Quicken for Mac 2016 Release 3.5.2 Discussion

Unknown

susanwerby said:

Since updating my Mac Quicken to 3.5.2 I also have had hidden accounts of yesteryear reappear. I resolved that but the worst situation is not being able to access old transactions on some of my checking accounts any further back than July 2016. One is a business account and I shall not be able to have an end-of-the-year report to help me with my taxes.

Other accounts retained all the transactions from the very beginning of time. I tried downloading again and again to no avail. It makes no sense to me. HELP!!!

Susan, given all the issues that are experienced it is a very good idea to back up often and before you make an upgrade.  That way you can reinstall the previous version if necessary and import your data again.  I don't trust the Quicken stability so I back up every reconciliation so I always have a starting point of the latest balanced reconciliation to fall back on. Personally, I will not do anything online through Quicken so I can't share those kind of problems but I wish you all the Luck!

Concordman

Have used the reconcile feature just recently; All worked well with the on line reconcile. However a few wks later I did the manual reconcile with my bank statement. Was off by a dollar amount familiar to one of my payees..I just did the reconcile adjustment tho add the dollars back into my account..Will see how it works when I get my EOM statement for September.

Unknown

I am on 3.4.1 & am, for now, "refusing" the 3.5.2 update..  Am just checking back here periodically waiting for an update with better news - think that's a sound idea? (I have 2 dozen accounts including bank, credit cards & investments & all seems well for now & - frankly - am not eager to update hearing all these horror stories)  

Unknown

Longtime user, first time caller...

I have been a longtime user of Quicken, always on a Mac. So even before this latest incarnation, Quicken for Mac xxxx. Have been through the ups and downs, but have never seen anything like this 3.5.2 release.

The first thing that I noticed were all these accounts appearing on the sidebar that were supposed to be hidden. OK, so I go back and go through all of them to make them hidden properly. Maybe some sort of sync issue? I dunno, but things might be back to normal.

Oh and they changed reconcile. Takes a few uses to see what's what, but OK, maybe someone thought this would be better. Me personally, meh. But it does work, so no harm, no foul.

But wait, there are two credit card accounts under a single login that now won't download. Wants to know if I changed something-I hadn't. The error says ACCOUNT NOT FOUND (FAILED USER_ACCOUNT_CANCELLED). Gee, it was working a few days ago. So I fill out the error report thing that sends an email. I guess it goes to a blackhole because I never even get an acknowledgement that I sent them something.

Since there are two cards, I try turning off connector one of them, thinking I could reset things that way. No such luck. No matter what I do, I can't get it to download anything for that login. My other login at Chase, with two other cards, seems to be fine. Maybe the don't like two different logins at Chase, but one's for me and the other's for my SO. Like I said, always worked before.

Additionally, I have an account that's been inactive and hidden for years at a credit union. There are two accounts there, too, a savings and a LOC. When I try to reconcile with the CU, even though I hide the LOC, a ACCOUNT SYNC ERROR appears, and the account shows up in the sidebar. This is labeled a GENERIC ERROR. Says I should try again, or submit another useless error report.

SO, anyway, just found this forum and thought I'd add my two cents. Sounds like others have had similar problems with 3,5,2. I realize, much like the error reports, this isn't going to get me anywhere, and it seems I should try support, probably over the phone. Also from reading here, I don't think they'll fix anything. Maybe if they get enough complaints these issues might be resolved in the next version. Or the one after that. Or not.

Unknown

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

The reconciliation part I actually "get" - coming from Quicken Mac 2005 - It's the rest of it that scares me.  I DO download transactions from my bank & everything works  at present with 3.4.1  (given I know how to deal with it's quirks)

RickO

John Parker said:

I am on 3.4.1 & am, for now, "refusing" the 3.5.2 update..  Am just checking back here periodically waiting for an update with better news - think that's a sound idea? (I have 2 dozen accounts including bank, credit cards & investments & all seems well for now & - frankly - am not eager to update hearing all these horror stories)  

That's my plan too. And I've already saved a compressed archive of 3.4.1 so I can revert if needed.

