Bug in Current Spending vs. Average Spending by Category Report
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I am using QWin 2017 Home & Business, but I believe this problem has bedeviled me in previous versions. I spoke with someone in Customer Support today who was able to reproduce the issue, so I expect it is also present in current versions of Quicken as well.
The issue is with the Current Spending vs. Average Spending by Category Report. As background, I use this at the beginning of each year to help plan our budget, setting it to compare last year to the previous 3 or 5 year period to get an idea how much to budget in each category. I could never figure out why the total for the previous year wouldn't match the amount shown in a historical budget report (verifying that both the budget and the category report were identical in the categories they contained.
The issue is as follows (and affects both the online and printed version of the report):
Assume a Category has Subcategories; A, B, C, D. The total amount for the Category on the report should equal the sum of the amounts for the Subcategories A+B+C+D. I.e., it should (and does) look like:
Category
A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D 100.00
TOTAL Category 400.00
However, if the FINAL Subcategory in the list also has its own Subcategories, then the total for Category does not include the total for the last Subcategory. In other words, it looks like:
Category
A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D
a 50.00
b 50.00
TOTAL D 100.00
TOTAL Category 300.00
If any Subcategory other than the final one (i.e., A, B, or C) in the example above) has Subcategories, the Category total is calculated correctly. I.e.,
Category
A
a 50.00
b 50.00
TOTAL A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D 100.00
TOTAL Category 400.00
I have not found this behavior to occur in any other report.
My expectation is (based on my long, long career in IT, including many years as a programmer) that although this would probably be easy enough to correct, it's impact would be judged to be minor and a low priority on the fix list. Obviously, there is a workaround: rename the last subcategory so that it's order in the list changes. I hope this lengthy post helps if anyone else ever happens to stumble upon the problem (or also has experienced it but never could figure out what was wrong.)
The issue is with the Current Spending vs. Average Spending by Category Report. As background, I use this at the beginning of each year to help plan our budget, setting it to compare last year to the previous 3 or 5 year period to get an idea how much to budget in each category. I could never figure out why the total for the previous year wouldn't match the amount shown in a historical budget report (verifying that both the budget and the category report were identical in the categories they contained.
The issue is as follows (and affects both the online and printed version of the report):
Assume a Category has Subcategories; A, B, C, D. The total amount for the Category on the report should equal the sum of the amounts for the Subcategories A+B+C+D. I.e., it should (and does) look like:
Category
A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D 100.00
TOTAL Category 400.00
However, if the FINAL Subcategory in the list also has its own Subcategories, then the total for Category does not include the total for the last Subcategory. In other words, it looks like:
Category
A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D
a 50.00
b 50.00
TOTAL D 100.00
TOTAL Category 300.00
If any Subcategory other than the final one (i.e., A, B, or C) in the example above) has Subcategories, the Category total is calculated correctly. I.e.,
Category
A
a 50.00
b 50.00
TOTAL A 100.00
B 100.00
C 100.00
D 100.00
TOTAL Category 400.00
I have not found this behavior to occur in any other report.
My expectation is (based on my long, long career in IT, including many years as a programmer) that although this would probably be easy enough to correct, it's impact would be judged to be minor and a low priority on the fix list. Obviously, there is a workaround: rename the last subcategory so that it's order in the list changes. I hope this lengthy post helps if anyone else ever happens to stumble upon the problem (or also has experienced it but never could figure out what was wrong.)
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This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Bug in current spending vs average spending by category report.
This has also frustrated me immensely for many years and would love to have it fixed. The workarounds are painful. I use this report constantly for retirement planning and have to export it to Excel to make it functional.0
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