Add feature to 'Lock' or 'Prevent Changes' to customized saved reports(edited) (17 Merged Votes)

Snowman

One of the nice features of Quicken is when you open an existing report if new budget categories had been added or changed you receive a warning that this has happened and you are asked if you would like to incorporate the new budget structure into that report.

This should also apply if a new banking account is added.  Quicken should warn that a new account has been added and ask if you want to include the new account into the report.

I have Quicken 2017 R5 on PC.

I noticed this recently when I compared my report for the first Quarter of 2017 with my Year To Date (3/31/2017) report for the end of March.  They should have been the same and they were not.  The issue was that I had added a banking account since the first Quarter of 2016 and that was not included in the 1st Quarter Report.  When I added it the reports agreed as they should.  I added the account to my monthly reports last year when I added the new account but missed this in the Quarterly Reports.  A warning like the one for the budget categories would be a helpful addition.

mshiggins

Good suggestion.

Unknown

We have a lot of memorized reports.   We also change credit cards frequently (to accumulate signup mileage bonuses).     The problem is that Quicken AUTOMATICALLY ADDS new accounts (like new credit cards) to existing Memorized reports.   A number of our memorized reports are customized to include only specific accounts and we don't want Quicken to Automatically add new accounts to these memorized reports.  We want these Memorized Reports to stay Memorized the way we saved them.    Please, Please add a LOCK as an option to Memorized reports.

mshiggins

Good idea.

Jim_Harman

This warning should be controlled by the "Show me change alerts" setting on the Advanced customization tab on all reports as it does (or should do) for new Categories, tags, and securities. 

In QWin Subscription R25.10 I added a new category and used it in a transaction and received the expected warning when opening a saved Itemized Categories report with selected categories and accounts that did not include the new category.

However when I added a new account, the saved report automatically selected the new account and included transactions from that account, which I do not think it should do. This appears to be the opposite behavior from what @Snowman reports, but is still wrong.

Jim_Harman

On the Advanced tab in the report customization, do you have the "Show me change alerts" box checked? This should warn you when new accounts have been added so you can decide whether or not to include them in the report.

Dan Glynhampton

I think this idea has merit and I'd like to see it implemented.

As @Jim_Harman rightly points out, there's a Change Alerts box which should warn of new accounts, but it doesn't always work.  To see what I mean create an account balances report (Reports > Net Worth & Balances > Account Balances), then customise it to show just one of your accounts, make sure that "Show me change alerts for this report" is checked on the Advanced tab and then save the report.  Now create a new account for test purposes, then once the new account is in place open up the balance report that you just saved.  No warning of change is given, but the new account you have just created is included in the report. (I'm using Q2020 R25.18 for that test.)

In that example it's easy to see the report has changed as there's only one account, but if your saved report has twenty or thirty accounts it's not so easy to spot that a new one has been added.

So when you know that you've created a report that is fixed to a specific set of accounts, categories or whatever, it would be useful to have a capability to "lock" the report so that no automatic changes are made and no warnings are given when the report is opened.

Jim_Harman

Maybe radio buttons in a box:

--- New Accounts and Categories-------------------
|  o Add automatically
|  o Warn before adding
|  o Do not add
---------------------------------------------------------------

Currently we have only the first 2 options, the change alerts do not always work (maybe you have to restart Quicken for the alert to take effect?), and  and it is not clear what "Show me change alerts for this report" 

smayer97

Interesting...in QM2007 the opposite is true. Reports are "locked" by default in that any changes in accounts, categories, tags, etc. ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY added.

To me it would seem more desirable to "lock" reports by default and PROMPT to add any changes that have occurred, and add the option to change the default behaviour.

Also, just to expand this idea a little, maybe the prompt to modify reports would make more sense to occur when creating a new account, category or tag, rather than when opening a report (presenting the list of reports to modify)? Or as I think it through a bit more, maybe both, and keep track of user response either way?

See this QMac idea for comparison:

• Add option to identify reports that need to be updated when a new Category or Tag is created
• Add option to identify reports that need to be updated when a new Account is created
• Add option to identify reports that need to be updated when a new Payee is created

Dan Glynhampton

Jim_Harman said:

Maybe radio buttons in a box:

--- New Accounts, Securities, and Categories---
|  o Add automatically
|  o Warn before adding
|  o Do not add
---------------------------------------------------------------

I like that approach Jim, it's quite clear about what should happen when you select one of the buttons.  I'd expand the heading text to include "New Securities", as I've seen that trigger an alert in investment reports; there may also be other things that should (or do) trigger an alert, tags for example.

Edited to add - in case of misunderstandings, just to clarify this should be implemented on a per report basis, not as a global preference.

Jim_Harman

Good idea Dan, I have edited my earlier post to include new securities.

DaWeav

Every time I add a new account to Quicken, the new account gets automatically added to every one of my customized saved reports. So I then have to open 'each' customized saved report and remove the new account from 'each' report and save them.

So, I would like Quicken to add a feature to be able to 'Lock' or 'Prevent Changes' to customized saved reports so that when I add new accounts to Quicken, the new account does not automatically get added to any of the customized saved reports that I have 'Locked' or set to 'Prevent Changes'.

