Improve handling of hidden accounts in dropdown lists and selection dialogs

Jim_Harman

Quicken treats hidden accounts differently from hidden securities, and differently in different places.

On the Investing Portfolio and Performance pages, if you select the Accounts dropdown and then Custom, there is a Show hidden accounts checkbox but the only accounts it puts in (parentheses) and hides if un-checked are those you have marked as Separate.

The same applies to the Accounts tab in report customization.

In short dropdowns, such as the From and To lists in Buy and Sell Enter Transactions dialogs for investing accounts, there is no Show hidden accounts checkbox and all accounts are included in the list. 

It would certainly be nice if Quicken made the following changes:

-- Make the Show hidden accounts checkbox show and hide accounts that are marked Hidden, not Separate

-- Add a Show hidden accounts checkbox (default un-checked) next to the short dropdowns


You might be able to work around this issue for the larger Account dialogs by marking your unused accounts as both Separate and Hidden. Marking them Separate also makes them excluded by default from reports, which is what you would want for most unused accounts.

I think at one time the display of hidden accounts in dropdowns was controlled by the Show hidden checkbox in the Account list, but that was pretty obscure.

See this discussion
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7885695/hidden-accounts-appear-in-drop-down-menus

for more info.

Frisky070802

A related issue: I just pulled up a saved report from many years ago which referenced accounts that are no longer active and so were hidden. All of a sudden, all these accounts were no longer hidden. And I see no way to check a bunch of accounts and say to hide them all -- I had to re-hide them one by one. Ugh.

Boatnmaniac

As a variation of this proposed improvement:  I would prefer that there be two boxes in the reports Customization dialog.

1. One box for "Show Hidden Accounts" which is checked by default.  If people do not want Hidden accounts included in the various reports, they can either uncheck this box or they can uncheck specific checked accounts as desired.
   
2. One box for "Show Separate Accounts" which is unchecked by default.  If people want Separate Accounts included in reports, they will need to manually check this box or they can check specific unchecked accounts as desired.

But I do agree with the bottom line:  There needs to be a way to better distinguish between Hidden and Separate accounts.

q_lurker

This continues to be a problem.  May be related to the more recent addition to report customization requiring first a selection of All Accounts, or Selected Accounts.  

Somewhere along the line, a Tools / Manage Hidden Accounts option appeared, but that has not helped.  That tool created two classes of Hidden Accounts, but neither option apply to the Account Dropdowns used for a multitude of reports and other presentations within the program.  All such customization dropdowns should be subject to one of those two "Hide" columns (IMO).  I'd associate the first "Hide" column (Account Bar and Account List) to the dropdown lists.   

Jim_Harman

Update: In R42.8 the wording for the Accounts selection tabs for reports and the Portfolio views was changed to match how Quicken currently works:  

In the report customization, the All Accounts button now says All Accounts (excludes Separate accounts)

In both the report and portfolio view customization, the checkbox below the account list now says Show Separate accounts.

This does not address all the improvements discussed here, but it should help to reduce confusion.

Quicken Jayashree

Hello

We are trying to understand the use cases for not including hidden accounts in reports, portfolio view customization, etc. What would help us answer this question is:

1. What type of accounts (banking/investments/others) do you generally hide in your Quicken data file?
2. Why do you hide these accounts?
3. What are the statuses of the accounts (active, dormant, closed etc.,) that you generally hide?
4. Do you hide all or some of the hidden accounts from 'transaction entry list' as well? (In Tools → Manage Hidden Accounts→ you will see an option to hide accounts from the transaction entry list → which hides the account from the 'Transfer' category list).

Please let us know.

Jim_Harman

Thanks for reaching out, @Quicken Jayashree

1. I hide all accounts that I am not using anymore. This includes Banking, Investing, and Asset accounts. I currently have 2 hidden Banking accounts and 18 hidden Investing accounts.
2. I hide them so they will not clutter up the Accounts bar (left side of screen)
3. These are dormant accounts that currently have zero balances. I never close old accounts because that is irreversible.
4. For all but one of the hidden accounts, they also have the Hide in Transaction Entry Lists box checked. The exception is a normally empty offline taxable investing account that I use so that Roth IRA conversions are tracked correctly.

Re: hidden accounts in reports, sometimes I want to see them and sometimes not, depending on the purpose and date range of the report. If the account has had a zero balance for the whole period of the report, generally I do not want it to show in the report.

