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Subject Author Date
Recurring vs. Schedule - Can someone explain? Colm 06-14-2006
Posted by Colm on June 14, 2006, 9:43 pm
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 Hi there!

What I'm trying to do is figure out what are my monthly recurring
expenses.
E.,g. rent, water etc.
I'd like to just be able to mark certain payees as recurring so I can
report on them.

Quicken has the scheduled transactions feature which I don't like
using. One reason I don't like using it is that it sticks these
reminders as scheduled transactions and forces you to take action on
them. Why do I need that when my water bill has already arrived and has
enetered into my register? Then it makes you click 'skip' for each one
and it takes ages because I have a backlog. And you can't just select
the lot of them and click delete or skip up until today.

So I don't want to be reminded like that, I just want to tag certain
payees as recurring so I can get a quick snapshot of what my monthly
outgoing is.
E.g I get a water bill every month.
I would like to mark the water company as a recurring biller so that I
can view it with all my other recurring bills.

Any ideas r?


Posted by JM on June 15, 2006, 1:44 pm
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Colm wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> What I'm trying to do is figure out what are my monthly recurring
> expenses.
> E.,g. rent, water etc.
> I'd like to just be able to mark certain payees as recurring so I can
> report on them.
>
> Quicken has the scheduled transactions feature which I don't like
> using. One reason I don't like using it is that it sticks these
> reminders as scheduled transactions and forces you to take action on
> them. Why do I need that when my water bill has already arrived and has
> enetered into my register? Then it makes you click 'skip' for each one
> and it takes ages because I have a backlog. And you can't just select
> the lot of them and click delete or skip up until today.
>
> So I don't want to be reminded like that, I just want to tag certain
> payees as recurring so I can get a quick snapshot of what my monthly
> outgoing is.
> E.g I get a water bill every month.
> I would like to mark the water company as a recurring biller so that I
> can view it with all my other recurring bills.
>
> Any ideas r?

Do not know of any way to 'flag' future transactions and generate a
report. However, let me describe what I do to accomplish what I think
you are lookinf for - a look ahead for the month.

I have each of my regular income/expense items for my checking account
set up as a scheduled transaction; each with its' normal payment date.
This includes all regular monthly activity as well as quarterly &
annual items [water monthly, auto insurance quarterly, vehicle
registration annually, etc].

Setting the amount for 'fixed cost' items is obviously easy - e.g.,
cable TV monthly charge is fixed [until they change/raise it :<(]
For the variable items [e.g., electricity] I typically use the option
to estimate the amount from the last three payments.

I then tell QW to automatically enter each scheduled transaction into
the register 'x' days in advance so that all transactions are entered
on the first of each month. E.g., mortgage payment normally paid on
25th, so I tell QW to enter it 24 days in advance; water is normally
paid on the 10th and transaction is entered 9 days in advance.

Thus on the first of each month I have a 'rough' look forward as to
cash balance in my checking account. As bills come in for the variable
cost items, I simply edit/enter the amount in the register transaction
to refine the forward estimate. I may also edit the payment date if the
'normal' date is not a business day.

I do not ever have to manually enter any 'regular' transactions in the
register - only edit the amount and/or date as necessary.
I also get a 'heads-up' if I'm running a little tight at some point
during the month - do I need to anticipate a transfer from savings to
cover a short-fall. Or conversly, can I anticipate a surplus available
for transfer to savings.

This is a system that has evolved over years of use - it accomplishes
what I want. Perhaps some aspects of this will be useful to you.


Posted by Oilcan on June 15, 2006, 9:31 pm
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I like this idea. Thanks for sharing.

JM wrote:
> Colm wrote:
> > Hi there!
> >
> > What I'm trying to do is figure out what are my monthly recurring
> > expenses.
> > E.,g. rent, water etc.
> > I'd like to just be able to mark certain payees as recurring so I can
> > report on them.
> >
> > Quicken has the scheduled transactions feature which I don't like
> > using. One reason I don't like using it is that it sticks these
> > reminders as scheduled transactions and forces you to take action on
> > them. Why do I need that when my water bill has already arrived and has
> > enetered into my register? Then it makes you click 'skip' for each one
> > and it takes ages because I have a backlog. And you can't just select
> > the lot of them and click delete or skip up until today.
> >
> > So I don't want to be reminded like that, I just want to tag certain
> > payees as recurring so I can get a quick snapshot of what my monthly
> > outgoing is.
> > E.g I get a water bill every month.
> > I would like to mark the water company as a recurring biller so that I
> > can view it with all my other recurring bills.
> >
> > Any ideas r?
>
> Do not know of any way to 'flag' future transactions and generate a
> report. However, let me describe what I do to accomplish what I think
> you are lookinf for - a look ahead for the month.
>
> I have each of my regular income/expense items for my checking account
> set up as a scheduled transaction; each with its' normal payment date.
> This includes all regular monthly activity as well as quarterly &
> annual items [water monthly, auto insurance quarterly, vehicle
> registration annually, etc].
>
> Setting the amount for 'fixed cost' items is obviously easy - e.g.,
> cable TV monthly charge is fixed [until they change/raise it :<(]
> For the variable items [e.g., electricity] I typically use the option
> to estimate the amount from the last three payments.
>
> I then tell QW to automatically enter each scheduled transaction into
> the register 'x' days in advance so that all transactions are entered
> on the first of each month. E.g., mortgage payment normally paid on
> 25th, so I tell QW to enter it 24 days in advance; water is normally
> paid on the 10th and transaction is entered 9 days in advance.
>
> Thus on the first of each month I have a 'rough' look forward as to
> cash balance in my checking account. As bills come in for the variable
> cost items, I simply edit/enter the amount in the register transaction
> to refine the forward estimate. I may also edit the payment date if the
> 'normal' date is not a business day.
>
> I do not ever have to manually enter any 'regular' transactions in the
> register - only edit the amount and/or date as necessary.
> I also get a 'heads-up' if I'm running a little tight at some point
> during the month - do I need to anticipate a transfer from savings to
> cover a short-fall. Or conversly, can I anticipate a surplus available
> for transfer to savings.
>
> This is a system that has evolved over years of use - it accomplishes
> what I want. Perhaps some aspects of this will be useful to you.


