Report auto-refresh after transaction edits?

toddz

In a Category Summary report, the report does not auto-refresh anymore, after editing a transaction included in the report.

That used to work, but seemed to stop a few months ago. Now, I must close the report, reopen it, and scroll down to where I was before. Very annoying.

Am I missing something?

jacobs

Yes, a columnar report with 316 columns would be pretty unwieldy!

I can't imagine why you need perhaps a hundred categories and hundreds of tags. If you have 100 categories and 300 tags, then picture that in the matrix form of that cross-tab report: that's 30,000 potential data points -- way more than anyone, even businesses, would need.

I suspect there are lots of creative ways Quicken users use tags, but I think the most common reasons are dividing by people (e.g. me, wife, child, parent, etc.) or purpose (e.g. track all my vacation expenses using my regular categories for food, entertainment, gas, etc. rather than creating a separate category and subcategories for vacation spending), or for people who use Quicken for tracking a business, for tagging different real estate properties or similar business units. Quicken Help has a pretty good basic explanation of how to use categories/subcategories versus tags if you click on Basics: Categories and tags overview.

jacobs

@toddz You are using the old Category Summary report. This report is a carry-over from the predecessor Quicken Essentials program, and it does not live update changes in the database. This and a few other old reports (in the Reports list under "Other Reports," with gray icons) will likely be removed from the program now that reports using the modern reports engine can replace them. If you use any of the modern reports, you will see that they do live update as changes are made in the database. So you should use Transactions by Category, or any of the other reports, instead.

toddz

@jacobs Thank you for the fast reply! You're right, this Category Summary report is grey and in Other Reports. I just tried the Transactions by Category report, but I don't see it using Tags to sub-group transactions within each Category, as my old report does. Is that not possible anymore? Can it be done with a different custom report? Thanks!

jacobs

None of the Quicken reports allows you to specify a primary and secondary sort order, such as transactions by category, and subtotaled by tag within category. 

But try the Category by Tags report (under the Crosstab subheading in Reports). It will show transactions by Category, with separate columns for all tags, or whichever ones you specify to include in the report. That should get you what you want, or close to it.

The other thing to know is that you can do a report by Transactions by Category report, add the Tags column, and click on the tags column to sort in Tag order within each category. It won't give you subtotals by Tag, but it will group things in Tag order. Or, depending on your need, you could do the opposite: Transactions by Tag, sorted in Category order. 

toddz

Thanks @Jacobs. This is VERY DISAPPOINTING. For years and years, I have used the (now deprecated) Category Summary report, which does exactly what I need: List all transactions, grouped and subtotaled first by Category, and within each category, by Tag.

So I can have
- Food
- - Coffee
- - - (tag: Me)
- - - (tag: Wife)

Then I can use those same tags in any other category, rather than building out sub-cats on so many cats.

For all the "advances" Quicken has made over the last few years, this is a MASSIVE STEP BACK, that will require a massive amount of work for me to keep using it.

jacobs

@toddz  I understand why you want this capability, but I'm unclear why the Crosstab report that I mentioned wouldn't fill that need for you. 

Instead of:
- Food
- - Coffee 
- - - (tag: Me)
- - - (tag: Wife)

You have:
                       Tag:me     Tag:Wife
- Food
- - Coffee             x.xx            x.xx

Double-click any number to see the transactions that comprise that value.

toddz

After so many years of using Quicken, I have 316 Tags. And many categories do not use the same sets of tags. I see why my example of "Me; Wife" tags might imply more consistency. But at this point, a grid of data, where every Tag is a Column, would be impossible to use. It seems like i'll need to tediously convert every Tag to a SubCategory. Maybe i've just been using Tags the "wrong" way, and I havent had much luck finding helpful tutorials on strategies for tags, reports, etc. I'm no accountant, and using quicken is generally a painful experience for me.

jacobs

Yes, a columnar report with 316 columns would be pretty unwieldy!

I can't imagine why you need perhaps a hundred categories and hundreds of tags. If you have 100 categories and 300 tags, then picture that in the matrix form of that cross-tab report: that's 30,000 potential data points -- way more than anyone, even businesses, would need.

I suspect there are lots of creative ways Quicken users use tags, but I think the most common reasons are dividing by people (e.g. me, wife, child, parent, etc.) or purpose (e.g. track all my vacation expenses using my regular categories for food, entertainment, gas, etc. rather than creating a separate category and subcategories for vacation spending), or for people who use Quicken for tracking a business, for tagging different real estate properties or similar business units. Quicken Help has a pretty good basic explanation of how to use categories/subcategories versus tags if you click on Basics: Categories and tags overview.

toddz

btw, the problem with CrossTab reports is that my Tags are often very specific to the Category. So, most tags are irrelevent to most categories, and a grid with a column for every tag, for every category/row, is TERRIBLE information design. The old reports simply grouped and subtotalled the tags, within the category, treating them essentially as sub-categories, but more flexible, as the tags can be used in multiple categories.