Quicken for Mac v6.2 Released

Quicken Marcus

Today we're releasing Quicken for Mac v6.2.

The biggest change in this release will go mostly unseen and unused and it's something we've been working on for over 3 to 4 months. What could this be? Well, over the course of the next year we are moving to a new bank connectivity and transaction download technology.  v6.2 contains the first phase of this tech.  The goal is to improve connectivity with the banks and to support all of the different connection and authentication methods the banks are deploying over the course of the next few years as they improve security and connectivity with third-party partners. The benefit for Quicken customers will be improved reliability and transaction data quality but also, in some cases, we have to make these changes just so Quicken can continue to connect to the over 14K financial institutions we currently connect to. In v6.2, when you create a new file and connect your banks, you may start to use the new technology but the vast majority of us will continue to use the old, tried, and true, transaction download tech meaning most of us shouldn't notice a difference. v6.2 sets the foundation for this transition which we estimate will take the next 6 months or so to complete.

In this release, you will also notice a visual update to the reconciliation screen which matches the re-reconcile window design. The goal was to remove the hidden, blue transaction list at the bottom of the first screen since it just added visual clutter and to expose more functionality that used to be hidden on the second screen.  In addition, we made the Prior Balance optional in the Statement reconcile on the first screen because there were cases where entering a value could mess things up like when you're reconciling multiple months of statement in one session. It's not really required but we use it to decide where to put an adjustment either at the beginning or end of your reconcile if one is needed.  In any case, this is slightly changed.


The other change we've made is that Help now points to a unified, online help system on Quicken.com. This has a number of benefits. First, this allows people doing Google searches to be able to find our help documentation. We find that more people use Google to get help on Quicken than use our own in-product help.  Second, when you do a search on the support site, we can include community, video, and FAQ resources in the search results so you'll be able to see all the content we have on the topic you're searching for.  Finally, we can update the help more often and keep it up-to-date.  We haven't really done a good job of this in the past but hope to improve this going forward.

Even though there aren't a lot of new features in this release, v6.2 is a major milestone for us because of the changes we've made under the hood that will benefit all of us in the future.

If you find issues in v6.2, please report them here as we'll be monitoring this thread for issues and will be able to react faster.

UPDATES

• 5/13 - Starting to roll out v6.2 to a select number of people. If you want to try it out now, just go to the Quicken : Check for Updates menu item and you'll be able to download it immediately.
• 5/27 - We released v6.2.1 with some minor bug fixes and improvements to the transaction download process. We're still in a staggered release mode so not everyone will see the upgrade notice but if you want to upgrade, just go to Check for Updates under the Quicken menu.
• 6/2 - 6.2.1 is now available to everyone.

  

Gilles9

Conection to "National Bank of Canada new login" does not work for Quicken Connect
after updating my production datafile from 6.1.1 to 6.2

However it is working fine with the 6.2 beta datafile I used for testing ( the datafile used for testing the 6.2 beta was created from scratch by importing all my accounts from my production 6.1.1 datafile )

this is surprising as 6.2 released has the same version number as the last 6.2 beta
Now I use the Datafile created for testing beta 6.2 with the release version and it became my production datafile

Just for you to know, as I have deleted my former 6.1.1 datafile updated to 6.2 because the Quicken Connect did not work for that Financial institution.

It may be something you want to look at

Quicken Marcus

Gilles9 said:

Conection to "National Bank of Canada new login" does not work for Quicken Connect
after updating my production datafile from 6.1.1 to 6.2

However it is working fine with the 6.2 beta datafile I used for testing ( the datafile used for testing the 6.2 beta was created from scratch by importing all my accounts from my production 6.1.1 datafile )

this is surprising as 6.2 released has the same version number as the last 6.2 beta
Now I use the Datafile created for testing beta 6.2 with the release version and it became my production datafile

Just for you to know, as I have deleted my former 6.1.1 datafile updated to 6.2 because the Quicken Connect did not work for that Financial institution.

It may be something you want to look at

Thanks. That is really odd since they are the same code. One possibility is it worked in an earlier version of the app but we accidentally broke it or our aggregator broke it in newer versions.  Let me reach out to you directly to discuss.

