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"Spending" tab vs. Reports > Spending > Spending by Category

Tom Young

I'll admit that I've paid very little attention to the various "tabs" Quicken has added over the years and the information contained therein. I have Quicken open to a customized view on the Home tab, I look at my portfolio under the Investing tab, but mainly rely on various saved Reports and my inspection of Registers and Transaction lists to see what's going on with my finances.
This post:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20013094#Comment_20013094

got me to looking at the report and graph that comes up when you click on the Spending tab and comparing the information shown there to a Spending by Category report, customized, (I thought), in the same fashion that I'd customized the Spending tab information - All accounts, Last 12 months.

The first thing I saw was that the numbers on the two reports didn't agree. I figured out that "all accounts" means something different on the Spending tab then it does in the Spending report. (Quicken help certainly doesn't point this out. In Quicken-speak "spending" only comes from Spending & Savings and Investment & Retirement Accounts(?))

After quite a bit of thrashing around I was able to reconcile, (but not agree), the dollars on the Spending tab to the dollars on the Spending by Category report. The Spending tab understated the actual spending per the Spending by Category report by exactly the amount of expenses that had been entered using the "MiscExp" action in various Investment Accounts. In 3 Accounts the MiscExp pertained to foreign taxes picked up on the 1099-DIV and on another Account, an IRA, the MiscExp pertained to an administrative fee. The entries affected cash, so the omissions seems odd.

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Comments

Jim_Harman

If you look at the MiscExp transactions, do they have a Category that is a subcategory of Tax?

If you click on the Tax line on the Spending tab to see the details, do the transactions match what you see when you do the same in the Spending by category report?

Tom Young

"If you look at the MiscExp transactions, do they have a Category that is a subcategory of Tax?"

In the case of the foreign taxes, "Foreign" is a sub Category of "Tax". But in the case of the administrative fee expensed to the Category "Bank Charge", Bank Charge is a stand-alone Category. I did run a Report > Investing > Investment Transactions covering the 12 months over all investment Accounts with the only allowed Action being "MiscExp" and the Spending tab report excluded them all.

"If you click on the Tax line on the Spending tab to see the details, do the transactions match what you see when you do the same in the Spending by category report?"

No, the detail supports the summary number, i.e., the MiscExp transactions are completely missing.

Jim_Harman

I now see what you mean and I agree it is weird.

If I go to the Spending tab and select just the account with the MiscExp's, which are the only cash withdrawals in that account, it says I have spent $0 but it shows the two MiscExp transactions below. Other withdrawals work as expected.

It appears that Quicken in its wisdom has half-way decided that a miscellaneous expense in an investing account gets special treatment and is not "spending" but a fee assigned to the same Category in a banking account as the MiscExp is "spending"

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
I am able to reproduce the problem (in Q2019 R18.16); Quicken ignored all MiscExp transactions (regardless of category) in the Spending tab and I have no idea why.

But when I create essentially the same investment transaction, using the Withdraw Action, that transaction appears in the Spending tab display of transactions.

The only difference I could see was that Withdraw transactions had (actually, required) a payee; MiscExp transactions did not even allow a payee. I have trouble believing that should matter (a transaction in a checking account with no payee did appear on the Spending tab).

[I chose "All Transactions" for the display.]

Tom Young

I don't think there's any "wisdom" involved here, which would suggest some sort of judgement call on the part of the programmers. It's simply a form of spending - even under Quicken's constrained definition - that's been over looked. A programming error.

Jim_Harman

I was surprised to learn that MiscExp's ARE treated somewhat differently in Quicken than Withdrawals, as discussed here
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7432411/withdraw-vs-miscellaneous-expense

If you specify a security in the MiscExp, it affects the performance calculations for that security. For example in the Investing Performance Report, a MiscExp adds to the Investments column, thus reducing the IRR as I suppose it should. It also reduces the Return and the ROI for the security.

Specifying a security for the MiscExp does not affect the original issue here however. Here is an account where there is one MiscExp transaction. Zero at the top but $100.00 at the bottom??