Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.4.x Released

Unknown

John Morrow said:

Marcus, is there any reason why the register toolbar is not present for Mortgages like it is for other account types? It would be handful to have the usual buttons available to, for example, press Reconcile (which I know you can get through other ways, but it has become a habit).

Hi John,  did you select the account you want to Reconcile before doing Accounts>Reconcile? If you didn't that's probably why Reconcile is greyed out.

Unknown

Please fix the problem that when you export the .csv file on an report that had a column for check numbers, and then you import that .csv into Excel, YOU LOSE THE CHECK NUMBERS! It comes up "null". This is obviously really serious when you run large reports. Also, where is the ability to click on a transaction in a report where it would open the appropriate register to the transaction in question. Also pretty key functionality that is lost from prior versions of Quicken for Mac.

Unknown

John Morrow said:

I need some advice regarding loan management and maybe there is a bug (or feature).

I have created a new loan, with an opening balance of 120k€. I have also created an asset account to track the asset for the loan. At first, I entered a standalone transaction in the account for the asset to track the value of the asset.

But then I thought these were really the same transaction and should be linked, so I changed the Loan Opening Balance to a Transfer to the asset account. This quickly became a Split in order to record further details. And I also updated the date of LOB.

Probably a bad thing because Quicken promptly created a Balance Adjustment transaction and now my loan doubled in value. (In the database, hopefully not in the real world.)

Is this how Quicken is supposed to behave? Am I doing something wrong? Is changing the LOB transaction not supported yet?

BTW, my attempts at changing the LOB were partially inspired by:
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-track-refinanced-loan
I know this was written for Quicken Windows, but it should work similarly -eh, better!- on the Mac, shouldn't it?

Hi John, 

You could try the following:
1. Create Asset
2. Create Loan
3. Edit Loan terms (with or without scheduled transaction)
4. When that is done, edit the loan's Loan opening balance transaction, and change the category from "Adjustment" to "[Asset]" (that would be Transfer:[Asset] if long category names is on).

We are working on new features that will make this process easier, building in the linking of asset/loan accounts to the creation of either one. 

Unknown

Emily Salas said:

Please fix the problem that when you export the .csv file on an report that had a column for check numbers, and then you import that .csv into Excel, YOU LOSE THE CHECK NUMBERS! It comes up "null". This is obviously really serious when you run large reports. Also, where is the ability to click on a transaction in a report where it would open the appropriate register to the transaction in question. Also pretty key functionality that is lost from prior versions of Quicken for Mac.

Hi Emily,

Can you tell me what types of reports (Summary, Transaction, Comparison etc) were you trying to export to CSV as well as testing the ability to open the appropriate register for a transaction? Please attach screenshots of the reports (especially where you see the check numbers).

jacobs

Emily Salas said:

Please fix the problem that when you export the .csv file on an report that had a column for check numbers, and then you import that .csv into Excel, YOU LOSE THE CHECK NUMBERS! It comes up "null". This is obviously really serious when you run large reports. Also, where is the ability to click on a transaction in a report where it would open the appropriate register to the transaction in question. Also pretty key functionality that is lost from prior versions of Quicken for Mac.

@quickentanushree: The first problem with the check numbers has been reported here before and is easy to reproduce:

Go to New Reports > Transaction > Subtotal By Category.
Click Customize once the initial report is displayed.
Click Columns.
Select Check #
Click Accounts.
Select None, then select just a checking account (to keep the report simpler)
Click OK

Note that the report now shows check numbers, where present on transactions.

Now click Export > Export to CSV file.

Open the .csv file in Excel or another spreadsheet program. Look for any transaction which on-screen has a check number in the report, and in the Excel file, that value shows as "(null)".


The second issue is something that product manager Marcus acknowledged was a known limitation of version 5.4 when in the first post of this thread: "We are temporarily losing the ability to drill down to the transaction in the register but we'll add this back in the next update." That was back about 6 weeks ago now, so I guess the underlying question being asked is how long will we be without this important feature which was removed in version 5.4?

Craig in ER

I reported this problem a month or so ago when 5.4.3 was released.  Quicken Marcus acknowledged the issue but it was not fixed in 5.4.4.  You will also find that the check numbers do not print if you try to print the report.  I don't know what other column data also fails in this way as I have not tested all.

Unknown

Emily Salas said:

Please fix the problem that when you export the .csv file on an report that had a column for check numbers, and then you import that .csv into Excel, YOU LOSE THE CHECK NUMBERS! It comes up "null". This is obviously really serious when you run large reports. Also, where is the ability to click on a transaction in a report where it would open the appropriate register to the transaction in question. Also pretty key functionality that is lost from prior versions of Quicken for Mac.