I have not used it extensively, but I think this is what the new "Zero balance accounts" checkbox in the Account Balances and Net Worth report does. Or is it zero balance at the end of the reporting period, or zero balance today?

It would be nice if the caption for that checkbox was "Include zero balance accounts" if that is what it does, and the question mark Help should say exactly what the option does. Also the Help for that option says that there is a global setting for that but it is not present in the Reports Only preferences in R49.22. The Help says the global option is "Don't show zero balance accounts". When you implement the global option, please make it the same - Show or Don't show - as in the individual reports!

q_lurker

@Quicken Jayashree

1. I hide any or every type of account - currently hidden are 9 banking, 6 credit cards, 9 investment, 4 asset, 2 liability
2. I hide them because they are not currently active and have not been for several years, like 5 or more. I don’t want them cluttering up selection drop-downs when I customize portfolio views or any reports or cluttering the account bar.
3. Within Quicken these accounts are 'active'. I don’t use Quicken’s closed feature because it cannot be undone. Dormant is not a Quicken status. In real life, such accounts are all closed.
4. All such accounts are checked as hidden in both columns of the Manage option - the Account Bar and Lists column and the Transaction Entry column.

Not asked - I do not want or consider these accounts to be Separate. When I do want them available for reports etc. I want them as part of my net worth or similar. Separate for me is a very special use setting applicable for tax or other reasons.

So I have 23 investment account 9 of which I consider hidden (2 column selection on the Manage hidden accounts tool) yet when customizing a portfolio view for accounts, I see all 23, instead of the 14 I am likely to want to select from. Likewise customizing an investment report, I must select from 23 rather than the likely (non-hidden) 14. For a more inclusive report, I am selecting from 59 accounts rather than 29. That is, I have 59 total account, 30 hidden and 29 I consider not hidden.

The Account Bar and Account List are managed fine (or adequately). The transaction entry seems to be fine. The deficiency is customization (for me, portfolio views and reports; maybe other dashboard features for others). Those customization features could follow the Transaction Entry check as far as I am concerned, or the other column, since I treat them the same. Indeed, the two columns have no distinction in my mind and usage.

Thanks for looking into this.

Boatnmaniac

@Quicken Jayashree - I hide all accounts of all types that are closed. I also hide a few rarely used accounts that are set up only for special circumstances.

In my custom reports I will select or deselect the hidden accounts depending on what I want the report to show. For instance, if I want to see spending for all earliest-to-date I will make sure to include all hidden accounts, regardless of which categories I end up selecting.

I still think that there should be two optional check boxes on the reports customization: One to show Hidden Accounts and one to show Separate Accounts. And IMO the defaults should be that the box for Hidden Accounts is checked and that the box for Separate Accounts be unchecked.

Scooterlam

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20358842#Comment_20358842

@Quicken Jayashree

1. All account types are subject to being marked as hidden
2. I hide account types because they are no longer used. Avoids clutter.
3. I regularly close accounts that I no longer use. These closed accounts are hidden in Account Bar/List and hidden in Transaction Entry List (by default) Note, closed accounts still allow changes to account details and editing of account register. There is no "dormant" account status.

4a. All of my open and closed accounts that are marked as Hide in account Bar/List are also Marked in Hid in Transaction Entry Lists

4b. For my open accounts marked as Separate, I always mark the account as Hide in Transaction Entry Lists but show in the Account Bar/List. These separate accounts are usually "informational" such as Life Insurance, SSA, Credit Card Reporting Agencies, IRA, Law Firm, where I used the account detail for contact information, description and other important information. Register itself is not used.

As an aside, in Reports under Customize Gear>Accounts tab, you have changed the Show Hidden Accounts to Show Separate Accounts. This has changed recently. I would like to see the ability to filter out my CLOSED accounts, in the list, as well. Image. I have many, many closed accounts now over 30 years of quicken use. Its a cluttered mess to find my open accounts in this account list. This is mainly an issue with reports that are expected (or defaulted) to show only currently open account data and not historical data (net worth).

Below is a standard Quicken report showing this issue. Account names appended as "CL" are closed in Quicken. I would like to filter these in the list. YES, i know I can rename them zzz <Account Name> and drop them to the bottom but that will mess with sorting options in other areas. Can you add the ability to filter from view closed accounts in this Account tab table?

Quicken Jayashree

Thank you for the responses. This is very helpful!