Report based on keyword of Memo/Notes (10 merged votes) (Q Mac)

TomJF

Would you please implement a keyword search in Reports for the Memo/Notes column. My database dates back to 1981 and I often want to check the purchase date and cost of principal items like refrigerators, washing machines, auto batteries, cars, etc. Keywords of most items are entered into the Memo/Notes column of my database.

Thanks Tom

smayer97

Yes, a REPORT that can pull up only the lines (split lines) that matches the memo criteria, not the entire transaction (unless it matches).

This also would apply to the QuickReport that is only partially implemented, here:

Bring back Quick Reports

(click here for list of missing items from Quick Reports)

Also needed is the ability to save such a report.

jacobs

I do this all the time in Quicken Mac. The Search box searches the memo/notes fields. Click on All Transactions in the left sidebar, then enter the search term in the Search box. I'm not sure what you find missing?

TomJF

Thanks jacobs. This does work. I'm so used to performing this function easily and simply in QM2007 using "QkReport" that I had not worked out how to do it in the new Quicken. I greatly miss the the versatility and simplicity afforded by "QkReport" from QM2007.

jacobs

Like many things in modern Quicken Mac, at first it feels alien and worse. Then, after you work with it a little, you come to see that many things are just different, not worse. (And some are better. And some are worse. )

In terms of finding something in a memo field, I actually find it as good as doing a QuickReport in Quicken 2007: click All Transactions or Banking on the left, type the memo I want to find in the Search box, and press Return. The results come up fast, I can print the results if I want to (although most of the time finding it on-screen is all I need), and I can double-click a transaction if I need to see the split detail.

On key thing, if you use Memo/Notes extensively as I do, is to make sure you make this column visible on all your registers and group registers (like Cash, Banking, Credit Card, All Transactions). It's annoying to have to set up your columns in every register, but it's fortunately something you set up once and then forget about.

One other thing to mention: in the Search box, by default Quicken will search all visible columns. Sometimes, you might be looking for a specific word in a memo that also shows up in some other field. For example, let's say you want to find a payment for your annual Amazon Prime membership, and you enter "Amazon" in the Search field; it will find all the transactions where "Amazon" is the Payee, which is not what your intended. So sometimes, it's helpful to tell Search to only search the Memo/Notes field (or another field). You can do this by using what must be the tiniest icon in Quicken: in the Search box, just to the right of the magnifying glass icon, there's a small downward facing v-shaped symbol (a "caron") which looks like this: ˇ -- click on it and you'll see a drop-down list of all columns, and you can change the Search from "All visible columns" to just "Memo/Notes" or another field.

smayer97

jacobs said:

I do this all the time in Quicken Mac. The Search box searches the memo/notes fields. Click on All Transactions in the left sidebar, then enter the search term in the Search box. I'm not sure what you find missing?

The thing missing is what I stated above... Searching the register only brings up entire transactions and NOT just the split lines that meet the memo criterion. Also, any total generated = transactions totals and NOT the total of just the matching split lines matching. So this is STILL a missing feature in QMac.

Also missing is the ability to save the reports.

jacobs

@smayer97  I was answering the original question, not turning this into a feature comparison. I agree with you, Search in Quicken Mac doesn't fully replace Quicken 2007 QuickReports. But the issue here was how to do a keyword search of the Memo/Notes field to locate a specific purchase transaction by searching the Memo field -- and for that purpose, Quicken Mac Search works well.

smayer97

Well I took the CONTEXT of the Search in Quicken as per the TITLE..."REPORT based on ..."

Scott Rose

The old Quicken 2007 used to have the ability to generate reports based on "Memo" or "Notes".

I really need this capability in the new Quicken, so I can try to clean up my transactions from this Quicken bug:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20106426

smayer97

YES, YES, YES....this is a BIG hole!

rl4265

Great idea.

PL404

Hello,
I have been a Quicken user on Mac and Windows for years.  For the life of me, on Quicken Mac (not sure if this exists on the Windows version), I do not understand why the report features do not include the ability to create reports based on what is written in the Memo/Notes field. 

