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.
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.
...they plugged on hole but opened another.
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.
Another common flaw is that neither QM2016 or QW2016 will not 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.
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 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)