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

If your comfortable with how things are working, don't upgrade it's not worth it unless there is a major upgrade you just have to have.  I used 2007 for 9 years and didn't realize it would still work even on the latest IMAC or I would of just stayed with it.  Not into the Quicken online.  I go directly to my bank online to do my business and use Quicken for my tracking which I enter manually more secure and less headaches.  I will never put all my eggs in one basket. Besides I believe in keeping track of my finances not just downloading what the bank says and reconciling the two as intended to find any discrepancies by the bank unless you believe they never make any (I have found it to happen).  

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

I would very much like some of the "improvements" - AND am actually a fan of the new (old) reconciliation method - but am very willing to wait for both until the other negative issues mentioned here are better rectified. 

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

Not so. I only download transactions from my bank and then reconcile to the statement. In most cases, I delete the duplicate transactions created by Quicken which mirror those transactions repeated from my payment schedule. And before 3.5.1, everything was fine. 3.5.1 was followed quickly by 3.5.2, and chaos has reigned since. Quicken suddenly shows old transactions ( some as old as 15 years), in some cases changes offsetting transactions between accounts. Okay, so I switch back to 3.4.1; but the Finances files won't open. I get a message saying this file hasn't been opened since 2014, but I used it last week. After all the nonsense so far, I didn't dare open it lest I lose everything. At this point, I've gone back and started to reconcile my accounts. So far the reconciliations don't start with the last statement balance, but a mysterious balance apparently consisting of "missed", "hidden", or "duplicate" transactions. The first account I attempted to reconcile after the upgrade had an initial balance that didn't reflect the previous balance and had several old transactions. I noted a handful of older transactions which I didn't recognize. Thinking they were duplicates, I deleted them. BIG MISTAKE!! As a result, I'm in reconciliation limbo: not knowing whether to trust Quicken or not. Right now I don't.

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

To Steven,
From when I first updated to  2016/ 3.4.1 from 2007 the first thing I noticed in reference to the reconciliation process is it didn't display the prior months outstanding transactions and I complained about it.  I had to go back into the register to find those transactions and check them off in the register as they cleared on this months statement in order to balance as it should which was bazar.  I believe this was responsible for some of the recon's imbalances people had experienced that they adjusted off and now is haunting them.  The fix they did to correct and show the prior outstanding transactions along with the current transactions was needed.  Not everything clears in the same month from the date of disbursement and  statement closing dates are different for everyone. The other imbalances people are experiencing has to due with the way they now calculate your beginning balance to begin the reconciliation I understand-I am not experiencing that problem either. It appears it is causing things to surface that need addressing apparently, as I understand it and not related to the pulling of transactions by date range into the recon screen re "Old" transactions.  It may actually help people find their issues if it is due to an outstanding item they never matched off and or duplicate transactions.  I must say once I got my import of 9 yrs imported successfully into 2016, I made sure I always balanced or find out why and fix it.....I never do an adjustment and have the problem flow into future months. That logic has served me well even though sometimes I have to start the recon all over from scratch to get it right. 

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

John, the one thing that was a big improvement is the reconcile screen now shows the old outstanding transactions you did not see before "outstanding" or items not cleared if you reconcile by "Bank Statement" and may help spot download duplicates.   I think most issues have to do with "online" reconciliations/downloads etc. 

P.S Keeping accurate bank records means documenting all disbursements not just downloading the ones that hit the bank......that will never give you an accurate today balance in your register so you know what available funds you have to spend.

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled QMac 2016 (3.5.2): Cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken when reconciling.....


This is an Intuit bug and it should be fixed ASAP. At the present time, I cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken for Mac 2016, Ver.3.5.2. The starting balance is way off even though last month I was able to reconcile with the appropriate number and accuracy. It happened with both checking and credit card accounts. I refuse to allow Quicken to make an "adjustment entry" since the problem is on Intuit end. This started to happened after the last update. Come on Intuit, you can do better than that.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: QWin 2016: Trouble Reconciling my accounts.

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled QMac 2016 (3.5.2): Cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken when reconciling.....


This is an Intuit bug and it should be fixed ASAP. At the present time, I cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken for Mac 2016, Ver.3.5.2. The starting balance is way off even though last month I was able to reconcile with the appropriate number and accuracy. It happened with both checking and credit card accounts. I refuse to allow Quicken to make an "adjustment entry" since the problem is on Intuit end. This started to happened after the last update. Come on Intuit, you can do better than that.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: QWin 2016: Trouble Reconciling my accounts.