Gilles9

Fixed, Thank you Marcus

gojohn

I have a problem that has been getting worse over time. While it's not directly related to the 6.2 release, I find that Quicken pauses for 5 seconds for each character I type in the Payees & Rules search box. Auto-completion of payees in the register is super fast. I've tried a number of suggestions based on replies in a thread I started <https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20180034#Comment_20180034>; but nothing helps. Is there a way to open up a bug report on this?

Snoopy FC

gojohn said:

I have a problem that has been getting worse over time. While it's not directly related to the 6.2 release, I find that Quicken pauses for 5 seconds for each character I type in the Payees & Rules search box. Auto-completion of payees in the register is super fast. I've tried a number of suggestions based on replies in a thread I started <https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20180034#Comment_20180034>; but nothing helps. Is there a way to open up a bug report on this?

Go to the help menu, and submit the issue via the report a problem.  I've done that for several issues I've had.  

jacobs

Be aware that if you use Report a Problem, you won't get an acknowledgement or reply, so there's no way you'll know if they see it as a bug or not. Unfortunately, for an issue like this which is likely due to something in your data file that is not affecting multitudes of other users, there's a good chance the person reviewing the submissions won't be able to reproduce your issue, and if they can't, it's discarded and not recorded as a bug.

If @Quicken Marcus is reading this thread, he can hopefully tell you if the problem you've described with the slow Payees search is a known issue or how to best get this on their radar.

Quicken Marcus

gojohn said:

I have a problem that has been getting worse over time. While it's not directly related to the 6.2 release, I find that Quicken pauses for 5 seconds for each character I type in the Payees & Rules search box. Auto-completion of payees in the register is super fast. I've tried a number of suggestions based on replies in a thread I started <" rel="nofollow">https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20180034#Comment_20180034>; but nothing helps. Is there a way to open up a bug report on this?

Hi gojohn, quite honestly these forum posts right after we ship are the best way to get something on our radar. I'm not aware of any issue regarding search in the Payee screen but I'm guessing you might have a huge number of payees and we haven't done a good job of indexing or optimizing the search in that screen. I'll contact you offline to work with you directly.

jacobs

@Quicken Marcus For two quick points of data, I compared notes with @gojohn -- he has about 5,200 Payees in his file, while I have I have about 4,700 Payees in mine. I don't experience the slowness in the Payees search field that he does, and it's hard to conceive that his additional 500 Payees is making a massive difference. So perhaps it's something more than the raw number of Payees?

Just Lurking

I may have encountered two bugs, or perhaps these are two design decisions that I simply don't understand.

1. Reconcile functionality.

I used the reconcile functionality on an old account that I barely use and that hasn't been reconciled since last year. I first tried to reconcile with the online balance, and the balances didn't match. So I then started going month-by-month, using the "Use statement balance" option in Quicken and reconciling to the balance of my account at the end of each month. As I did this, Quicken helpfully adjusted the date for me, I first started with 12/31/2020, and then during my next reconcile Quicken chose the end of the next month, i.e. 1/31/2021, then 2/28/2021. A small but very nice and appreciated touch!



My issue occurred after fixing a couple of transactions that were throwing off the balance. I now believed my account should reconcile, so rather than  continuing to reconcile one month at a time, I wanted to jump right to the end. I clicked the reconcile button and this time chose "Use online balance." However, Quicken still is under the impression that I only want to reconcile through 2/28/2021. Instead of showing me all the transactions through today, it's only showing me transactions through 2/28/2021. It basically is forcing me to continue using the "Use statement balance" option.

2. This definitely might be a design decision because I was able to recreate it in 6.1.x, but I'll list it here just in case as it scared me and I really don't think it should work this way.

I download all my transactions across many accounts. Some of these transactions are transfers between accounts, and when I categorize the transfer (e.g. checking to savings) Quicken usually helpfully finds a matching transaction on the other side and offers to link them. Great.

The other day I was categorizing a transfer, and I accidentally selected the wrong account as the destination account. As Quicken did not find a matching transaction (since it was the wrong account), it created a new linked transaction in the wrong account. I realize that this is by design and often useful/helpful. In my situation this was not desirable, and fortunately, I caught the issue fairly quickly, and I "fixed" it by deleting the newly created linked transaction.

