Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.4.x Released

Concordman

Concordman said:

Just downloaded the update 5.4.2. Looks like the column width modification appear to be working. Quicken is indeed remembering the widths I selected. Wondering if Marcus had a chance to review some of the bill & income issues RickO, QPW & I discussed a few weeks ago.  

Guess I spoke too soon, in the PV  switching from portfolio value to realized gains..Quicken does not remember the column widths .

jacobs

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

Unknown

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

This is unlike any financial software I've ever used

Have you every used Quicken Windows?  :-)

It was changed to be like that maybe 5 to 10 years ago.

It in fact works best with the GUI controls that are generally available.
As in they are using a "tree" GUI element.

It means that if you have say Auto with two sub categories under it.
You can collapse the "tree" at Auto and still see its total.

In Quicken Windows at least this is used in many places like the account bar, the budget, reports, ...

smayer97

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

May be great for screen but in print format and for sharing, e.g. with accountants, etc. Subtotals is still the norm. I see people complain on the Windows side too...

Unknown

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

Yeah.  In fact I believe VolvoGirl resisted updating for years for that very reason.

But I wonder on how you take care of the problem with collapsing the sub fields.  I will probably have to install an old version of Quicken and see how it was done.

I do pretty much guarantee that at this point it is changed and not an option there will be a lot of complaints for the other side of this.

Unknown

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

Well I jumped back to Quicken 2007, and it hasn't changed in all these years.

Unknown

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

OK Quicken 2004 has it that way.  The price you pay?
You can't collapse any section of the report.

jacobs

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

I never used Quicken Windows, only Mac. And legacy Quicken Mac (2007 and earlier) had subtotals (non-collapsable) on the bottom, not top. I've used about five other financial software programs for my work and other organizations where I've helped with finances, and again, never seen subtotals above the data they total. And certainly if you look at any company financial reports, they subtotal at the bottom of the data.

And there's no reason a trailing subtotal or grand total couldn't have an expand/collapse triangle next to it to do exactly what the software does now, except with the totals on the bottom instead of the top. (For a number of reports I do for my company, built in Excel, they're exactly like that: line items followed by a subtotal/total, with the rows grouped so they can be collapsed to show only the subtotal/total or expanded to show the detail rows.)

Perhaps my best hope is for a user-selectable option. I use the database Filemaker Pro, and when budding a report, subtotals and grand totals can be positioned to be either leading or trailing. If there could be such an option in Quicken, then existing users wouldn't care, and those of us who prefer typically-formatted financial reports could have them at the click of a preference button. 

Unknown

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

And there's no reason a trailing subtotal or grand total couldn't have
an expand/collapse triangle next to it to do exactly what the software
does now, except with the totals on the bottom instead of the top.

Yes there is.  The people writing Quicken don't create new widgets/GUI elements.  They use "tool kits" written by "tool developers" like Microsoft.

The "tree control" is a commonly used control.  You see it everywhere, in programs and file and web browsers and on and on.

You will never see it "opening upwards".  I don't know about the Mac tool kit (or whatever tool kit the Mac developers are using), but on the Windows side there isn't such an option for the tree control.

So that control would have to be custom built or they would have to find tool kit that does support it, and do it in a report, that supports graphs and printing and all the rest.

Far from a trivial request.

Switch between top/collapsible and bottom/non collapsible would be a much more reasonable request.

John Morrow

Entering a *credit* transaction with cents, the cents portions is discarded upon entry. This is a rather annoying bug.

Steps to reproduce:
0. Change currency to EUR and regional format to French.
1. Create a new transaction.
2. Set the amount to, for example, +3000,12
3. Press enter. The transactions is registered, but the amount has been converted to (green) 3000,00

John Morrow

I have come across a few bugs around scheduled transactions with a non-monthly schedule... Maybe the refactoring currently in progress will be an opportunity to fix these? Details below.

BUG 1
Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new scheduled transaction in Bills & Income
2. Set schedule to be twice a year, for example on 20 July 2017 and 20 December 2017
3. Save
4. Reopen the scheduled transactions : the schedule has been converted from twice a year to yearly.

BUG 2
Steps to reproduce:
1. Do the same as above, but from one of the registered account this time.
2. Save.
3. Reopen from Bills & Income : the transaction shows as yearly instead of twice a year.

BUG 3
1. Do the same as bug 2, but reopen the transaction from the register this time.
2. Save.
3. The transaction disappears and a dialog shows: "Transaction cannot be displayed in this filtered view." But there are no filters currently in place ! The transaction also no longer appears in Bills & Income. Has it been deleted completely? It is still lurking somewhere?

