Can I control custom reports from changing every time I add a new account?

Kevin Roulston

I have several custom reports (about 20 or so) that I use to monitor my finances in Quicken. Every time I add a new account, Quicken automatically adds the new account to every report. I then have to go into each report and remove the new accounts and save each report.

I searched the community but couldn't find anyone else reporting this issue so maybe it's not a common frustration.

I don't think that there is any option within Quicken to prevent this from happening but to me it seems wrong to automatically add every new account into all custom reports.

Does anyone have experience with this and can recommend any way to work around this?

Frankx

Hi @Kevin Roulston,

You raise an interesting question, and I did a little research but couldn't find any similar questions being asked in the recent past.

So, I do not know exactly why Quicken made the decision to have the software always add new accounts to a user's existing reports. That being said, it appears that they had two choices - either to have the new account appear or not.  Had they made the decision to go with either choice, there would likely be half of users who would want the new account to be included and the other half that would be of the opposite view.  Personally, I would prefer that the new account appear in my saved reports than not.  I also think that being more inclusive, as Quicken's approach is with this issue, is easier for users because eliminating an account that appears in a saved customized report is more recognizable and easier for the user, than trying to remember that if I add a new account I must always also change my reports to include the new account, one report at a time.

My two cents - and maybe that all that its worth.

Frankx

Rocket J Squirrel

The funny thing is that Quicken already has a mechanism to prompt the user when some new "item" is added to the data file. I have only seen it happen for categories, though. It would seem that the best path would be to cause new accounts to also trigger this prompt. That would be consistent with current behavior.

Boatnmaniac

Rocket J Squirrel said:

The funny thing is that Quicken already has a mechanism to prompt the user when some new "item" is added to the data file. I have only seen it happen for categories, though. It would seem that the best path would be to cause new accounts to also trigger this prompt. That would be consistent with current behavior.

I have also seen this come up for new securities in some tax and investments reports but not in others.  Never figured out why that is.

q_lurker

I believe the question has been raised before with the same conclusion you reached - there is no specific alternative setting.  This Idea post is an example.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7864369/have-new-accounts-added-behave-the-same-as-new-categories-within-saved-reports#latest

My spin on the matter (not based on any knowledge or input from Quicken, Inc) is that the programmers chose to automatically add the new accounts so that a user would see the information and be reminded as to whether to include it or not.  The converse approach of assuming the user did not want it and not adding the accounts does not provide such a reminder. 

As noted in the other posts, they could certainly force a more direct 'what do you want' reminder.  

Kevin Roulston

Thanks for the responses of everyone. Most of the reports don't give any notice that the reports have been changed and I would prefer to have the option to add the accounts when needed. However in the scheme of things maybe there are more pressing needs to address in the software.

deschenesjac

I'm for the 'Saved Report Alert' as a way to let us decide what we want to do with the new account.