is downloading. Since I do this daily, I don't feel the need to do any monthly statement reconciliation. Every transaction in Quicken gets looked at to make sure it's assigned to the right expense/income category. This means my overall spending is nicely categorized and viewable in the charts and graphs that Quicken provides.

This is just part of my morning routine and has been for many, many years.

Stated differently, you reconcile daily.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

Stated differently, you reconcile daily.

Correct. I never said I didn't reconcile. I said I don't reconcile to my monthly statements, which some people in previous posts were discussing they do.

 

[Montecfo]

Correct.

In my experience, anyone using quicken is going to need some method of dealing with differences in what statements say and what downloads.

Why? Because for a variety of reasons they will not always match.

 

[rk911]

How do you guys get quick to reconcile your spending? Is it better than mint? or Personal capital?

I find it a pain with the reconciling CC payments and downloading all CC statements.

We have three CCs. I enter all CC transactions into Quicken as they occur. Along with our bank accounts we get instant notification by text and e-mail for any CC activity greater than $0. Each morning when I log in to check email I mark each tranaction in Quicken with a 'C' (cleared) for which there is an email alert.

When we get the monthly CC statements it takes just a few moments to enter the spending total, previous payment and new balance data into the Quicken reconcile window. Since all of the transactions on the statement are already marked as cleared in Quicken more often than not the reconciled balance differnce = $0. Occasionally I have to unmark a few transactions in the reconcile window but that's NBD.

But I 'm not really 'saving' any time. I'm just time-shifting the work involved.

 

[SecondAttempt]

I pay for a Quicken Deluxe subscription and use One Step Update and Password Vault. I type in one password, and in theory, it downloads all of my information for all of my accounts. I download and accept transactions every few days. I reconcile every so often (maybe once every few months on each account), either to the statement balance or to the online balance, whichever I feel like.

It's pretty seamless. There are some accounts that don't work in One Step Update very well and some that don't support Quicken at all (like the 529s).

I reconcile all accounts to the penny at the end of each year, which catches any small errors that might have crept in.

Works well enough for me to not mess with Mint or PC. I've heard more negative comments about Mint and PC than about Quicken. But I've also used Quicken for close to 30 years, so I'm probably set in my ways that way.

Couldn't agree more. I will say that they are making security enhancements recently, probably driven by the banks, that have led to annoyances like having to move thousands of transactions to new quicken accounts, losing accounts, and so forth. Cost me hours of time but not the end of the world.

I've had occasional instances where a transaction is set to the wrong account but very rare (maybe 1 in 1000). I have Quicken premium, just renewed and considered going to deluxe to save a few $ but could not figure out if it would do what I need. (That's a bad thing!)

 

[retire48in2018]

I use Fidelity Full View - Spending

It downloads and categorizes according to its own algorithm, but I add/change rules to personalize the categories. From what I’ve been told it’s similar to Quicken.

Lots of charts, and other options within Fidelity Full View.

I choose to then download that transactions (csv) into a spreadsheet and with a pivot chart - organized by month and category - compare to budget. There’s a budget spending category within Fidelity that I’ve chosen to not use/explore.

I’ve kept my own spreadsheet and categories for many years. I used to have to download from financial institutions and then categorize myself, with Fidelity tool - that’s done. After a couple months, mostly all categories are right as I want them. Every now and then, I create a new rule.

I do monthly reviews (including comparing to budget in spreadsheet) in few minutes. Wife and I review to see if we need to react to how things are going.

Setting up annual budget takes about 20 minutes each year / changing pivot chart - deciding on new budget amounts, etc - and discuss with wife.

As a note - fidelity full view does not allow you to change categories when transaction is still pending. Takes my bank a couple days after month end to convert frown pending to finalizing. I therefore wait until 3rd or 4th business day after month end to do review.

Fidelity full view keeps transactions for a long time -much longer than banks allow transaction look up. I have spreadsheets by year. So, if I want to look at spending over years - fidelity tool is nice.

Also - It’s Free.