There are certain items of information that I can only capture by filtering the memo/notes field and I want an easy way to do it across accounts. 

For instance, tracking NET income (not gross).  That involves a split transaction with gross income (i.e., amount of my paycheck) as one split line, and then all the deductions from that gross pay as subtractions on the other split lines (i.e., Fed and state taxes, FICA, Medicare, health insurance, etc.).  That leads to a number that goes in my bank account (i.e., net income).  But there is no easy way to capture that number for a global report (I can't tag the transaction because it is already tagged "split"). 

So I end up writing "net income" in the Memo/Notes field to reflect how much is actually being deposited in my bank account.  But again, there is no easy way to press a button or two and get a report of seven years worth of net income data, because Quicken won't let me create reports based on what is written in the Memo/Notes field. 

Please add this feature ASAP!  Shouldn't be hard to do right?  Thanks for reading, Paul

jacobs

I agree that generating a Report based on text in the Memo/Note field is a highly desired feature. I hope more people will vote for this idea (scroll to the top of the page, look for the yellow box under the initial post, and click the arrow to add your vote.)

@PL404  As I understand it, when Quicken Mac was being initially built, the developers felt that many people using the prior generation products used Reports (e.g. a Quick Report in Quicken Mac 2007 to search for Memo text) when they really just wanted to locate a specific transaction or group of transactions. So they built a robust Search feature, and felt Search would replace Reports for certain things. I think they were partially correct -- I do use Search for many things I used to do with Quick Reports -- but they didn't assess correctly that people might want to save reports, like you describe above, or combine multiple search criteria as you can do in Reports but not Search.

That all said, you can easily get a report of your Net income currently... perhaps with one small tweak to how you record your transactions. The key is to have a unique Payee for your pay deposits. That is, don't use "Deposit" or "Pay", but use your employer name or something like "Deposit (My pay)" and "Deposit (Spouse pay") for each deposit entry. Then, simply do a search for that Payee name. you can contain the dates to any range you want. The resulting search screen will show your actual deposits -- your net pay -- and will show the total of the transactions. And this doesn't require you to record a Memo/Note of net income; better, it gives you a total, whereas your notes are not totaled.

PL404

Hi Jacobs I appreciate that response and the upvote on the idea. I have done what you suggested and in fact my paychecks have a unique payee name. And it does give me some insight. But I would say the drawback to the method you suggest (unless I misread it) is that I can't get a report format where I can quickly see my net income variability (I get paid by the hour) over many years or even over many months over those years. I want time-columns and not just transactional lists of data. That's where reporting really has power for me. I agree, the Search feature is robust, but even that does not give the options and insights that reporting gives the user.

PL404

My workaround: I created a "net income component" tag for each item in my paycheck split transaction (total pay minus each deduction). Then I use the tag-based reporting features to get the appropriate report. Still want this "memo/notes" field reporting option though, so I can just write "net income" in the total split line (the one you see in the register before you click into the split) and be done with it.

jacobs

@PL404  Ah, you hadn't mentioned the desire to see notes about time, just net pay. Search will show you your net pay and total it. But of course Quicken doesn't have a field for hours; if you record your hours in the notes field, you can have a list of those transactions, but no way to total them without exporting to a spreadsheet and doing some formatting work .

One shortcoming of Search is that if you search for text in Memo/Notes which is in a split transaction, Quicken displays a register showing the overall transactions containing such split lines, not just the split lines themselves. So if you record your hours in the Memo/Notes field of a split line for gross pay (e.g. "30 hours"), and do a Search for the text "hours" in the Memo/Notes field, it will correctly find all your pay transactions -- but you won't see the split line for the gross pay with the number of hours. This is something I hope the developers will address in the future, along with a number of other shortcomings with split lines (like find and replace not working on split lines).