Here's the bug / questionable design decision: when I deleted the newly created linked transaction (that was accidentally created in the wrong account), the original downloaded transaction was also deleted! I was able to save myself some heartache by "Undoing" the last few transactions (thank goodness for that feature and for the google search which educated me about it) but I was briefly worried and thought I would need to try and manually download a single transaction from the FI or restore from backup.*

*Side note: a "Trash bin" for deleted transactions would have been very welcome in this instance.

jacobs

@Just Lurking Creating the transfer to a different account did what it should have. There's no way for Quicken to know what account you're transferring to, so if you say Account X, I don't think there's any way it would be able to say "Are you sure you didn't mean Account Y, because you transferred funds there last month?"

If you delete a linked transaction, it properly should disappear from both accounts. I understand this wasn't your intent, but again, if you delete the transaction, I'm not sure how it would have the smarts to say, "Hold on a sec -- do you want to delete the other side of this transaction, which came from a download?" If you have just a plain downloaded transaction, you can click and delete it. So I'm not sure why, or even how, you'd expect it to work differently if you've edited the transaction into a transfer to another account.

As you discovered, the better action here would have been to undo to edit to the original transaction creating the transfer, rather than deleting the transfer. But even if you knew that, if these steps didn't happen back to back, Undo might not have been a practical course of action.

One other thing: you said that if you hadn't discovered Undo, you would have had to revert to a backup or download a single transaction. If you had tried to download again, the transaction wouldn't have downloaded. That's by design: if someone deletes a transaction, they usually wouldn't want it popping back up the next time they download. But the simpler alternative to reverting to a backup, to me, would have been to simply enter the transaction manually. (Even if you had to quickly log onto the bank's website to check the amount, that seems easier to me than quitting Quicken, finding the most recent backup, restoring, it re-downloading, and trying to recall if you had done anything else in Quicken you need to re-do.)

jshaf

Thanks for updating but is this where the users are asking for improvements? Bank Connectivity - always. Reconciliation work - not sure. In 25 years of using quicken I have never used the reconciliation tool. But, I do use the budget and reports weekly, if not daily. Can we get the budget and reporting on par with the windows version? Thank you for the work improving these other areas.

jshaf

^^^ https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7894122/include-scheduled-transaction-amount-when-viewing-entire-budget-year-budget#latest

Just Lurking

jacobs said:

@Just Lurking Creating the transfer to a different account did what it should have. There's no way for Quicken to know what account you're transferring to, so if you say Account X, I don't think there's any way it would be able to say "Are you sure you didn't mean Account Y, because you transferred funds there last month?"

Yes, as I tried to make clear, I made a mistake and I don't fault Quicken for creating the new linked transaction. I was just describing the chain of events.

jacobs said:

If you delete a linked transaction, it properly should disappear from both accounts. I understand this wasn't your intent, but again, if you delete the transaction, I'm not sure how it would have the smarts to say, "Hold on a sec -- do you want to delete the other side of this transaction, which came from a download?" If you have just a plain downloaded transaction, you can click and delete it. So I'm not sure why, or even how, you'd expect it to work differently if you've edited the transaction into a transfer to another account.

My simple brain is asking why shouldn't Quicken know the difference between a downloaded transaction and a newly-Quicken-generated linked transaction? If I delete the "main" (downloaded") transaction, I can understand why the Quicken-generated linked transaction should also get deleted. I just never in my wildest dreams expected the reverse to be true. At the very least please give me a warning!

Again, maybe this is all very logical and how it's always worked from the perspective of Quicken experts, but even though I've been using Quicken for a couple of years, I was stunned to notice it silently delete one of my downloaded transactions when from my perspective I was just trying to correct a simple mistake.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is from my naive perspective there was no obvious way to undo my mistake after I had created the wrong transfer. From experimentation, I now know that I can "unlink" a transfer by going to the originating transaction and removing the transfer category, but at the time, it seemed entirely logical to me to simply "delete" the errant linked transaction. I feel pretty strongly that at the very least Quicken should warn what will happen and not simply delete something silently.

This is definitely drifting off-topic, but as I mentioned in my original comment, a "trash can" for deleted transactions would give some peace of mind in these sorts of situations.

jacobs said:

If you had tried to download again, the transaction wouldn't have downloaded. That's by design: if someone deletes a transaction, they usually wouldn't want it popping back up the next time they download.