Looks like we've fixed the issue with the "null" check numbers in the Transaction Report csv export as part of the fix for the missing check numbers in the printed report reported by Craig in ER. These fixes will be included in the upcoming 5.5.0 release.

Quicken Marcus

rangersix said:

I just upgraded to Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.4.x and now I get this error all the time. This account does not to be updated it's just the value of my house and I input that manually.

To follow up Balance discussion, we've changed it to always appear in the 5.5 beta and it now matches QWin so people can see how it works.  I just read through this thread and it sounds like most people would like us to not change this behavior so let us know what you think in the beta.  I think most of you who commented are beta customers.  I personally like it on when filtering the transaction list so I can have Quicken do the math for me for each transaction but I also understand the argument against it for different column sorts.  I spoke to Quicken Care and they said there was a similar debate for QWin but after turning it on and after people understood it was a calculated field they haven't really had any calls on it whereas we get a lot of calls on QMac for the balance missing.

smayer97

rangersix said:

I just upgraded to Quicken for Mac 2018 v5.4.x and now I get this error all the time. This account does not to be updated it's just the value of my house and I input that manually.

if you go this route, any chance of making it optional?

Quicken Marcus

Craig in ER said:

I reported this problem a month or so ago when 5.4.3 was released.  Quicken Marcus acknowledged the issue but it was not fixed in 5.4.4.  You will also find that the check numbers do not print if you try to print the report.  I don't know what other column data also fails in this way as I have not tested all.

The issue is fixed in 5.5 but it was too big of a change to bring over to the 5.4 release.  When we do a small release like 5.4.4 we don't like to change too much because the more we change the higher likelihood of causing major issues.  We can only do targeted fixes.  We originally planned on having 5.5 out before Christmas but we didn't get everything finished in time so we decided to do a small update with just the low-risk fixes.  We are always working on the next version so when I say we've got a fix for the issue, I'm talking about the next major update and not the small updates.  The way our numbering system works is that the first number designates the release year.  In our case 5 represents the 2018 release.  The next number is the major changes for that release.  So we've had 4 major changes since the 2018 product launch.  The 3rd number represents the small bug fix releases.  We've had 4 small bug fix releases for the 5.4 release which is why the version number is 5.4.4.  I hope that helps explain how the version numbering works.

Quicken Marcus

Zoolook said:

When are you going to fix the multi-currency migration issue we spoke about at launch, and when is Quicken Mac going to have useful reporting? It’s a very expensive product to only have basic list reports - almost every other Mac based financial management application has far superior reporting.

Are you asking about the Linked Transfer issue when opening a Quicken Windows file?  This is fixed in 5.4.4.  In terms of reports, please state which reports you want.  smeyer also has a page where all the reports are being voted on so definitely go there to vote for the report you want.

Quicken Marcus

Batman said:

When selecting the Investing tab, the portfolio view takes about 30 seconds to display with the spinning beach ball. The 2017 version of the portfolio view displayed around 5 seconds. The portfolio is unusable with this delay. Also, Quicken 2018 for windows displays the portfolio instantly running VMWARE.

Try adding the "Day Gain Loss " and "Day Gain Loss %" columns to the "Performance" table view. No results display. Works when these columns are added to the "Portfolio Value" view.

Thanks for reporting this.  I'm able to reproduce it and will get it fixed.

Concordman

Batman said:

When selecting the Investing tab, the portfolio view takes about 30 seconds to display with the spinning beach ball. The 2017 version of the portfolio view displayed around 5 seconds. The portfolio is unusable with this delay. Also, Quicken 2018 for windows displays the portfolio instantly running VMWARE.

Try adding the "Day Gain Loss " and "Day Gain Loss %" columns to the "Performance" table view. No results display. Works when these columns are added to the "Portfolio Value" view.

Marcus I believe you are aware that the column width adjustment is still  an issue, I find  myself continuously adjusting the column withs in multiple accounts.

Quicken Marcus

John Morrow said:

Drag & Drop transactions between Brokerage (and other?) accounts.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Add shares into an investment account
2. Dup transaction
3. Drag and Drop to another account -ah, does not work yet alas!

ALTERNATIVE 1
3. Select Brokerage in the side bar
4. Change account for transaction 2. above -does not work either

ALTERNATIVE 2
3. Get Info
4. The account is not displayed and thus cannot be changed

It's so cool to be able to d&d with checking accounts and so sorely missing with brokerage accounts !

