Accounts Summary Report: Net Worth

daffo

I have accounts in both US dollars and in Canadian dollars. Since my most recent upgrade (Quicken for Mac Deluxe (Canada) 6.1.1), in the Accounts Summary Report, no matter which currency I select from the dropdown menu, the Net Worth shown is the sum of both currencies WITHOUT any conversion of dollars. The correct net worth for each separate currency can thankfully be found in the Net Worth report. But that does not excuse this bug in Accounts Summary, which is new.

jacobs

Accounts Summary is one of the half-dozen remaining "old" reports which came over from the predecessor 2010-era Quicken Essentials, which provided the core code base for the current Quicken Mac. We've been told that the old reports, which have various limitations and bugs, will eventually be removed from the program once they can be accomplished via reports using the new reports engine that's been developed over the past 3-4 years.

I don't know if Accounts Summary will be modernized or will simply fade away, because, as you note, the same information is available in the Net Worth report. My  guess is that since they built the modern Net Worth reports, there's no reason for a separate Accounts Summary report, and that they will not be doing additional work to make patches to it. Accounts Summary has a number of shortcomings, including that the default report shows all hidden and cloud accounts (although you can turn them off and save as a custom report). Also, it only shows the data as of today; you can't see your account balances as of another datum such as the end of last month or last year. The Net worth report defaults to today, but can show account balances as of any other past date, which is much more versatile.

You may want to report the problem with Accounts Summary using Report a Problem under the Help menu. You won't get a reply, but it is the best way of making the development team aware of the issue if they aren't already.

jacobs

Accounts Summary is one of the half-dozen remaining "old" reports which came over from the predecessor 2010-era Quicken Essentials, which provided the core code base for the current Quicken Mac. We've been told that the old reports, which have various limitations and bugs, will eventually be removed from the program once they can be accomplished via reports using the new reports engine that's been developed over the past 3-4 years.

I don't know if Accounts Summary will be modernized or will simply fade away, because, as you note, the same information is available in the Net Worth report. My  guess is that since they built the modern Net Worth reports, there's no reason for a separate Accounts Summary report, and that they will not be doing additional work to make patches to it. Accounts Summary has a number of shortcomings, including that the default report shows all hidden and cloud accounts (although you can turn them off and save as a custom report). Also, it only shows the data as of today; you can't see your account balances as of another datum such as the end of last month or last year. The Net worth report defaults to today, but can show account balances as of any other past date, which is much more versatile.

You may want to report the problem with Accounts Summary using Report a Problem under the Help menu. You won't get a reply, but it is the best way of making the development team aware of the issue if they aren't already.

BrianG

Now that the old Accounts Summary report has been deprecated, has anyone figured out how to re-create the same look and feel with a Net Worth report?

jacobs

The Accounts Summary report was just a snapshot of each account’s balance on a specific date. We’ll, that’s exactly what you can get with a Net Worth report. You can decide if you want all accounts, all but
closed accounts, or specific accounts. Although there’s a date range, only the end date matters for the Net Worth report.

Please post back if there is something in the old report which you cannot replicate in the new report.

BrianG

I'm looking for the same info, look and feel. Bar graphs with Assets & Liabilities up top of page on left with summary of assets, liabilities and net worth to the right with each account summarized below broken out into sections for Checking, Savings, Credit, Investing, Property & Dept.... It's the report I looked at every time I opened Quicken and the one that I sent to my spouse. The report was easy for the non-financial centric person to look at and quickly understand the entire financial picture at a given moment in time. Besides, it just looked good. The Net Worth reports are boring, with less info and not very intuitive.

jacobs

Oh, if you're looking for the exact same formatting and style, then as you see, it doesn't exist in the new reports.

But for the time being, you can still use the old Accounts Summary report if you wish; it's still available in the program. Personally, I never liked that report. For one thing, you can only get the account values as of today, not as of the end of last month, or quarter, or year. And it's full of a lot of accounts with $0 balances I've long ago closed, but there's no way to customize which accounts appear in that report. And the bar graphs that you like are simply one bar for Assets and one for Liabilities, which provided no visual representation I ever found useful. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.  

If you like the summary at the top of Assets by type, Liabilities by type, and "bottom line" Net Worth, that's the same information you see in your left sidebar. Or you could create a summary Net Worth report with all the categories collapsed, to mimic the summary section of the old report. You say the Net Worth report is boring, and yes, it lacks the simple little icons for each section -- but it's otherwise quite comparable. 

In any case, if you want the same info as the old report, you have it. I'm looking at my Net Worth report next to the Accounts Summary report, and they contain the same information. You say it has less information, but I'm not clear on what information is missing -- with one exception I'm aware of: the credit limit on credit cards appears in the old report but not in the Net Worth report. If you want it to look exactly like the old report, then you can still use the old report unless/until they remove it from the program.

BrianG

The old report doesn't include any new accounts, so useless now. Appreciate your perspective but it is still a terrible replacement.

jacobs

BrianG said:

The old report doesn't include any new accounts, so useless now.

Hmm, I don't understand that. I don't think Quicken was a concept of old or new accounts. To test, I just created a dummy new savings account, and it immediately showed up in the Accounts Summary report. (I didn't even need to close it and re-open it; it showed up instantly.)

As you said, I guess things are a matter of personal point of view. I mentioned several reasons why I find the Net Worth report tangibly better -- particularly the ability to omit closed accounts and to shoe is as of any prior date as well as today. I can create the top summary as well as the detailed accounts list with the New Worth Report; all that's missing is the little colored icons.

You can feel it's a terrible replacement, and I can feel it's a superior replacement -- this illustrates the problems the developers have in trying to please everyone.