Trying to select categories for a tax report

Meg

In Quicken 2007, it was easy to get a report for taxable expenses at the end of the year, when they were sorted by category and subtotals for each category. I can't seem to figure out how to do this in Quicken Version 5.14.2 (Build 514.31850.100). Can you help, please?

jacobs

@Meg  I'm not sure what you're finding so terrible. It certainly isn't worse than Quicken 2015, since they've only added a ton of features since then. Perhaps if you explained in more detail what you're trying to accomplish and why, we can help you figure it out.

jacobs

@Meg  In terms of the readability of the report, I wanted to make sure you're aware of a few things: (a) you can widen any columns that may be truncating text; just click on the divider between column headings (just as you do in adjusting an account register); and (b) you can add or hide columns to suit your need, such as adding the Memo column I find indispensable. For example, showing just one transaction:



I find this report easy to read.

The Quicken Mac development team has slowly (very slowly!) been building out the features of the new reports engine. (When the modern Quicken Mac originally came out in 2015, it had a limited number of reports that had been created for the underwhelming 2010-era Quicken Essentials.) It still lacks some functionality and types of reports that existed in Quicken 2007, but all signs are that they are working on continuing to add functionality. Meanwhile, thinking about things a little differently rather than comparing directly to Quicken 2007 does sometimes yield usable, if not optimal, ways to work with the current program.

Fixing mistakes with categories is, fortunately, pretty easy. Open Windows > Categories. Scroll or search for a category that you created in error. Click on that one, and then Command-click on the one you want to merge it with. (Actually, it doesn't matter which one you click on first.) Once you have two or more categories selected, the Merge Categories button at the bottom of the window becomes active. Click it, and Quicken will display a panel with the two (or more) selected categories allowing you to select which one you want to merge the categories into. Here, for example, I want to merge the mistaken category of "householding" I created into my category of "Household"



Click merge and voila, the categories are merged into the one you selected, and any transactions using the categories you merged are updated to the one you merged into.

Meg

Thanks for your quick reply. I tried the transaction report, but it gives me the total for each category; how do I separate the accounts and get subtotals for those?

Meg

It doesn't give me that option. It says: Category is a Row. I used to be able to organize it by category, then account, then payee. There aren't those options now--at least I cannot find them.

Meg

All I can get is payments by account, not sorted by category, and subtotaled only by account.

Meg

This is terrible! It is WORSE than any previous Quicken software. It doesn't answer the questions it used to, even in the awful 2015 version. I am really disappointed. Surely I cannot be the only person who is having this issue!

Meg

But thank you for your attempt at answering my questions. How do I delete all the reports that appear to have been saved--the erroneous ones?

jacobs

[Hmmm, this post seemed to travel through a time zone delay and show up an hour after Rick posted the same thing! ]

Just do the reverse of what @RickO originally wrote: row=category, column=account



You can customize the report for last year, and for only the categories and/or accounts you want. 

jacobs

@Meg  I'm not sure what you're finding so terrible. It certainly isn't worse than Quicken 2015, since they've only added a ton of features since then. Perhaps if you explained in more detail what you're trying to accomplish and why, we can help you figure it out.

jacobs

Adding: if you're looking to see the transaction details, in the Summary Report discussed above, you can double-click on any dollar amount in the report to open a window with the transactions that comprise that value, and you can print that report if you need to. I'm not sure I understand why you need tax-related values separated by accounts, but this can get you there. 

jacobs

To delete reports you don't want, you need to select the report so it loads, then click Delete Reports at the bottom of the Reports menu. 

Meg

Hi, @Jacobs! Thanks so much for your detailed information. Those of you who take the time to answer idiotic questions like mine are worth a ton of gold!

So what I wanted to do was get a report that I use yearly for listing specific categories, then sort by account and then sort by payee. Quicken 2007 used to allow this. I don't think the new Quicken does. If I can do this, then I more easily spot errors that I made --incorrectly categorizing a transaction, for instance. This is useful in many instances.

Also, Quicken 2007 had you "memorize" (a stupid word--why not "save"?) a report to save it. Now it appears any report you create is automatically saved. That wastes space and doesn't make sense to me.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions. I'll turn to your other posts now.

jacobs

@Meg  You can pretty much replicate the report you describe.