Unknown

Test reply to Serge

smayer97

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Reply #1.


This does not answer your question but I just wanted to point out that since Apr 2016, Quicken is no longer part of Intuit.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: QMac 2016 (3.5.2): Cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken when reconciling.....

Unknown

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Reply #2.


Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps it is part of the problem but I would assume that solutions could be found quickly by the new "owners".

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: QMac 2016 (3.5.2): Cannot trust the numbers provided by Quicken when reconciling.....

Unknown

Bob Harris said:

When will it be out? Will it let us set the prior balance in the window to agree with our calculated balance for Reconciling? That's the dilemma for me. My balance was always perfect til 3.51 which created a balance I couldn't change

I have had a great experience with a customer service agent when installing and reconciling Quicken 2016 (MAC).  However, I ran into some problems wit on line balance and ledger balances did not match.  After server long calls with other service people than went from bad to worse.  I am so messed up now I in despair.  If only I could get the person that I first spoke to or you spoke to!!!!!!!

Unknown

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

jacobs

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

Pretty much the entire Quicken team came over intact in the separation from Intuit.


Back to @serge's comment: from all the from Haitian I have seen, the problems people are having with reconciliation is NOT due to a bug in the program, but to older issues in the data file. Reconciliation in the previous versions may have worked fine because you were entering a starting balance value; however, now Quicken is calculating the starting balance by adding up all the reconciled transactions since the beginning of the account, and some people are finding that value is off from their bank or credit card statement. The problem turns out to be older transactions which were duplicates, or adjustments made (manually or by the program) to force a correct balance, or old unreconciled transactions. It may or may not be easy to find those discrepancies in your accounts, but that is almost certainly where the problem lies.

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

I appreciated this user forum trying to address the issues all Quicken users face with the program. Being a Quicken and Quickbook user since its inception, I have a fair amount of experience with both programs and all the bumps and problems that came along the way. While I could write endless comments, I prefer addressing the main concerns of the program's current failure to assist its users manage their individual and commercial finance flawlessly. Like many other users, I spent countless frustrating hours on the phone or the chat line trying to identify where the existing or new problems were coming from. I am keeping my financial data in Quicken that include crucial information for long-term planning and financial components related to investments and properties and I wonder now if such information will not be false or missing important components. At the end of the day, Quicken is supposed to make our financial management life simpler, not more complicated and unsure.

Back to the reconciliation issue, one of the account is a fairly recent credit card which allowed me to go back to each transaction for a full year period. Nothing was duplicated, nothing was missing and each transaction could be traced to the bank statement. How can we explain then why Quicken is asking me to make an adjustment entry to match my bank and Quicken balance statement? By the way, I stopped using the download from the banking and investment institutions after the entries and balances on the accounts stopped matching the institution's entries and balances. Perhaps, the development team should use caution when releasing new updates and have some power users test each existing and new features to create detailed release notes to help the users with potential issues associated with the new release. You have what could be a super good program for Mac so it would be a shame to continue destroying the user's confidence and fidelity. Thanks for the feedback

smayer97

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

@Marcus, et al

All these problems with the new reconciliation process by auto-calculating the starting balance highlight how superior the way reconciliation is done in QM2007 and QWin. 

The process there does 2 things: allows users to enter a starting balance; tracks the reconciliation records for each period. There are many advantages to that approach:

• you can perform a reconciliation for any given period and it does not get interrupted with being forced to deal with discrepancies outside that period. Makes it purely independent and flexible
• the tracking mechanism identifies immediately where any past discrepancies exist, making it far easier to resolve any issues
• because of the independence of each period, a user can ignore past discrepancies and choose to deal with them at a later time when it may be more convenient, without preventing them from moving forward.
• Other advantages include the ability to re-reconcile a period (I and many other users have noted the need to do this for various reasons), which is virtually impossible to do in the current model

Also, when there is a change in such a fundamental process, why force the user into the new process at the exclusion of the old? At the very least, allow the option for the user to use one or the other. Though such a new process may have been requested by some users, there are often situations that are not accounted for when redesigning such a process and that is when you see a lot of grief from users, which then creates a LOT of extra churn and frustration for all (users, community support and Quicken alike). It does not seem to be a very wise approach. Please seriously reconsider.

