Budgeting errors in the budgeting tool (totals don't add up...)

J-C Bailly

I have been trying to establish my 2019 budget for quite some time now with no luck with my new 2019 Premier Mac version with the latest update 5.9.2 (Mac OS 10.14.1), whereas the same exercise with my previous Quicken Premier Windows 2014 was a breeze!

Problem 1:
Income minus expenses should show a difference (credit or debit), but in my case, they simply add-up! For the sake of an example, if you have an income of 150'000 and expenses of 120'000, you should have a difference of 30'000. But Quicken tells me that it is 270'000!!!

I first thought that perhaps I should change all expenses one by one and switch to a minus sign. Time waisted, I get the same result: 150'000 -120'000 = 270'000...

Problem 2:
My categories sub-totals don't - always - work. Example: If the house expenses category is divided in four sub-categories: Electricity, Telephone, Snow removal, Heating, the House expenses sub-total of these four sub-categories will be anything but the correct addition of these four lines... The total amount has absolutely no correlation at all with the actual sub-categories amounts, it can be in excess of 12'000 above the actual total!

In some cases, all months sub-totals but one will be correct, I cannot identify why.

Interestingly, this phenomenon does not apply to all category sub-totals, some work perfectly and the sub-totals are correct. I checked all my categories and sub-categories to ensure they were properly listed and related to each other, and all are, so that can't be the reason.

I am puzzled because since I merely moved my data from my Windows version to the Mac 2019, I have not  changed any category or sub-category that I used for more than twenty years with Quicken and I obviously never encountered such a problem before.

So what is the secret solution to resolve these two issues please?

Thank you. 

Unknown

When QM was written it did not have the sophistication that QW has. So over the years, Quicken has slowly been upgrading QM.

Problem 2: when I set up my budget I leave the sub-categories at zero, then put the budget number as a total in the top category. I select only the top categories for the budget. I can drill down on the budget report to see what I've spent in the sub-categories, It's a bit of a hassle to set up, but works well.

Wes

Quicken Harold

Hello J-C. Appreciate your questions.

I would reach out to Quicken Support and allow one of our Mac technicians to assist you with these questions.

Please let us know if they were able to resolve your issues.

Respectfully,
~ Quicken Harold.

J-C Bailly

Thank you Wes and Harold.

My problem is that I am currently in Europe for a few more weeks and I cannot reach Quicken support by Chat as it seems to be unavailable from there, after clicking on the link, I get a window where I select Mac version and nothing happens...

Telephone from Europe not being an option with the waiting time, it seems I am stuck for good until I get back next April!

So sorry there is no email support available in such cases.

Quicken Harold

J-C Bailly said:

Thank you Wes and Harold.

My problem is that I am currently in Europe for a few more weeks and I cannot reach Quicken support by Chat as it seems to be unavailable from there, after clicking on the link, I get a window where I select Mac version and nothing happens...

Telephone from Europe not being an option with the waiting time, it seems I am stuck for good until I get back next April!

So sorry there is no email support available in such cases.

Hi J-C. Appreciate your reply.

Chat support is available 24x7, however you might need a VPN to connect to the US or Canada in order to make the chat work...

You can call our customer support at 650-250-1900, available Monday-Friday from 5am-5pm Pacific Time.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Respectfully, 
~ Quicken Harold.

J-C Bailly

I just realised that this very same issue was already debated here two years ago (!!!?):

https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/budget-report-total-error

and has yet to be solved, which is absolutely astonishing, one would have thought that a reported problem as serious as this one would have been addressed and resolved by now!

And yet this was before Quicken brought its customer base into a subscription model.

Now I sincerely regret my moving into this from a perfectly working Windows 2014 Premier version - - which I cannot restore since my backup data used for the Mac version 2019 erased my Windows data in the process. I will nevertheless try to see how and if I can retrieve that November QW14 data to make the move backward.

What a disappointment!

smayer97

J-C Bailly said:

I just realised that this very same issue was already debated here two years ago (!!!?):

https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/budget-report-total-error

and has yet to be solved, which is absolutely astonishing, one would have thought that a reported problem as serious as this one would have been addressed and resolved by now!

And yet this was before Quicken brought its customer base into a subscription model.

Now I sincerely regret my moving into this from a perfectly working Windows 2014 Premier version - - which I cannot restore since my backup data used for the Mac version 2019 erased my Windows data in the process. I will nevertheless try to see how and if I can retrieve that November QW14 data to make the move backward.

What a disappointment!

Note that the thread you reference is for QWin... so it seems this problem exists in both platforms... so will going back to QW2014 solve your problem? Or is this an issue that was introduced in QWin after 2014?

J-C Bailly

I managed to find a few things happening within the budgeting tool this afternoon:

1/ I made a new 2019 (version 2) budget importing my past year data and everything went well. All totals were making sense with the exception of a few category sub-totals which were not 100% accurate but at least they were not totally wrong (a few cents difference here and there). The overall picture was correct Income - Expenses = Difference.

2/ When I tried to understand why some category sub-totals were inaccurate I could not find any explanations. Out of frustration, I typed "0" in the subcategory total of January and then selected "same for all months". Miraculously, all months sub-totals were fixed to their correct total amounts... Quicken programmers please take note!

3/ Then I wanted to eliminate some unneeded lines and selected the categories which I wanted to keep. That's when everything turned around to give me the same stupid results with Income - Expenses = Total of the two instead of the Difference, and several sub-totals were totally out of wack again and impossible to fix. Reselecting the categories I eliminated earlier would not allow to rectify this situation meaning that I need to redo my budget all over again.

So from the above, I remember to:
a/ Keep all categories whether needed or not
b/ When the category sub-totals are wrong, use the "0" fix in January and select for all months

This is still not a solution but at least a temporary fix.

J-C Bailly

To clarify one important point regarding the categories I eliminated: NONE of them had any amount other than 0.00. I thought this should be made clear to Quicken programmers if they ever read these lines.
Thanks.