transactions not registering in portfolio view (Q Mac)

jschaffe

I was certainly able to see the issue whenever transactions were available to actually download. But of course it’s NOT easy to create a transaction just for testing with no investment impact. I’m hopeful that the defect occurs when transactions, either manually entered or downloaded, are ready to be updated to the portfolio view. That might be the whole problem however the transactions are created. But I have to say that I’m not noticing failures since I disconnected from the financial institution and resumed entering transactions manually. 

jacobs

Anyone doing testing like this is certainly advised to use a duplicate copy of your data file, or a new test file started from scratch, just in case something goes wrong or if becomes hard to undo your way back to where you started.

@jschaffe I'm not sure what you mean by "transactions ready to be updated to the portfolio view." Transactions entered manually should simply appear if you immediately switch to the portfolio view. (And in my limited testing, they do.)

Barry Gilbert

I will try this coming weekend to do as you suggest, including explaining how to produce the error.  Where do I send my results, including the step-by-step instructions (I'll create a Microsoft Word file)?
BKG

jschaffe

@jacobs, I’m thinking how the code might be written. First read from file or downloaded list a text transaction. Second, create an internal transaction record to capture it. Third, update holdings list and share counts (portfolio) to reflect the new transaction. Finally apply current price and update the display. I’m wondering if the second or third steps might be defective under certain circumstances. 

From other support interactions and forum posts, there might be a difference in the way a 401k retirement account and a taxable investment account is processed in Quicken. We don’t often write which one is causing us a problem, but in my case, I’ve seen the issue I reported in both Vanguard taxable and 401k accounts with downloaded transactions. 

jacobs

@Barry Gilbert Ah, you've hit on the next tricky part: how to get this information in front of the right folks at Quicken. In the Quicken Help menu, select Report a Problem. There's it gives you a small pane to type a description of the problem. It doesn't have scroll bars or a way to make it bigger; I've assumed that's because they want users to keep it brief! But some problems just can't be described in a few lines, and there is a button on the screen to "Attach additional files". So you can attach a Word document, but I'd suggest using a basic text format (.txt or .rtf) is probably better. And still, try to keep it as short and to-the-point as you can.  

@jschaffe My experience with troubleshooting problems like this tells me to not try to figure out what the program might be doing. Because without detailed information about the program, this often leads to wrong assumptions and wrong conclusions. Try to find a way to reproduce a problem on demand, document it, and let the developers figure out the how and why. 

Quicken Marcus

@jschaffe, I don't think this is the issue you ran into but let me mention it in case other people are seeing this issue. We did find a bug in reinvested dividend downloads that will be fixed in 5.12.  Basically, if a dividend and it's corresponding buy downloaded on different days, Quicken Mac wouldn't recognize this properly and you could end up with your dividend income being recorded twice. I know this was a problem on some Schwab accounts because of the way Schwab would send div and buy transactions typically over a weekend period. Only the div would be downloaded on Friday and then on Monday it would come down as a div and buy and Quicken wouldn't know that the div on Friday was the same div that appeared on Monday. I don't know if it ever happened on Vanguard accounts. 

Everything in Quicken is based on transactions including the portfolio view so you can't have something appear in the portfolio view without it being first in the transaction register.  The portfolio view, under-the-hood, is like a special report.  There are a bunch of calculations made to reconcile buys and sales and to do them in the right order or based on the right matches because of specified lots to arrive at the share counts so this is where there could be a bug. 

The Placeholder comes up a lot because it's been a problem in the past. Basically, your brokerage tells us how many shares you have and we create a placeholder for that many shares.  Quicken then subtracts the number of shares you have because of downloaded transactions and then if there is a remainder, the placeholder appears displaying the remainder amount. Everyone has a placeholder for every single stock they own but most are hidden because they have a 0 share count. 

Sometimes brokerages send the wrong number of shares because of the number of digits they decide to send.  For example, if the number of shares is off by .000001, a placeholder would theoretically appear.  There are also rounding issues with calculations because of splits, etc. In any case, placeholders can pop-up from time to time without you knowing it which shouldn't impact share counts but might do so in some circumstances.  

I don't think there should be issues with manually entered transactions but I'll be working with Mr. Gilbert to see if we can figure out what might be going on with his account.

jschaffe

@Quicken Markus I understand what you wrote, but it isn’t the problem I experienced.

I would download transactions from Vanguard, they would appear in the register, but the portfolio view (or “report” as you described it) displayed share counts and market values as they were before the transactions. This happened for at least the buy, reinvest, and sell transactions that I executed; I can’t speak to other transaction types.

Only by deleting and manually reentering the transactions could I get the portfolio view to display correct values. In some cases I could trick sell transactions to update the portfolio by selecting lots. That often worked, but not always. Ultimately I had to give up on downloading from Vanguard completely and resort to manually entering all the transactions. 

dsuit46

@Quicken Markus,  when is the MAC 5.12 version going to be released as I have a similar bug with cash balances not be updated or reflected properly in the portfolio view and appear to not be downloaded correctly from my IRA Schwab Investment Account in portfolio view or the correct value downloaded in the transactions view.

I am on Mac Deluxe 2019 Subscription Version 5.11.0 (Build 511.25626.100) macOS 10.13.6

Thank you, Don S.

jacobs

@dsuit46 If Marcus doesn't respond here, what I can tell you is that they don't always know when a release will be out because it depends on the completion of development work, what testing turns up, and how long it takes to hunt down and fix any bugs. Since the last update was close to three months ago, and they have rarely gone that long between updates, it's logical to assume something is coming soon -- but exactly when is unknown, possibly even to the development team if they're in testing/debugging mode.

dsuit46

Thank you @jacobs I spent 45 years in software development, most of the time folks have a plan they follow with release dates, so I hope the Quicken team is using a planning tool and planners to manage the work. If not, sigh!

I will wait for with everyone else for the next release, investment tracking is my secondary usage, tracking my checking bills and cash is primary and I do that manually as a check on my bank. I tried over many years of using Quicken Windows and Mac when it became available to do checking with feeds from the bank, it was more out of sync than in-sync. So, I do what works for me.

It would be nice if the investment features worked, they did before I went to the 2019 Subscription version.

Thanks again.

jacobs

@dsuit46 I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet they have a pretty detailed roadmap of features and releases scheduled into the future, and tools to manage the development process.

We've all experienced the results of some companies releasing software to fit a schedule rather than taking time to fix bugs, and the results can be pretty bad. I'd much rather they take an extra week or two or three to test and fix bugs than put out a release because the calendar says it's time to put one out. Since today marks 12 weeks since version 5.11 was released, and that's longer than normal, I would bet that they had a release scheduled prior to now -- and the schedule was pushed back because they ran into some delays in development or testing. 

I'd also note that some features under development can be simply pulled out of the code, or deactivated, if they aren't ready when a company wants to push out a new release -- but some can't. Some of the things they've indicated they're working on likely entail changes to the database structure and can't just be pulled out or disabled once integrated into the program. I'd guess that's what's at play with the upcoming 5.12 release. We'll see... hopefully within the next few weeks.

dsuit46

@jacobs I agree it is better to put out a working release with fewer bugs. I can wait for the 5.12, if it does not fix the issue I and others are seeing I will put in a formal bug reports against the 5.12 release. I do not like work-arounds, I like code to work as paid for by the customer.

Take care and thanks for the dialog.

RobinMills

I had this same issue and it was not due to place holders. What I did was changed the date (by one day) of the stock purchase in my Transactions list and it magically appeared in my Portfolio.