• Select Create Transaction report
• Select rows=account
• Customize the date range to last year
• Customize the accounts to only include those you want
• Customize Categories to only include those you want
• Create the report
• Click on the Payee heading

This gives you a report that shows what you described: "specific categories, then sort by account and then sort by payee". In your case, you might have had a three-level sort -- categories > account > payee -- but you can't do that in the current Quicken reports. You could create a report with Categories as rows, and then sort by either account or payee within reach category. I think on elf these options should allow you to do the review and error-checking of your transactions pretty readily.

And yes, the auto-save of every report you create can be annoying, but once you get used to it and get in the habit of deleting ad hoc reports you don't wish to save, I've found it's not too bad. 

Meg

Thanks, again, @Jacobs. Unfortunately, the report that is shown is harder to read and to print, with columns and rows. It is also harder to view the individual transactions. I do make mistakes sometime, and it makes it harder to find them. I do wish that Quicken would put the ability to sort and then sort by successive inputs, as I have previously described. I don't understand why, 13 years later, some of the most valuable reporting methods have still not been returned to the newer versions.

I do have one more (stupid?) question, again, prompted by mistakes I have made. I see that some categories I have created are either misspelled and/or duplicated. How do I merge them, so that the mistaken spellings and corrections are all put into the same category?

Thanks again for your help. It is tremendous.

jacobs

@Meg  In terms of the readability of the report, I wanted to make sure you're aware of a few things: (a) you can widen any columns that may be truncating text; just click on the divider between column headings (just as you do in adjusting an account register); and (b) you can add or hide columns to suit your need, such as adding the Memo column I find indispensable. For example, showing just one transaction:



I find this report easy to read.

The Quicken Mac development team has slowly (very slowly!) been building out the features of the new reports engine. (When the modern Quicken Mac originally came out in 2015, it had a limited number of reports that had been created for the underwhelming 2010-era Quicken Essentials.) It still lacks some functionality and types of reports that existed in Quicken 2007, but all signs are that they are working on continuing to add functionality. Meanwhile, thinking about things a little differently rather than comparing directly to Quicken 2007 does sometimes yield usable, if not optimal, ways to work with the current program.

Fixing mistakes with categories is, fortunately, pretty easy. Open Windows > Categories. Scroll or search for a category that you created in error. Click on that one, and then Command-click on the one you want to merge it with. (Actually, it doesn't matter which one you click on first.) Once you have two or more categories selected, the Merge Categories button at the bottom of the window becomes active. Click it, and Quicken will display a panel with the two (or more) selected categories allowing you to select which one you want to merge the categories into. Here, for example, I want to merge the mistaken category of "householding" I created into my category of "Household"



Click merge and voila, the categories are merged into the one you selected, and any transactions using the categories you merged are updated to the one you merged into.

Meg

@jacobs, what you describe in the Accounts view is easy. It's the reports that I find difficult. Listing things in rows and columns is not an easy way to see individual items at a glance within categories; I know that sometimes I make mistakes when entering transactions, and the "old" way of doing things made it easy to spot a "missing" transaction. It would be helpful to have the "old" way, as within a category, you could see each account and then each payee separately. For instance, if you have two insurers that are paid out of the same account, you could have a subtotal for each of them, as well as a total for "insurance." This is what I think is missing. Allowing one to sort by category, then by account, and then by payee would make this a snap.

jacobs

@Meg  What I showed above was a Report, not a view of a register. My point was that you could get something closed to -- not exactly -- what you're wanting to see. You said that "listing things in rows and columns is not an easy way to see individual items at a glance within categories", but listing things in rows and columns is exactly what you were doing in Quicken 2007. Please understand that I'm not arguing against the idea of being able to add additional layers of sorting or subtotaling; I'm just trying to illustrate you can do the error-checking you want in modern Quicken Mac, even though it doesn't allow three-level sorting.

In your example, if you created a transaction report with rows=category and then sorted the report by the Payee column, you'd be able to see all your insurance expenses by payee and with a total. What's missing is breaking it out by account, too. But you can make the Account field visible in your report, so you can see which expense is from which account, or alternatively, switch the sort order to Account. It's not quite as flexible as Quicken 2007, but for checking transactions, you might find it does the trick. Alternatively, you could generate the report, then click on Export to create a .csv file, open it in Excel or Numbers, and do the three-level sort you prefer. For year-end checking, perhaps doing that in a spreadsheet sorted exactly the way you want would be easier for you. 

Meg

I am trying to follow your instructions (again!), but as I said, I am not very smart about this. Can you please tell me what steps to take to make a report that has categories first, then payee, and omits all the payees where the answer is zero? I'm sorry to be so stupid!