John Morrow

There is a formatting issue for Mortgages when the currency is Euro. See for example below the gibberish character next to the Principal and Interest amounts.

John Morrow

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

What's best for reporting? Quicken indeed has the menu Help > Report a Problem, but I remember Marcus requesting to post here.

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

I have come across a few bugs around scheduled transactions with a non-monthly schedule... Maybe the refactoring currently in progress will be an opportunity to fix these? Details below.

BUG 1
Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new scheduled transaction in Bills & Income
2. Set schedule to be twice a year, for example on 20 July 2017 and 20 December 2017
3. Save
4. Reopen the scheduled transactions : the schedule has been converted from twice a year to yearly.

BUG 2
Steps to reproduce:
1. Do the same as above, but from one of the registered account this time.
2. Save.
3. Reopen from Bills & Income : the transaction shows as yearly instead of twice a year.

BUG 3
1. Do the same as bug 2, but reopen the transaction from the register this time.
2. Save.
3. The transaction disappears and a dialog shows: "Transaction cannot be displayed in this filtered view." But there are no filters currently in place ! The transaction also no longer appears in Bills & Income. Has it been deleted completely? It is still lurking somewhere?

No, the register had no filter set, i.e. date was set to All Dates.

jacobs

John Morrow said:

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

Usually, right after he posts about a new release, Marcus checks back in here a few times over the next few days. After that, he rarely posts here, and it's hard to say whether he or someone on the dev team is reading the comments here. (Someone from Quicken has said they do see them, even though they don't reply, but I've seen multiple instances where something reported as a bug in one of these threads comes up months later in a new release thread, and Marcus reacts like he hasn't been aware of the issue.)


My suggestion: in the few days after a new release, post here if it's an issue related to the new release (e.g. it's about a feature in the new release, or the new release seems to have broken something that was recently working.) Otherwise, go ahead and post here, but also submit a report (copy and paste) via the menu option inside the program.

Quicken Harold

John Morrow said:

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

5.4.2's pie chart on the Home Screen is totally different:



I like the enhancement. 

~ Quicken Harold.

Unknown

John Morrow said:

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

Until you get to the end of the month....and there are so many slices the descriptors can't be read.  

smayer97

John Morrow said:

I have come across a few bugs around scheduled transactions with a non-monthly schedule... Maybe the refactoring currently in progress will be an opportunity to fix these? Details below.

BUG 1
Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new scheduled transaction in Bills & Income
2. Set schedule to be twice a year, for example on 20 July 2017 and 20 December 2017
3. Save
4. Reopen the scheduled transactions : the schedule has been converted from twice a year to yearly.

BUG 2
Steps to reproduce:
1. Do the same as above, but from one of the registered account this time.
2. Save.
3. Reopen from Bills & Income : the transaction shows as yearly instead of twice a year.

BUG 3
1. Do the same as bug 2, but reopen the transaction from the register this time.
2. Save.
3. The transaction disappears and a dialog shows: "Transaction cannot be displayed in this filtered view." But there are no filters currently in place ! The transaction also no longer appears in Bills & Income. Has it been deleted completely? It is still lurking somewhere?

No...that last one has to do with the account setting:



(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

Quicken Marcus

Bobalaska said:

I have a couple questions about IRR and ROI.
1.  Are these only generic values, i.e. for the given holding period for the YTD, 1 and 3 year periods specified? Or are they specific to the individual investor?  For example, if I were bought GE a week ago, would the YTD value reflect GE's performance from January 1 until today, or from one week ago until today?
2.  Either way, is any consideration being given to adding an option of being able to display ROI and/or IRR in the Portfolio Value view, so a user doe not have to use the drop down menu and go to Performance? I would prefer one window for sure.

Thanks.

Sorry.  We screwed up a configuration file.  Everything should be fine now.

Quicken Marcus

smayer97 (QM2007, CDN user since '92) said:

Having a discussion over here (in the SU Lounge) about the handling of monthly scheduled transactions that occur on the 29th, 20th or 31st of the month...

QM2018 handles this by pushing any of those dates to ALWAYS be the LAST DAY OF THE month...Not elegant.

QM2007 on the other hand gives a warning that not all months end with that date and gives the option to skip those months or to make then all the Last Day of the Month. Better but also not most elegant.

QWin on the other hand simply automatically assumes you mean the last day of the month and goes to the Last Day of the Monthly ONLY on months where that date does not exists, e.g. if the schedule is monthly on the 31st, on months that have less days, QWin makes it the last day (30th, 29th, 28th) for THAT month ONLY, then resumes on the 31st...(likewise for 30th and 29th).

