How do I generate a report anything like this one from QM 2007?

tmplee

This is an example of the kind of report I do almost a dozen times a year in Quicken Mac 2007, only it would have several more accounts than in this example. (I've blacked out all the numbers for obvious reasons.) How do I do this in "new" Quicken (2019)? I can't get realized gain as a category, and the way cap gain distributions are handled is strange. The "tax schedule" report is almost useless for several reasons.

jacobs

I don't know what blurb you're referring to; the 5.12.4 release contained only a few specific bug fixes, no new features. 

Quicken_Tyka

Hello tmplee,

Sorry, you haven't received a response.

At this time the 2019 version of Quicken for Mac doesn't offer any investment reports.

There is an option to customize the columns in the portfolio view, however, I don't believe any of these available options are what you are looking for.



Sorry for not having better news!

-Quicken Tyka

jacobs

@tmplee It might help for you to explain why you find the tax report "almost useless." Getting the developers to tweak problems with this existing report seems a more likely path than getting them to create new reports. (Although there have been hints that investment reports of some kind may be in the works.)

tmplee

@jacobs Yes, I should have been more specific. As I recall, what made it almost useless is that it insisted on showing transaction detail rather than summaries (totals) no matter what I did on the configure line. I think there were other problems. I'm going to hang on to my ammunition for now because I see a new version of Quicken for Mac is out and it advertises more investment reports and what sound like more flexibility/control with other reports.

tmplee

@Quicken_Tyka I'm not looking for an investment report, but a more flexible category summary report (e.g., accounts as columns, categories as rows, or vice versa) and appropriate categories for investment transactions (dividend, cap gain dividend, cap gain/realized gain, etc.) I don't know how Quicken 2007 records the cap gain/loss (realized gain) on a sale as a category, but it does. I see there's a new version of Quicken for Mac out that says it's made some improvements related to investments and I'll have to take a look and see what it is.

jacobs

@tmplee The most recent release (5.12) of Quicken Mac doesn't really address investment reports. There are a few new types of values that can now be enabled in registers, and a bug that prevented tax-free investment categories from being selected in reports was fixed. But there are no new investment reports. Yet. The product manager has hinted that's something they are or will be working on.

The Tax Schedule report is one of the "old" reports that uses the reports engine which carried over from 2010-era Quicken Essentials. It has not yet been re-developed using the new reports architecture that has been built over the past three years. Hopefully that change will happen as the work to get all the reports migrated to the new architecture, but of course, there's no ETA on when that may happen.

One of the very positive developments for Quicken Mac was the introduction back in January of columnar/crosstab/matrix reports -- e.g. reports where you can define both rows and columns. It's not a flexible as the Quicken 2007 reports were, but it opened up the ability to do a lot of things that weren't possible previously in modern Quicken Mac. For instance, you can now create a summary report with Categories as rows and Accounts as columns. (But not visa-versa, since having Categories as columns would in most cases produce unusably wide reports.) So that enables a report of investment-related income by categories as rows with accounts as columns. I'm not sure that will fill all your needs, but it was a big step forward for Quicken Mac.

tmplee

The blurb for 5.12.4 says it has some improvements (over 5.12.3) in the investment area, as well as other improvements in reports, but I haven't had time to install it and check it out.

jacobs

@tmplee The investment fix in 5.12.4 was a fix for a specific bug with reinvested dividends that got introduced in 5.12. It has nothing to do with the concerns you've raised with investment reports.

Fixed an issue in which dividends for some investment accounts were being double-counted. Quicken was adding both dividends and reinvested dividends for the same security. Quicken will now only keep the reinvested dividend when downloading future transactions and will also fix currently affected accounts.

There was nothing regarding reports in 5.12.4.

(There are almost never new features introduced in "dot upgrades" -- e.g. 5.12.1, 5.12.2, 5.12.3, 5.12.4 -- after major releases (5.12); these subsequent dot upgrade releases bring bug fixes.)

jacobs

I don't know what blurb you're referring to; the 5.12.4 release contained only a few specific bug fixes, no new features. 

tmplee

You're right; I didn't read the blurb carefully enough. It's the window that comes up when you start Quicken but haven't yet installed the update. It covers ALL version of 5.12, not just 5.12.4. So it lists the changes that were introduced in 5.12.1 (or .0, whatever the first one was) as well as all subsequent ones. The bullet for 5.12.4 only lists a handful (maybe even only 4) of bug fixes. I see I have 5 days left on my 30-day trial. I have to decide whether to keep it or wait until I absolutely have to move up to Catalina. Decisions decisions decisions...

jacobs

If you don't think Quicken 2019 fills your needs, you can return it for a refund and continue using Quicken 2007 -- and just not update your macOS. I don't typically update my macOS for months, sometimes years after Apple releases one. 

tmplee

I understand. My wife's machine is still running Sierra since we weren't sure how well Quicken 2007 would play with High Sierra; as it is, I haven't moved up to Mojave yet. We even have an old mac mini that's still running Snow Leopard (2011 vintage software) because it has some software of value that only runs under Rosetta. Mostly I use it to act as a server for backups and a printer.