I had been planning on trying to download a single transaction as a Quicken or Quickbooks file from the FI, and then import that file into Quicken. Would that also not have worked because it would recognize the transaction ID as one that has been deleted?

jacobs said:

But the simpler alternative to reverting to a backup, to me, would have been to simply enter the transaction manually. (Even if you had to quickly log onto the bank's website to check the amount, that seems easier to me than quitting Quicken, finding the most recent backup, restoring, it re-downloading, and trying to recall if you had done anything else in Quicken you need to re-do.)

Yes that makes sense, it's just that historically I have been leery about manually entering transactions that should have downloaded because I was afraid there might be some useful information in the download that might be hidden or non-obvious that I neglect to recreate in the manual transaction. As I get more comfortable with Quicken I'm learning that that's probably not the case...

jacobs

Part of the problem, perhaps, is from my naive perspective there was no obvious way to undo my mistake after I had created the wrong transfer. From experimentation, I now know that I can "unlink" a transfer by going to the originating transaction and removing the transfer category, but at the time, it seemed entirely logical to me to simply "delete" the errant linked transaction. I feel pretty strongly that at the very least Quicken should warn what will happen and not simply delete something silently.

I think the misconception in your head is that there were two separate transactions, and that you could therefore delete one without affecting the other. I think the terminology "linked transaction" possibly contributes to this; it sounds like one thing is "linked" to another. In reality, a transfer transaction is simply a single transaction which exists in two places, rather than two transactions with something tying them together. 

In this case, upon discovering you made the transfer into the wrong account, the fix would have been to simply edit the transaction's transfer field to the correct account. Again, you're not "unlinking" two transactions; you're editing one transaction.

I think once you understand this how what transfers work in Quicken, you won't have any confusion or concern in the future about how to correct an error.

I had been planning on trying to download a single transaction as a Quicken or Quickbooks file from the FI, and then import that file into Quicken. Would that also not have worked because it would recognize the transaction ID as one that has been deleted?

Exactly right. Each transaction you download from a financial institution carries with it a unique transaction identification code -- the FITID (Financial Institution Transaction Identification). That number is stored in a table in Quicken, and new downloads are checked against those numbers so that only transactions with new numbers are imported into Quicken. This is what prevents a deleted transaction in Quicken from re-importing the next time you download.

I have been leery about manually entering transactions that should have downloaded because I was afraid there might be some useful information in the download that might be hidden or non-obvious that I neglect to recreate in the manual transaction. As I get more comfortable with Quicken I'm learning that that's probably not the case...

Yes, there's absolutely no harm, downside, or reason to avoid entering a transaction manually. (I enter most of my transactions manually, but that's another story.) Click on one of your downloaded transactions and select View > Show Inspector (or Command-Option-i). The bottom part of the Transactions Inspector window shows you 5 fields of data exactly as imported from your financial institution, starting with the FITID. The top section shows all the fields as they exist in Quicken. (This can be useful if a Payee name is wrong, so see exactly what came from the bank and what Quicken turned it into, so you can perhaps create a Payee Renaming Rule to insure future transactions from that Payee use the name you want.) Other than what you see here, there is no "secret sauce" from downloaded transactions. And so if you enter transactions manually, you're missing nothing.

(If you manually enter a transaction which subsequently downloads from the financial institution, Quicken will in some cases auto-match them and merge the manual and downloaded transaction into one; in other cases, you can manually tell Quicken to match the two transactions. You can also undo a manual or automatic match if you find, for instance, that a downloaded transaction is matched to the wrong Quicken transaction. Some users like to manually enter some of their transactions when they make them -- a credit card payment, for example, or a payment by check -- so it's in the register right away; when the payment clears the bank and downloads, the manual and downloaded transaction are merged not one, and you can control via a preference setting whether Quicken keeps your original date or switches the transaction date to the date it was posted by the financial institution. This is why Date Posted is one of the fields which is downloaded, and visible at the bottom of the Transaction Inspector )

smayer97

jacobs said:

...