Conclusion, it would be nice if QM2018 handled it the same way as QWin...or a combination of QWin and QM2007 (warning you and giving the option of what it will do).

Thanks for the pointer to the thread.  What we'll be working on is improving the UX and supporting editing a single instance.  To do this requires changing a bunch of things under-the-hood.

Quicken Marcus

Snoopy FC said:

There's an issue with the bills and income screen.  Notice it in the screenshot below: 

See how the upcoming transactions view only takes a small portion of screen real estate below the graph.  Please fix this.  

I'm not able to reproduce that issue.  Can you tell me how you got into that state?  Is anyone else seeing this?  Do you have 2 monitors or a single monitor?  Did this happen when resizing the graph?

Stephen Tecot

John Morrow said:

There is also a formatting issue in reports for All Transactions. Notice below how HTML spaces ( ) are visible :

Marcus, I recently converted from Quicken for Mac 2007, then to 2017 and now 2018. All of my bonds came over as stocks. I need to be able to convert stocks to bonds.

Quicken Marcus

Jeff said:

Is anyone else having QuickenCloud issues since upgrading to 5.4.1?  I am getting it every time I try to update my accounts.  I've waited longer than the hour and rebooted and tried multiple things but I'm still getting the error.

We always automatically backup your file before we update it for this very reason.  Under the file menu, you can use the Show Backups in Finder menu item to see all of the backups.   The ones we create when you upgrade start with "BACKUP ( Pre-Update)".  Unfortunately, we keep running into issues with the release which is why we stop upgrading people.  Most recently is an issue with the password dialog after the financial institution tells us a password change is required.

Quicken Marcus

Jeff said:

Is anyone else having QuickenCloud issues since upgrading to 5.4.1?  I am getting it every time I try to update my accounts.  I've waited longer than the hour and rebooted and tried multiple things but I'm still getting the error.

We always automatically backup your file before we update it for this very reason.  Under the file menu, you can use the Show Backups in Finder menu item to see all of the backups.   The ones we create when you upgrade start with "BACKUP ( Pre-Update)".  Unfortunately, we keep running into issues with the release which is why we stop upgrading people.  Most recently is an issue with the password dialog after the financial institution tells us a password change is required.

Quicken Marcus

Concordman said:

Just downloaded the update 5.4.2. Looks like the column width modification appear to be working. Quicken is indeed remembering the widths I selected. Wondering if Marcus had a chance to review some of the bill & income issues RickO, QPW & I discussed a few weeks ago.  

The Portfolio View columns work sometimes but there are times when they will be reset.  This is why I didn't mention that they were fixed. They aren't fully fixed yet.  The columns in reports is a much bigger deal.  It was designed to work the way that it does so that it matches the printed output.  I personally think the screen report can be different than the printed version but was curious what others think? 

Quicken Marcus

jlgg said:

I just downloaded 5.4.2.  I know Marcus stated we would temporarily lose ability in Comparison Reports to drill down to register, but I noticed we also lost the ability to automatically show memos when clicking on categories. I can customize to show memo/notes but I have to do it each time I select a category.  Moreover, memos from split transactions don't appear at all.  For me, individually, the old Comparison Report was more useable.

Great feedback.  I'll take this back to the team.

Snoopy FC

Snoopy FC said:

There's an issue with the bills and income screen.  Notice it in the screenshot below: 

See how the upcoming transactions view only takes a small portion of screen real estate below the graph.  Please fix this.  

I think it showed up after marking bills as paid/income as deposited under the projected balances tab.  I'm only using the built in monitor on my iMac.  I don't recall it happening when resizing the graph.  In fact resizing the graph has not affect on it.  

Quicken Marcus

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

Thanks for bringing this feature to my attention again.  What I'm wrestling with is whether to move forward with new reports or continue to refine the reports we have and adding more of the functionality like the one you described.  I'm inclined to keep improving what we've got especially as we work to replace our legacy reports with the new architecture.  There are always trade-offs.  

Quicken Marcus

jacobs said:

I'm happy to see the ongoing incremental improvements in reports, but I continue to be frustrated with the report architecture that displays/prints subtotals on TOP of the data it totals. This is unlike any financial software I've ever used, and the reports are therefore unlike any financial reports I've ever read. Marcus, I hope moving subtotals below data (or at least an option to do so) is on your development roadmap. 

Thanks for bringing this feature to my attention again.  What I'm wrestling with is whether to move forward with new reports or continue to refine the reports we have and adding more of the functionality like the one you described.  I'm inclined to keep improving what we've got especially as we work to replace our legacy reports with the new architecture.  There are always trade-offs.