jacobs

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

Well, for those of us who spend a lot of time in this forum, let's remember that there were a LOT of users who complained and and were confused by the previous Quicken 2015/2016 reconcile procedure. (And not surprisingly, as it was flawed.) The change the development team made was in response to there being so many support requests and cries of frustration -- they were trying to make things better. In the process, they solved problems for some people, but unearthed problems for others for whom the old reconcile process was working (even though they had errors in their past data that they weren't aware of). And I'd guess that they didn't realize how many people would run into these problems due to previous duplicate downloaded transactions and/or placeholder adjustments. I'd be curious how well the new process would work going forward if everyone was able to magically reconcile their past data; I suspect it would work quite well for most people.

(I'm not disagreeing with your post, @smayer97. The reconcile process in Quicken 2007 has always worked great for me, and I've never used Quicken Windows. I'm just trying to add the perspective that the development team was trying to address an area that users repeatedly said was problematic -- this was definitely a user-driven change -- but in doing so, they plugged on hole but opened another.)

M C Crockett

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

@smayer97:

While you may be correct about how QM2007 performs reconciliation, you need to explicitly identify the version(s) of QWIN that you are referencing.  Due to missing support for common, basic investment transactions in QM2016, I continue to use Quicken Premier (QW2016) as my "production" version of Quicken.

I can assure you that QM2016 3.5.2 does perform reconciliation in the same manner as QW2016.  I can't recall whether the new reconciliation method was introduced in QW2015 or Qw2016 but think it was the latter.

There are several significant differences between the QM2016 and QW2016 products.  QW2016 does not support reconciling investment accounts to an online statement as does QM2016.  In QW2016 you must reconcile investment accounts to a paper statement from your financial institution.

Another difference between the products involves the "Clr" column.  QM2016 only sets the "Clr" column to "cleared" when downloading investment transactions that are of Type, Payment/Deposit.  QW2016 sets the "Clr" column to "cleared" for all downloaded investment transactions.

Another difference is the ability to manually manipulate the "Clr" column.  QW2016 allows you to manually change the "Clr" column on transactions in banking and credit card accounts but not investment accounts.  QM2016 allows you to change the "Clr" column for transactions in all types of accounts.

In accounts that support reconciling to an online balance, both QM2016 and QW2016  report the summation of the reconciled transactions as the prior balance when you start to reconcile.  This may not be the ending balance from your last reconciliation should any of your previously reconciled transactions have been changed to cleared or uncleared or if erroneous entries were created during a file conversion.

Another common flaw is that neither QM2016 or QW2016 will report a negative balance in any account being reconciled.  There is a tacit assumption in both products that account balances must be positive.  This is, perhaps, a relatively safe assumption for banking accounts.  This is not a safe assumption for investment accounts.  As an example, my brokerage does not dynamically create a margin account in Quicken when I purchase securities on margin.  It decrements my cash balance by the amount that I borrowed on margin leaving a negative cash balance.

One notable difference between QM2016 and QW2016 is that the latter appears to keep track of its notion of the current online balance.  As a test, I changed one previously reconciled transaction to cleared and another to uncleared.  I then initiated the reconciliation process.  The starting balance reported for using a paper statement was adjusted for the transactions that were no longer reconciled.  For reconciling the online balance, QW2016 reported the current register balance.

Next, I created a $10,000 withdrawal that occurred on 07 September 2015.  This was large enough for the balance in the register to always be negative for the last 12 months.  The starting balance for reconciling to a paper statement still showed the correct amount for the transactions that had been reconciled.  The online balance reported did not change as a result of the withdrawal.

So, there are subtle reconciliation differences between QM2016 and QW2016.  Somewhere in its database QW2016 maintains its notion of what the current online balance should be and always displays it as the online balance.  In contrast to this QM2016 displays the online balance as the register balance preceding the transaction that caused the register balance to become negative.

After several attempts, I did get QW2016 to report a negative value for the prior balance when reconciling to a paper statement.  I have not been able to do this in QM2016.

So except for the items that I've indicated above, the QM2016 and QW2016 reconciliation methods are the same.