Posted by Bernie on June 16, 2006, 12:28 am
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On 6/14/2006 8:43 PM, Colm wrote:
> Hi there!
>
> What I'm trying to do is figure out what are my monthly recurring
> expenses.
> E.,g. rent, water etc.
> I'd like to just be able to mark certain payees as recurring so I can
> report on them.
>
> Quicken has the scheduled transactions feature which I don't like
> using. One reason I don't like using it is that it sticks these
> reminders as scheduled transactions and forces you to take action on
> them. Why do I need that when my water bill has already arrived and has
> enetered into my register? Then it makes you click 'skip' for each one
> and it takes ages because I have a backlog. And you can't just select
> the lot of them and click delete or skip up until today.
>
> So I don't want to be reminded like that, I just want to tag certain
> payees as recurring so I can get a quick snapshot of what my monthly
> outgoing is.
> E.g I get a water bill every month.
> I would like to mark the water company as a recurring biller so that I
> can view it with all my other recurring bills.
>
> Any ideas r?
>
I'm not sure why scheduled transactions isn't doing what you want, so
let me explain what I do and how it works for me and see if that helps.

I have all of our recurring payments and income in Quicken as scheduled
transactions. For those that are the same amount each month I have them
set up to be entered automatically on their due dates. For those that
vary, I have them set up to estimate the amount based on the last three
transactions.

I have my Quicken Home tab set so that it shows a monthly graph of my
checking accounts and savings accounts. The graph Quicken displays is a
stacked bar graph, so it is also showing me the total cash I have
available day by day throughout the month. I think that is what you
were looking for.

When a bill does come in for a scheduled, variable payment item, I do
one of two things. I may enter it in the appropriate check or credit
card register and Quicken asks me if this is the payment that was
scheduled and I click Yes. Other times I'll just go to the scheduled
payment list and press enter and fill in the current amount.

Hope that helps.
Bernie

Posted by Colm on June 16, 2006, 11:52 am
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Thanks for all your thoughtful replies.
I guess I will have to learn to love scheduled transactions. I reset my
recurring payments so they automatically are entered into my register.
That way they don't build up as reminders.


Bernie wrote:
> On 6/14/2006 8:43 PM, Colm wrote:
> > Hi there!
> >
> > What I'm trying to do is figure out what are my monthly recurring
> > expenses.
> > E.,g. rent, water etc.
> > I'd like to just be able to mark certain payees as recurring so I can
> > report on them.
> >
> > Quicken has the scheduled transactions feature which I don't like
> > using. One reason I don't like using it is that it sticks these
> > reminders as scheduled transactions and forces you to take action on
> > them. Why do I need that when my water bill has already arrived and has
> > enetered into my register? Then it makes you click 'skip' for each one
> > and it takes ages because I have a backlog. And you can't just select
> > the lot of them and click delete or skip up until today.
> >
> > So I don't want to be reminded like that, I just want to tag certain
> > payees as recurring so I can get a quick snapshot of what my monthly
> > outgoing is.
> > E.g I get a water bill every month.
> > I would like to mark the water company as a recurring biller so that I
> > can view it with all my other recurring bills.
> >
> > Any ideas r?
> >
> I'm not sure why scheduled transactions isn't doing what you want, so
> let me explain what I do and how it works for me and see if that helps.
>
> I have all of our recurring payments and income in Quicken as scheduled
> transactions. For those that are the same amount each month I have them
> set up to be entered automatically on their due dates. For those that
> vary, I have them set up to estimate the amount based on the last three
> transactions.
>
> I have my Quicken Home tab set so that it shows a monthly graph of my
> checking accounts and savings accounts. The graph Quicken displays is a
> stacked bar graph, so it is also showing me the total cash I have
> available day by day throughout the month. I think that is what you
> were looking for.
>
> When a bill does come in for a scheduled, variable payment item, I do
> one of two things. I may enter it in the appropriate check or credit
> card register and Quicken asks me if this is the payment that was
> scheduled and I click Yes. Other times I'll just go to the scheduled
> payment list and press enter and fill in the current amount.
>
> Hope that helps.
> Bernie


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