Thanks for the suggestion John.  It makes a lot of sense.  I don't know how hard it would be to do it but it would make sense to work that way given that checking works that way.  The reason it doesn't is the simple fact that the drag and drop stuff between checking accounts was done by the original Quicken Essentials team back in 2010 which didn't have support for investment transactions.  When we added support for investment transactions in 2015, we didn't do the extra work to make dragging and dropping work.  It's a matter of priorities.  If we do drag and drop for investment transactions it means we don't do Loans or more reports or something else.  To me, there are bigger needs from the Quicken Mac community which is why this still hasn't happened.

Quicken Marcus

Snoopy FC said:

When will amounts/transactions included in hidden accounts be searchable and included in graphs?  With more than 20 years of Quicken data, I've got more than a few accounts that I need data from but don't use regularly (closed accounts).  The only way I know of now to have the transactions of these accounts (particularly investments) reflected in graphs is to maintain them as active on the left sidebar.  Can we add something to the following screen to allow access/updates from these accounts for searching all transactions and presentation on the investment graphs?

It's a pain to activate the account only to allow searching within that account.  Maintaining these as active on the desktop only clutters the account list on the left sidebar.  

Interesting discussion.  I'll create a ticket for us to consider adding the ability to search for items in hidden accounts at least as an option someone can turn on.   In my opinion, our search needs a lot of work.

smayer97

Scott Schmidt said:

Can this be FIXED soon?

When entering QM2007 investment transactions, there are four fields that are entered in the register - number of shares, $ amount of transaction, commission, and share price. The share price is back-calculated from the first three parameters. Occasionally if one of the first three fields is edited during the transaction entry, the share price does not get updated properly and the transaction ends up being entered with this field having an incorrect value (i.e. it is not consistent with the shares/$/commission fields). This is no big deal because this share value doesn't seem to be used for much in QM2007.
   However, when importing this faulty transaction into QM2018, the total transaction cost is calculated from the number of shares, commission, and the (possibly incorrect) share price. This results in the transaction $ amount being incorrect, and the account cash balance starts to diverge from that in the QM2007 register.

You are correct. But it doesn't take an "incorrect" share price to trigger the problem.

When entering investment transactions in Quicken 2007, number of shares, share price, commission, and total cost are equally important. Enter any three numbers and Quicken will calculate the other value. 

And, Q2007 will accept a transaction if the math works with rounding. For example, consider a mutual fund purchase of $5,000, where the closing NAV was $48.74. The mutual fund company will take $5,000 divided by $48.74 equals 102.5851, which the fund company rounds to 102.585 shares. Quicken would allow the transaction to be entered as Buy 102.585 shares at $48.74, for $5,000 total.

In Quicken 2016 and later, the share price is a derived field: transaction cost divided by number of shares gives the share price, to 6 decimal places, far more than the stock market actually supports. In Quicken 2018 you can't even enter the share price in a transaction. If the above transaction were originally entered in Q2018, it would calculate $5,000 cost divided by 102.585 shares equals $48.740069 share price.  

What is happening on the import is bizarre:

1. The import completely ignores the total transaction cost that was entered in Q2007.
   
2. It calculates a new, bogus total transaction cost: number of shares times the share price that was in the Q2007 transaction.
   
3. Then it takes the total transaction cost that it fabricated, which may not match the actual transaction, and uses that to derive a new share price: total transaction cost divided by number of shares, to 6 decimal places.

In the example above, it would first calculate a transaction cost of 102.585 shares times $48.74 equals $4,999.99. Then use that to derive new price: $4,999.99 divided by 102.585 is $48.739972. Which isn't even the share price that the same transaction would calculate if it were originally entered in Q2018!

The major error here is that Quicken is forgetting that total cost should be sacrosanct on the import, since that's what determines your cash balance. So if you have an account with a lot of history, the errors accumulate, until the account balance is wildly off.

Quicken Marcus, this issue keeps being asked about...see also here:
Import of QM2007 Investment Transactions Needs a Bug Fix

Any info on addressing this issue?

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

Marcus, is there any reason why the register toolbar is not present for Mortgages like it is for other account types? It would be handful to have the usual buttons available to, for example, press Reconcile (which I know you can get through other ways, but it has become a habit).

Hi Tanu, the account IS selected indeed, but there is NO Menu Bar and NO reconcile option for Debt accounts. This does not seem logical and I need to reconcile such accounts as well. It's all the more intriguing/frustrating that the "Loan opening balance" transaction is marked as reconciled by QM.