I've never used QM2007 and at the time that I had considered migrating to it, Intuit had stopped selling the product plus the changes that Intuit's knowledge article indicated I would need to make to my QWIN data scared the heck out of me and would have taken months to accomplish at the time.

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

This is one very good argument why Quicken needs to bring back the ability to see your "History" of reconciliations like in version 2007 by beginning balance date and ending bank balance date along with the reconciliation difference hopefully zero but where discrepancies in the balancing of any given monthly cycle are documented and the users to bring it up and go back and re-reconcile (should identify if adjustment entries were made too) .  These are tools users definitely need to see where they had issues like right now.  I sometimes think Quicken should put 2007 on a PC and analyze it's design and functionality since it was a master product that people to this day still are devoted to using. I can't remember ever having any issues, calling support or on a forum in the 9 years I used it.  Actually, I still have it on my other computer. I believe the adjustment entry was really intended for minor adjustments like a few cent or so to alleviate having to spent a lot of time finding the minor discrepancy, I'd rather find the few cents but I do remember I used it to correct .02 one time.  So far I don't see any tools or help offered to help these people being told they have ghosts haunting them, but to go back to where no one knows and find the needle in the haystack.  I have one suggestion, do a "search" for any adjusting entries (how ever Quicken labels them in your register because there should be an entry in the register;  I hope and not hidden) and find out when that adjustment was for and get out the corresponding bank statement to review that monthly activity for a place to start. Duplicates you might of missed during a download, should be together by date and easy to spot. Then there's the credit card account side I don't use that users are having difficulty balancing too and need some help. Some people are having trouble with the credit card reconciliation process since the upgrade too. 

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

I was a user of QM2007 and each new successive month of a reconciliation Quicken entered the starting balance which was the previous months ending balance and date, then you entered the ending bank statement ending balance and date.  It did not allow you finish a recon without being balanced to zero.  If you were able to remove the default entries in the beginning balance, I am not aware of this as I believe you truly are not balanced unless each previous month was balanced too so the figure coming forward should not need tweeking. This is accounting and you either do it right or it has no integrity.

Unknown

MeanGene said:

Longtime user, first time caller...

I have been a longtime user of Quicken, always on a Mac. So even before this latest incarnation, Quicken for Mac xxxx. Have been through the ups and downs, but have never seen anything like this 3.5.2 release.

The first thing that I noticed were all these accounts appearing on the sidebar that were supposed to be hidden. OK, so I go back and go through all of them to make them hidden properly. Maybe some sort of sync issue? I dunno, but things might be back to normal.

Oh and they changed reconcile. Takes a few uses to see what's what, but OK, maybe someone thought this would be better. Me personally, meh. But it does work, so no harm, no foul.

But wait, there are two credit card accounts under a single login that now won't download. Wants to know if I changed something-I hadn't. The error says ACCOUNT NOT FOUND (FAILED USER_ACCOUNT_CANCELLED). Gee, it was working a few days ago. So I fill out the error report thing that sends an email. I guess it goes to a blackhole because I never even get an acknowledgement that I sent them something.

Since there are two cards, I try turning off connector one of them, thinking I could reset things that way. No such luck. No matter what I do, I can't get it to download anything for that login. My other login at Chase, with two other cards, seems to be fine. Maybe the don't like two different logins at Chase, but one's for me and the other's for my SO. Like I said, always worked before.

Additionally, I have an account that's been inactive and hidden for years at a credit union. There are two accounts there, too, a savings and a LOC. When I try to reconcile with the CU, even though I hide the LOC, a ACCOUNT SYNC ERROR appears, and the account shows up in the sidebar. This is labeled a GENERIC ERROR. Says I should try again, or submit another useless error report.

SO, anyway, just found this forum and thought I'd add my two cents. Sounds like others have had similar problems with 3,5,2. I realize, much like the error reports, this isn't going to get me anywhere, and it seems I should try support, probably over the phone. Also from reading here, I don't think they'll fix anything. Maybe if they get enough complaints these issues might be resolved in the next version. Or the one after that. Or not.

Just thought I'd provide an update. As I said, I needed to contact support to help solve the problems I was having with sync and downloading (sorry no reconcile complaints for now).
So yesterday I contacted Quicken support via chat. There was a bit of a wait, but not too long, maybe 10 minutes to get going. Once contact was made, the tech worked with me for around 3 hours(!) to finally arrive at a solution.

