Withdraw vs Miscellaneous expense

Unknown

I read a post from 10 months ago about the Miscellaneous Expense transaction requiring a Payee to be entered but there is no Payee entry field in the dialog. The resolution was to use the Withdraw transaction instead. But I'm not satisfied with that. I use Premier 2016 R10.

Here's the problem:
First, MiscExp is not available in the action drop down in the register. So I click the Edit button on the entry and find Miscellaneous Expense in the Enter Transaction drop down.
I fill out the form leaving the security field blank since this is optional then click the Enter/Done button.
The transaction remains highlighted in the register. When I attempt to select another transaction I am prompted with the question to save the transaction. When I click Yes a box is displayed saying that Payee/Description is required. I click OK and find myself back at the transaction register with the MiscExp transaction still highlighted.It appears that if I leave the transaction register window the MiscExp transaction remains.

So, I have these questions:
Isn't this a bug that should be fixed? If so, how do I tell Quicken about it so it does get fixed?

Do the MiscExp and Withdraw transactions affect the cost basis and other calculations the same way or are they different. Quicken help says to use the MiscExp transaction to enter management fees. From what I can tell management fees increase the cost basis, as they should. Will a withdraw transaction do the same?

Thank you.

Unknown

First off there are some bugs in Quicken where it asks to save a transaction when it shouldn't.
For a transaction that has already been saved the proper answer is no to the save prompt.

On entering the MiscExp don't try to use the register at all.  I have found that in fact there are lot of transaction types that you can't directly enter into the register, use the Enter Transaction button/wizard instead.
If you look at the dialog you will see that the payee isn't there.  MiscExp doesn't allow for a payee, but if you try to change/save such a transaction from the register it is going to tell you that you need a payee, because in fact that form of entering transactions doesn't understand all the rules of all the transaction types.

On the cost basis question.  There is no way for a Withdraw to do the proper thing and change the cost basis because there is no way to specify the security.  That is the whole purpose of including the security as an option in the MiscExp dialog, so that it knows to change the cost basis for that security.

Unknown

Thank you. That works. I think the help needs to be a little better on this subject.

q_lurker

Neither MiscExp nor Withdraw transactions have any effect at all on cost basis, nor should they. Nor should management fees affect cost basis. (I do not believe you are talking about management fees applicable within mutual funds, but even those fees affect performance and contribute to lower NAVs. Those MF mgt fees do not affect cost basis either.)

Unknown

q.lurker said:

Neither MiscExp nor Withdraw transactions have any effect at all on cost basis, nor should they. Nor should management fees affect cost basis. (I do not believe you are talking about management fees applicable within mutual funds, but even those fees affect performance and contribute to lower NAVs. Those MF mgt fees do not affect cost basis either.)

Yeah, cost basis is the wrong term since you are not affecting the price of a given lot of the security.  But it will certainly affect "your cost".  As in it affect things like the Return and ROI values.