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

Top categories are either "Expenses" or "Income", but there are cases when one would like to regroup sub-categories of both Income and Expense types (I have several such cases, personally). Quicken disallows this for customers, but, under the hood, it uses it in a number of occasions : Investments, Transfer, etc.. I would like this possibility to be opened up to us mere mortals.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Create a new top level category
2. There is a choice only between Income and Expense types, and NOT "either"

This is likely going to be controversial. No flames please! 

Any feedback on this one? I really would like to be able to have top-level income/expense categories, just like you do. ;-)

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

Account > Reconcile shows incorrect balances of downloaded transactions.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Edit account
2. Setup transaction download
3. Select Web Connect
4. Update, then reconcile account
6. The Online Balance is shown as -1,00 €, even though the QFX ledger and available balances are  -606.98 €  (see example below)

<LEDGERBAL><BALAMT>-606.98<DTASOF>20171216
</LEDGERBAL>
<AVAILBAL><BALAMT>-606.98
<DTASOF>20171216</AVAILBAL>

@marcus, I've found the origin of the bug that has frustrated me for so long. It's a bug in the Quicken QFX/OFX parser. When (at least) the QFX currency is set to EUR, QM expects the BALAMT field to be comma-formatted. This by the way is not quite conferment to the OFX spec.

OFX 2.2, section 3.2.9.1 Basic Format
Amount: Amounts that do not represent whole numbers (for example, 540.32), must include a decimal point or comma to indicate the start of the fractional amount. 

There is no such issue with the TRNAMT field. It is always parsed properly, whether the transaction amount is dot or comma-separated. The fix should thus be relatively simple.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Download or create a QFX file where the currency is EUR.
2. Format transactions as comma or dot-separated.
3. Format the balance as dots-separated
4. Import the QFX file.
5. QM displays the online balance is -1,00 €.



6. Format the balance as comma-separated.
7. Reimport.
8. QM displays the online balance properly as 5 132,26 €.

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

I need some advice regarding loan management and maybe there is a bug (or feature).

I have created a new loan, with an opening balance of 120k€. I have also created an asset account to track the asset for the loan. At first, I entered a standalone transaction in the account for the asset to track the value of the asset.

But then I thought these were really the same transaction and should be linked, so I changed the Loan Opening Balance to a Transfer to the asset account. This quickly became a Split in order to record further details. And I also updated the date of LOB.

Probably a bad thing because Quicken promptly created a Balance Adjustment transaction and now my loan doubled in value. (In the database, hopefully not in the real world.)

Is this how Quicken is supposed to behave? Am I doing something wrong? Is changing the LOB transaction not supported yet?

BTW, my attempts at changing the LOB were partially inspired by:
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-track-refinanced-loan
I know this was written for Quicken Windows, but it should work similarly -eh, better!- on the Mac, shouldn't it?

Thanks Tanu. I've found and fixed the issue. QM does not like you to change the date the "Loan opening balance" transaction. If you don't, but only create a split, things work as expected.

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

Drag & Drop transactions between Brokerage (and other?) accounts.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Add shares into an investment account
2. Dup transaction
3. Drag and Drop to another account -ah, does not work yet alas!

ALTERNATIVE 1
3. Select Brokerage in the side bar
4. Change account for transaction 2. above -does not work either

ALTERNATIVE 2
3. Get Info
4. The account is not displayed and thus cannot be changed

It's so cool to be able to d&d with checking accounts and so sorely missing with brokerage accounts !

@marcus, I understand. Something to keep in mind though as it's one of the things that set you apart from competition. Drag & Drop for transactions, wow !

Snoopy FC

Snoopy FC said:

When will amounts/transactions included in hidden accounts be searchable and included in graphs?  With more than 20 years of Quicken data, I've got more than a few accounts that I need data from but don't use regularly (closed accounts).  The only way I know of now to have the transactions of these accounts (particularly investments) reflected in graphs is to maintain them as active on the left sidebar.  Can we add something to the following screen to allow access/updates from these accounts for searching all transactions and presentation on the investment graphs?

It's a pain to activate the account only to allow searching within that account.  Maintaining these as active on the desktop only clutters the account list on the left sidebar.  

Marcus, you can also check out what I'm talking about in the data file I sent you yesterday.  There are 2 issues here: 1) the ability to search for transactions in hidden accounts in all transactions, and 2) the ability to hide investment accounts in the left sidebar while allowing that data to be displayed in the big picture/composite graphs for investments, retirement, education.  