The first problem in the process involved my lack of making backups. I hadn't made one since April, and I didn't want to go back that far and hope that what happened in the interim would magically be OK. I was trying to find a master file that would be updated with each Quicken use, and then go back in Time Machine to a point before the 3.5.2 upgrade. Apparently, there is no such file (?), so I suppose that means I do need to manually backup more often. Word to the wise?

There were a couple of attempts at solving the problems that didn't pan out, and I felt like this was a surprise to the tech. What we finally ended up doing was exporting to a QXF and then restarting from there. Then it was a matter of reconnecting all my accounts. Happily, most everything came through, with only one account (manual) missing some entries, and a few of the connected accounts having a couple of duplicate transactions.

I was very impressed with the support tech hanging with me for all that time and making sure I got a satisfactory result. I can't imagine doing that over the phone, so chat was the right choice. In fact, at one point, we set up screen access so she could see what was going on. Maybe I got lucky, but she was very good.

So the end of my tale is don't be afraid to try support, use chat if you can, and backup often. Thanks for listening.

Concordman

MeanGene said:

Longtime user, first time caller...

I have been a longtime user of Quicken, always on a Mac. So even before this latest incarnation, Quicken for Mac xxxx. Have been through the ups and downs, but have never seen anything like this 3.5.2 release.

The first thing that I noticed were all these accounts appearing on the sidebar that were supposed to be hidden. OK, so I go back and go through all of them to make them hidden properly. Maybe some sort of sync issue? I dunno, but things might be back to normal.

Oh and they changed reconcile. Takes a few uses to see what's what, but OK, maybe someone thought this would be better. Me personally, meh. But it does work, so no harm, no foul.

But wait, there are two credit card accounts under a single login that now won't download. Wants to know if I changed something-I hadn't. The error says ACCOUNT NOT FOUND (FAILED USER_ACCOUNT_CANCELLED). Gee, it was working a few days ago. So I fill out the error report thing that sends an email. I guess it goes to a blackhole because I never even get an acknowledgement that I sent them something.

Since there are two cards, I try turning off connector one of them, thinking I could reset things that way. No such luck. No matter what I do, I can't get it to download anything for that login. My other login at Chase, with two other cards, seems to be fine. Maybe the don't like two different logins at Chase, but one's for me and the other's for my SO. Like I said, always worked before.

Additionally, I have an account that's been inactive and hidden for years at a credit union. There are two accounts there, too, a savings and a LOC. When I try to reconcile with the CU, even though I hide the LOC, a ACCOUNT SYNC ERROR appears, and the account shows up in the sidebar. This is labeled a GENERIC ERROR. Says I should try again, or submit another useless error report.

SO, anyway, just found this forum and thought I'd add my two cents. Sounds like others have had similar problems with 3,5,2. I realize, much like the error reports, this isn't going to get me anywhere, and it seems I should try support, probably over the phone. Also from reading here, I don't think they'll fix anything. Maybe if they get enough complaints these issues might be resolved in the next version. Or the one after that. Or not.

MeanGene, not for me to tell you your business ; as an FYI I backup 1/wk ( have it set up on my iMAC calendar so no need to remember). When alerted to QM updates I backup regardless of the day just in case there are issues. 

Unknown

102_dar_70 said:

The new owner was from Intuit along with an investor.The private equity firm H.I.G. Capital and Eric Dunn, the general manager of the Quicken brand will purchase the program and its brand. And I'd guess he brought some of the Intuit team with him so they maybe one in the same. 

I don't understand the reference to QM2016 cleared and uncleared transactions as though they can happen by happen stance, I do not find this true.  I have found you can change the status of  a transaction in the register from no X in the Clr column to clicking  "Clr" column which puts an X in (although it is not green yet until a recon is done) even though it was not reconciled through the "Reconcile" screen which does adjust an ongoing recon balance figures as I needed it  to in order to balance.  I complained to Quicken that I had to do this querky process in order to balance  because the old "Outstanding" transactions did not appear in the Reconcile screen-they do now. You could accidentally mark a transaction "clr" but to unclear a previously reconciled transaction, a pop up window appears and requires you to make sure you want to change the status of a reconciled  transaction as a precaution so you don't just click on it by mistake and mess the register up.  Interesting to learn though that windows and Mac have operating differences programming wise so that means they have a team of different programmers for operating system..makes sense.  Maybe they should do some brain storming together.