ifunlisted

Would also be nice to have search filters in reports that work as an "OR" function, not just as an "AND" function. Eg 1; right now you can't search/filter for transactions in a report that have EITHER a specific Category OR a specific Tag (like trying to run a report for all transactions that are either categorized as Personal Cellular or tagged as Business Cellular for a combined cellular report). Eg 2; right now you can't search/filter in a report for all transactions that contain specific text in a Category OR a Tag OR a Memo.

jacobs

@ifunlisted Depending on the specifics of what you need, you may find you can accomplish this via Search in the transaction register rather than a report. Select All Transactions in the left side bar. In the Search box, enter the term you want to search for. This will search for that text in all fields, so it will find the text in the Category, Tag, or Memo fields. You can also enter a date range if you want to limit the scope of transactions. You can sort the results by date or one of those fields and print a report of the results.

I’m not saying this is as desirable as being able to specify multiple search criteria for a report, but I find it gets the job done for many cases where I need a report which can’t be generated via Reports. 

ifunlisted

Thanks @jacobs I do use the search box quite often (both the register search and the global search) and helps to get me where I need to go. In this case --and for the types of reports I use-- I prefer to have them saved as a dynamic report that I can just pull up every month or two in order to monitor spending. It's part of a whole process I'm trying to streamline with a business account and personal account in the same Quicken file. There's a discussion here https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7899877/is-it-possible-to-filter-the-same-transaction-report-by-category-or-tag#latest

SVanDee

Is there a quick way to tell Search to include hidden accounts?

jacobs

SVanDee said:

Is there a quick way to tell Search to include hidden accounts?

Yes: select All Transactions in the left sidebar. Search will include hidden accounts. 

TTSguy

Filter by memo could sure help me!

Jim3

This is important and it apparently exists on the Windows version (a hard to find option under category reports). Q7 for Mac had a useful Quick Reports by Memo, which doesn't exist on Quicken Premier for Mac. I use it for vacations, prefixing all transaction memos with something unique, like Cruise'22, to create a report on every related expense for the trip. Now I have to export a wide date range of transactions to a spreadsheet and use Excel to sort, filter, subtotal, and print my vacation reports, since Quicken/Mac cannot generate such a simple report.

jacobs

I completely agree with the desire for Memo Text as a report criterion. In the meantime…

Jim3 said:

I use it for vacations, prefixing all transaction memos with something unique, like Cruise'22, to create a report on every related expense for the trip. Now I have to export a wide date range of transactions to a spreadsheet and use Excel to sort, filter, subtotal, and print my vacation reports, since Quicken/Mac cannot generate such a simple report.

See if you can get what you need using Search rather than a Report. For instance, click All Transactions in the left sidebar. Make sure you have the Memo/Notes column visible in this register. Now enter "Cruise'22" in the Search box, and Quicken will display in the register all transactions with that text. You can print or export this register. 

It's not a perfect solution. You can't save and re-use a Search as you can a report. Perhaps more importantly is that Search doesn't break apart transactions with splits; it shows transactions. So if one transaction has a split line for "Cruise'22" and other split lines for other things, the Search will show the entire transaction, and the total of the Search will be for all the selected transactions -- not just for the whole transaction plus split lines with the "Cruise'22" memo text.

When the developers who initially created the modern generation of Quicken Mac were laying the foundations for the new program, their philosophy was that there were a lot of things users did as reports in Quicken 2007 which were really just quick searches or ad hoc reports. Quicken 2007 did not have a powerful search feature, so the developers thought if they built a powerful search functionality in the new Quicken Mac, it would replace the need to configure reports for simple/quick queries. I think they were largely correct in that approach; the Search in Quicken Mac today is much, much better than the old Find in Quicken 2007. But while Search answered perhaps 80% of the needs, the developers failed to realize it wasn't enough — particularly because reports deal with split lines independently and Search does not. And the inability to use the Memo field as a criterion in reports really hurt those of use who use Memo notes extensively to document our transactions. Hopefully, the developers will devise a way to add Memo text as a criterion in Reports.