RCinNJ

John Morrow said:

Top categories are either "Expenses" or "Income", but there are cases when one would like to regroup sub-categories of both Income and Expense types (I have several such cases, personally). Quicken disallows this for customers, but, under the hood, it uses it in a number of occasions : Investments, Transfer, etc.. I would like this possibility to be opened up to us mere mortals.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Create a new top level category
2. There is a choice only between Income and Expense types, and NOT "either"

This is likely going to be controversial. No flames please! 

John, If I understand correctly what you are suggesting, I too have experienced situations where not having a non-Income or Expense choice was annoying. I've learned to ignore the imprecision, but would like to see another choice. 

My suggestion is to start a new discussion. This one has gotten too labyrinthine for me to follow. Also, an IDEA post to see if others would find this useful.

John Morrow

John Morrow said:

Account > Reconcile shows incorrect balances of downloaded transactions.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Edit account
2. Setup transaction download
3. Select Web Connect
4. Update, then reconcile account
6. The Online Balance is shown as -1,00 €, even though the QFX ledger and available balances are  -606.98 €  (see example below)

<LEDGERBAL><BALAMT>-606.98<DTASOF>20171216
</LEDGERBAL>
<AVAILBAL><BALAMT>-606.98
<DTASOF>20171216</AVAILBAL>

What I meant by the fix should be relatively simple is that the following lines should be changed from:

case <TRNAMT>: decode_amt(input);
case <BALAMT>: decode_bal(input);

to:

case <TRNAMT>: decode_amt(input);
case <BALAMT>: decode_amt(input);

or something similar.

John Morrow

Loans, I now have 2 scheduled transactions for the same loan ! This is one too many !

I am not quite sure how I ended up in that situation. I think a while back I edited the Loan Payment Terms and added an extra principal to match the bank Payment Schedule. And now, a month or so after, I am discovering that the target account has 2 transactions for January and 2 future scheduled transactions.

Here is the target account:


Here is the loan:

Snoopy FC

There's a bug in QM 5.4.4.  The result is a new transaction in a destination account when I add a modified transfer transaction.  Here're the steps to reproduce: 
1. Add a new transaction to a checking account to transfer money from one account to another
2. Add a transaction using the entry you just completed, but change the transfer to just a category
3. The result is a transaction that appears in both the original and transfer destination accounts even though I didn't tell it to transfer the money.  This clearly needs to be fixed.  

John Morrow

Deleting a scheduled transaction in Bills & Income resets the filter.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Go to Bills & Income
2. Set filter to Next One Due for ex.
3. Delete one of the scheduled transactions
4. The filter is reset (and shouldn't be)

John Morrow

Scheduled transactions for a mortgage are not amortized.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Create a new mortgage
2. Go to Payments to view transactions
3. Go to Settings
4. Select: Show all occurrences in the next: 12 months
5. Scheduled transactions are displayed but not amortize. The amount of the first scheduled transaction is correct, but not the ones after that. It's a pity, because it would be a good way to see how your mortgage evolves over time.

smayer97

Snoopy FC said:

There's a bug in QM 5.4.4.  The result is a new transaction in a destination account when I add a modified transfer transaction.  Here're the steps to reproduce: 
1. Add a new transaction to a checking account to transfer money from one account to another
2. Add a transaction using the entry you just completed, but change the transfer to just a category
3. The result is a transaction that appears in both the original and transfer destination accounts even though I didn't tell it to transfer the money.  This clearly needs to be fixed.  

It is a design flaw for sure...I reported this to Quicken during Beta even before this feature was released in QM2017 v4.3 (over 1 yr ago in Nov 2016) but needs to continue to be reported. 

The issue is that what you did allows the categorization of a transfer if you wish but if you re-use a transfer transaction, the only way to remove the transfer is to make the Transfer column visible. This defeats the very purpose to be able to enter transfers in the Category field without the Transfer field visible. The added problem is that the user has no visibility to the fact that a re-used transaction may have a transfer nor an easy way to edit it.

I would submit this using the "Report a Problem" via the Help menu for greater visibility of the problem by the developers.

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

Snoopy FC

Snoopy FC said:

There's a bug in QM 5.4.4.  The result is a new transaction in a destination account when I add a modified transfer transaction.  Here're the steps to reproduce: 
1. Add a new transaction to a checking account to transfer money from one account to another
2. Add a transaction using the entry you just completed, but change the transfer to just a category
3. The result is a transaction that appears in both the original and transfer destination accounts even though I didn't tell it to transfer the money.  This clearly needs to be fixed.  

Thanks guys!  I've noticed the issue for some time, but wasn't clear on how to reproduce the issue until it was crystal clear today.  I've submitted it via report a problem.