Quicken Marcus

M C Crockett said:

Quicken Marcus, Quicken Jeff, et. al.:  I have been a, somewhat, staunch defender of the new reconciliation feature in QM2016 3.5.2; however, I have just discovered a "bug" in this feature.

The first Reconcile window that is displayed opens with "Use Online Balance" selected.  If the account is not configured for automatic transaction downloads, a box is displayed for the user to enter the account's  current register cash balance.

If the account is configured for automatic transaction downloads, the amount displayed in the "Use Online Balance" box i the current register cash balance; however, this is not the case when the current register cash balance is negative.  There appears to be a "sanity check" in the reconciliation logic that does not allow a negative cash balance to be reported.  In this case, the balance displayed is the last positive cash balance in the register.

I discovered this problem in a retirement account that invests in a Unit Investment Trust.  These are similar to a mutual fund but exist for a limited period of time usually 12 months.  When the Unit Investment Trust matures, you can receive the current market value of your holdings or can use the current market value to buy shares in the next issuance of the Unit Investment Trust.  I do the latter in this account.

This creates a strange accounting phenomenon on the date that the Unit Investment Trust matures.  A Buy transaction for the next issuance of the Unit Investment Trust is recorded on the day that the last issuance matures; however, the cash needed for the Buy transaction will not be recorded until 3-5 days after the maturity of the previous issuance of the Unit Investment Trust.  This will be downloaded as a Miscellaneous Income or Sell transaction, I forget which.  If it is the former, you need to change it to a Sell transaction to remove the shares that no longer exist.

At any rate, this has a tremendous effect on the reconciliation process.  The Buy transaction that caused the cash balance in the account to go negative is discarded.  It is not displayed in the list of transactions to be reconciled in the shaded portion of the first Reconcile window.  In addition, the balance displayed in the "Use Online Balance" box is not the current balance in the register.  It is the cash balance displayed in the register before the discarded transaction.

If you switch to the "Use Statement Balance", Reconcile displays in the "Starting/Prior Balance" the correct value of all reconciled transactions in the account's register.  Next, enter the account's current negative cash balance and click Next.

In the second Reconcile window, the "Quicken Balance" displayed on the left will be the previously reconciled balance plus the sum of any transactions that are marked as cleared in the Clr column.  The "Statement Balance" on the right will be the current register account balance that you entered in the first Reconcile window.  The discarded transaction will not be displayed in the second Reconcile window.

If you use the Mark all as "Cleared" button to mark all transactions displayed in the reconcile list as cleared, you find that the "Difference" is exactly equal to the amount of the discarded transaction.

While having a negative cash balance in "Cash" and "Savings" group accounts may be unusual but I am sure there are others do as I do and keep a $0.00 balance in their checking accounts, manually write checks and record them in the register, and later transfer money from a "Savings" group account for the amount of the checks written.

In "Investment" group accounts, it is fairly common to have a negative cash balance in the account.  In "Brokerage" group accounts, you are allowed to purchase securities in excess of your cash balance in the account up to the limit of your margin.  If you do so, the cash balance will be negative.  Reconcile cannot discard transactions that cause the balance to go negative nor can it constrain the account balance to be a positive value.

A negative cash balance is far more common in "Retirement" group accounts, in particular, when you use an investment advisory service to manage the securities held in the account and what percentage each security be of the account's market value.  When you make an RMD withdrawal, it triggers a number of Sell and Buy transactions to adjust your security holdings to the new market value of your retirement account.  The transactions wil, generally, occur on a single day.  The order in which the Sell and Buy transactions are recorded is random; however, Quicken tends to record all the Buy transactions before the Sell transactions resulting in a negative cash balance.

The apparent "sanity check" in the reconciliation logic that does not allow negative cash balances to be displayed and discards transactions that cause the cash balance to go negative must be removed for reconciliation to work properly.

I just saw this.  I'll copy the detail to a ticket but it might be better to use the beta user channel.  Anyway, as always, thanks for reporting this.