Jim_Harman

On the Advanced customization tab of each report there is a "Show me change alerts for this report" checkbox. The Help text describes the intent of this as follows:

• Select this check box to have Quicken alert you when you're recalling a saved report to which new categories, tags, or securities might apply. For this alert to apply, you must have already saved the report after customizing it to include only a subset of the available categories, tags, or securities. This is because the purpose of this alert is to check whether the new item should be added to the subset included in the report. If the saved report already includes all categories, tags, or securities by default, Quicken automatically includes the new items in the report without first displaying an alert.

Does this help, or would you like to see it work differently?

This appears to be basically the same as this idea
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20075055#Comment_20075055

DaWeav

That setting advises that it is only for 'categories, tags, or securities' change alerts. I'm referring to 'Accounts' automatically being added to the customized saved reports and that setting does nothing to alert me about the changes to the reports Accounts after I've added new Accounts to Quicken. It would be nice if that setting was modified to include showing me change alerts for the report besides just 'categories, tags, or securities' to include Accounts too though.

Tdawalt

Is there a way when you save a report that the columns are also saved, so I do have to resize them?

Jim_Harman

Unfortunately no.

If you would like Quicken to make this enhancement, please vote here
(Removed-Self-Referencing) 

Tdawalt

Is there anyway we can request quicken to change the saved reports so that the column sizes remain? can this be an update?

NotACPA

Tdawalt said:

Is there anyway we can request quicken to change the saved reports so that the column sizes remain? can this be an update?

Did you follow the link that Jim Harman provided.  THAT's how you make the request.

Chris_QPW

It sounds to me that @Tdawalt is talking about something different.

@Jim_Harman is talking about the defaults column sizes.  @Tdawalt is talking about the column sizes being saved.

I'm not sure what problem @Tdawalt is having because the column widths do save for me (in a saved report).  Below two saved reports one where I saved the description column very narrow, and another with it wide.  This is exactly how each comes up.

Jim_Harman

Actually if you read through the Idea post it also covers saving the column widths. 

I'm surprised the column widths are saved for you, they have not for me unless there was a recent change

Chris_QPW

The history on the saving of columns has been "spotty".  As in they have saved for me for as long as I can remember, but others have reported that they don't save for them.  I have no idea why.

One thing that did change a few years ago was "when they were saved.  Say you have a saved report and then all you do is adjust the columns, and click save.  Before that point in time the column widths wouldn't save.  You had to do something else like change a filter (and you could change it right back) to "set the modified flag", and then save.  But since that change I can now just change the column width and click save and they save for me.

Chris_QPW

I take it back, I just tried some other report types, and the column widths aren't saving for them.  I guess I just got lucky with the Itemized Category report.

DaWeav

Seems this feature was requested multiple times before.

(Removed-Self-Referencing) 

Quicken_Tyka

Hello all,

I have located all previously mentioned threads on this Idea and have merged them into this current post.

The vote count has been updated to include the previous posts.

If you would like to see this feature added and haven't done so already, please be sure to vote at the top of the post.

Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka

Tdawalt

> @NotACPA said:
> (Quote)
> Did you follow the link that Jim Harman provided.  THAT's how you make the request.

what link did Jim Harman Provide?

Jim_Harman

This discussion has already been merged with the Idea. To vote, scroll to the top and click on the little up arrow under the vote count in the big blue box.

Georgia1032

IF anyone has a fix, please let me know. Who wants their mortgage balance added to their bank transactions registers balance report? Currently, I have to look at the physical balance in the check register after printing reports to make sure I don't need to look for new accounts that change the balance on the reports. Intuit occasionally corrects this problem, but then the problem resurfaces with a new update. When I lock my reports, I want them locked! The problem seems to have gotten worse this year. People are continually complaining -- why can't Intuit fix it once and for all. It is really wastes my time.

justmakeitwork

I spend so much wasted time fixing reporting every year. So frustrating. Prompt me to add new stuff if you detect it was added but please do not touch the reports I have created. Quicken has the functionality already in there to do it for categories so please add the same for accounts. The LOCK the report and don't touch it is another great option.

Hal1

FWIW I found that if the "new category, account, etc" bos shows up, I dismiss it with "OK", then click the "save" icon. In the box that appears, there is an area that allows/disallows new info warnings. Clicking the second choice, "lock" the report then clicking "save" does the trick ... at least so far.

Timothy Frank

Using Quicken Deluxe Version R44.28. I'm adding a clarification to my original report. The situation with adding a new account is, indeed, confusing. I added a test account, and discovered that Quicken R44.28 does, indeed, warn that a new account has been added. There are two choices at that point: use the report as defined, or go to a screen allowing a choice to add or ignore.

I agree with another post, above. The ignore option doesn't always work. I tried with two different reports, and on one report the test account was automatically added, and on the other report the test account was ignored (not added).

It might be that Quicken developers have yet to address this because the error is not in the obvious location. I may be that it is somehow related to the type of report being used? Rather than just intercepted at the entry point?

Also, I could find no option in the Advanced tab of the Report configuration window that indicates the enabling of a warning or not. Perhaps it's been removed in a later version of Quicken?

Rocket J Squirrel

Jim_Harman said:

Maybe radio buttons in a box:

--- New Accounts and Categories-------------------
|  o Add automatically
|  o Warn before adding
|  o Do not add
---------------------------------------------------------------

This exact feature now exists. It appears when you save a report. [I have edited this reply because I'd failed to notice @Jim_Harman's post was 2 years old.]