I think the misconception in your head is that there were two separate transactions, and that you could therefore delete one without affecting the other. I think the terminology "linked transaction" possibly contributes to this; it sounds like one thing is "linked" to another. In reality, a transfer transaction is simply a single transaction which exists in two places, rather than two transactions with something tying them together. 
...

I think you might be confusing UI and user interaction vs recording of the data in a database. Actually, unless the database is designed to have a separate table or create virtual entries in one table or register exclusively for "linked" transactions (which is unlikely as this would make the database and programming unnecessarily complex), linked transactions are actually 2 separate entries, one in each table or register and use a hidden identifier to link them together.

BUT to the user, programmatically in Quicken, once 2 transactions are linked, when something is done in one linked transaction, a similar action is performed in the other. So the impact of behaviours on one is totally up to the programming for that interaction.

jacobs

smayer97 said:

Actually, unless the database is designed to have a separate table or create virtual entries in one table or register exclusively for "linked" transactions (which is unlikely as this would make the database and programming unnecessarily complex), linked transactions are actually 2 separate entries, one in each table or register and use a hidden identifier to link them together. 

@smayer97 Hmmm... You're saying each account in Quicken would be its own table? That seems unlikely to me. Since there are an indefinite number of accounts a user can have, it seems highly unlikely that each would have its own table. I think all transactions* likely exist in one transaction table. For each transaction, one field would be the account, and another field would be if there is a linked account. Thus it could be one transaction, not two. The reason I could see for two transactions -- within the same table -- and a link ID to relate them would be if it made queries of the database for registers and reports significantly faster. But modern SQL database design generally tries to use joins and views to avoid the need for such duplication of data in multiple places, which can potentially get out of sync.

(Even in the venerable old Quicken 2007, all the transactions lived in one table or 'file' in the database. When I hit the limit for the total number of transactions, I'd get a message that "the transaction file is full." Deleting a transaction -- irrespective of account -- would allow a new entry, in any account.)

*Banking-type transactions and investment-type transactions are quite possibly two different tables because the feature sets were developed at different times and the data fields are significantly different. If they are two tables, then transfers between banking and investment account would need some sort of transaction link field.

In any case, back to the original issues: whether the inner workings of the code use one record or two for a transfer transaction isn't important; the program functions to a user as if there is just one transaction. 

smayer97

Just because linked transactions MAY live in one file does not lead to the conclusion that a linked transaction is only one entry. In QM2007 the proof is VERY simple. Create a linked transaction (transfer). After it is created, change the memo field in it. Check the other side of the link... memo field is NOT the same. In new QMac, the behaviour is not the same... any field change on one side is reflected on the other.

The only way to know the actual structure of a database is to examine it directly. It is not always possible to infer its structure by the behaviours of the user sees. (Since QMac uses an open SQL database, it can be easily examined, according to Marcus). And SQL databases are typically relational, though even that does not mean that all data is necessarily linked via relations.

The only reason I am addressing this issue is because you drew an unsubstantiated conclusion on the database structure, and that the main point I want to make is that the structure cannot be concluded simply from the UI behaviours. So, I did not want anyone reading this to draw unsubstantiated conclusions.

jacobs

@smayer97 I'm just not doing this again; you've insisted I'm factually wrong while making incorrect statements yourself. But it's just not necessary to pursue this and go around again for the issue the original poster and I were discussing. As I wrote above, whatever the structure of the database, the program functions to a user as if there is just one transaction when there is a transfer. That's all that matters to this discussion. 

smayer97

...the program functions to a user as if there is just one transaction when there is a transfer. That's all that matters to this discussion. 

Yes that IS all that matters BUT it is NOT all you said. I am simply dispelling any misleading information. That's all. Nothing personal.

lewisnd71

Quicken has been downloading accounts well for years. NOW, it has decided that since I have two checking accounts at the same institution, and they are associated to two different named accounts in Quicken, that they can just dump transactions into whichever Q folder they want to. Also, the download failed to pick up deposits that are showing in the electronic access in my credit union. Major screw-ups! Please tell me what the heck is going on! this is with q for mac. Thanks. Dennis Lewis

Just Lurking

jacobs said:

Part of the problem, perhaps, is from my naive perspective there was no obvious way to undo my mistake after I had created the wrong transfer. From experimentation, I now know that I can "unlink" a transfer by going to the originating transaction and removing the transfer category, but at the time, it seemed entirely logical to me to simply "delete" the errant linked transaction. I feel pretty strongly that at the very least Quicken should warn what will happen and not simply delete something silently.

I think once you understand this how what transfers work in Quicken, you won't have any confusion or concern in the future about how to correct an error.

Hopefully I will remember in the future, but it would be nice if Quicken made it a bit more explicit in the user interface that changing (or deleting) one linked transaction will immediately change the one that lives in the other account as well!

jacobs said:

I have been leery about manually entering transactions that should have downloaded because I was afraid there might be some useful information in the download that might be hidden or non-obvious that I neglect to recreate in the manual transaction. As I get more comfortable with Quicken I'm learning that that's probably not the case...

Yes, there's absolutely no harm, downside, or reason to avoid entering a transaction manually. (I enter most of my transactions manually, but that's another story.) Click on one of your downloaded transactions and select View > Show Inspector (or Command-Option-i). The bottom part of the Transactions Inspector window shows you 5 fields of data exactly as imported from your financial institution, starting with the FITID. The top section shows all the fields as they exist in Quicken.

That is very helpful; thank you. I had futzed around with the Inspector before, but it's very useful to understand that the five fields at the bottom are the only things imported in a downloaded transaction.


Edit:

I'm seeing several discrepancies in my expense reports and the Quicken Home tab views. I made a new post with several screenshots as I don't think there were any reporting changes in this release, but I'm including the link below just in case:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7894293/expense-reports-and-home-overview-tab-are-not-footing-q-mac

debbeh

Hi Quicken,
This still did not solve my connectivity to TD Canada Trust, which is not working since Nov.
waiting for the fix to have the Auto download working again.

Please fix this.

lewisnd71

Connectivity problems for Quicken for Mac abound. It transfers transactions to the wrong account, downloads incomplete data, or just fails to connect to the Bank. I echo Debbeh. Please fix this. We are paying a yearly subscription for something that doesn't work. I rely on Q since Quicken2 for compiling a succinct report for tax purposes. Ugh.
Dennis Lewis

Gilles9

debbeh said:

Hi Quicken,
This still did not solve my connectivity to TD Canada Trust, which is not working since Nov.
waiting for the fix to have the Auto download working again.

Please fix this.

Just FYI
I never had a problem with my connection with TD Canada Trust

I suppose you have tried to "reset connection" or "change connection type" and restart a new connection from scratch

debbeh

Hi @Gilles9

I did everything possible here, and even was on the phone with quicken support for an hour. We even tried this on a Windows with new test files. Nothing worked. Always returning 101 error.

I can download the Quicken file from the bank and update the transactions manually. But not the Auto connect and download.

My TD Bank in the US is working and connecting fine. Only Td Canada Trust is not.

Could you let me know what connection type are you using?

Thanks

Gilles9

@debbeh

Hello,

I am using Quicken Connect, for bank account and credit card


My TD Bank account in the US is also downloading fine with Quicken Connect

It sometimes asks for a code which i receive by Messages, but randomly, for both TD Canada Trust and TD Bank US

And I am doing this in Canada

Just a thought, are you using a VPN ? ( I am not )

debbeh

@Gilles9

Nop No VPN and I am doing this from Toronto too. Quicken connect to TD Canada and asks for the code. Yet, once I enter the verification code, Quicken losses connectivity.

I called TD and they told me this error from Quicken. It only happens after the verification Code. and this started once I updated to 6.1 not before.

I really hope to find a solution for this.

Gilles9

I am surprised Quicken cannot fix this
Aggregator_in-Error 
Have you tried reverting to a Quicken version prior to 6.1 ?

Have they asked you to send the logs, or a Diagnostics report ?

Sorry there is not much more I can think of !

debbeh

@Gilles9

Yup, sent the logs and did everything they told me. I even asked them if I can revert back to an older Quicken, they said it is not possible. So stuck with it for now.

I even just now I downloaded quicken to my Son's Laptop and set up a new account using his TD Canada account. Yet, receiving the same error.

What Quicken version are you using?

Gilles9

6.2 released version ( not a beta )
with MacOs 11.4 on a Macbook Air M1