Quirk - transactions not included in report due to certain Payee characters? (Q Mac)

BarryOH

I have a report that lists all transactions in a category for a year. There are a couple of transactions with the Payee = Cooper, Cindi which do not show up in the report. A duplicate transaction with the Payee = Speelman, Joshua shows up. If I change Cooper in the Payee field to anything else it shows up.
Additionally, I have a similar report that shows only a sub-category of the other report. It shows the Cooper transactions no problem. The selection criteria are identical to the larger report as far as I can tell except for the more limited sub-category selection.

UKR

What version, edition level (Starter, Deluxe, etc.) and release of Quicken are you using?   US, Canadian or other country version?
What is your subscription expiration date?
Click Help / About Quicken (Mac: Quicken / About Quicken) to get this information.
What version of Windows or Mac OS are you using?

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words …
Can you please capture one or more images of the parts of your Quicken window showing the issue, sensitive information blacked out as necessary to protect your privacy but annotated to describe the situation, and attach the image(s) here?
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac

Please save images to files of file type PNG, JPG, or GIF only. They're easier to work with than PDF files.

jacobs

I;d also be interested to know what report you are using in Quicken Mac. Thee very old "Category Summary" report is know to sometime omit data, although I can't tell you what specifically triggers such an omission. This old report is going to be removed from the program at some point, because the newer transaction reports are improved in many ways -- and don't suffer from data omissions.

The quickest way to know if this is the old Category Summary report is whether it shows this on the right side near the top:

If you see that, you're using the old Category Summary report. Instead, go to Transactions > Transaction by Category on the Reports screen, or Create New Report > Transaction. Set the parameters for the category(ies) and date range you want, and the new report should not omit data.

Let us know if this was the issue, or if we need to continue to dig to find out what's going wrong.

AlecFairhurst

I also am experiencing missing rows in a transaction report. I've got 16 rows I want to report on with dates from June 9th to June 21st. They all have the same Payee information and the same Category. I've updated the Memo/Notes column on all 16 rows with more information. When I run the report, it only shows the 3 rows from June 9th and the 3 rows from June 21st. All the other 10 rows between those two dates aren't showing.
I just upgraded to version 6.2.2 before creating the report, so maybe that's the issue. I haven't experienced missing rows in transaction reports prior to the update.

jacobs

@AlecFairhurst  The same as the original poster above, what report are you using? If it is the old Category Summary Report*, it is prone to omitting data in some instances, and you shouldn't be using that report. If it is any of the reports using the modern reports engine -- e.g. Category Summary by Year (or Month), or Transactions by Category --  then those reports are solid and reliable, and we'll need to understand more about the criteria you specified for the report. 

*A quick way to know if you are using the old Category Summary Report is if the top of the report on the screen looks like this:


If so, that's the old report, and you don't want to be using it. By contrast, a report constructed using any of the modern reports would look similar to this at the top:

AlecFairhurst

I was using the Transactions by Category report. I used all the default settings, but selected the one category I was interested in. All of the 16 rows I'm trying to report on have the same Payee information (i.e. "Email Trfs E-transfer Received"). All these transactions were downloaded from my bank. I updated the Category and Memo/Notes fields for each of these rows. The Memo field just shows who the transfer came from. For all but one of the rows, the amount was for either 4 or 5 dollars.

All that being said, I think I might have discovered the root cause of the missing data. I looked at the Transactions Inspector for each of the 16 transactions. In the Transfer field, the missing rows all say "Account not synced". I have no idea why that might be the case; could it be an issue with the bank? I reconciled the account in the hope that it would resolve the problem, but it didn't.

jacobs

What is the category for these transactions. Does it say just "Transfer"? If so, that's a special Quicken category which is not counted as an income or expense, and therefore won't be included in a transaction report which shows income and expenses. If you edit the category to be actual linked transfers to another account (e.g. "Transfer:[Account Name]") then you can explicitly add transfers to the report.

AlecFairhurst

The category I used is a custom one I created. It isn't "Transfer". Did you see my comment about "Account not synced"?

jacobs

If you're using a self-created Category, that's fine, but the Transfer field should be blank. Is there anything in the Transfer field? If so, I believe that's the root of your problem. If you enter something other than an actual account in the Transfer field, Quicken will accept it (and show a red arrow in the Transfer field) to indicate there is an Invalid Transfer in the transaction.

There are two types of transfers:

• A linked transfer to another Quicken account. This will show the name of the other account in the Transfer field, and "Transfer:[Other Account Name]" in the Category field.
• An unlinked transfer to represent money money to or from an account you don't have in Quicken. It will show "Transfer" in the Category column, and the Transfer column remans blank.

A situation may exist if you previously had a linked transfer to another account, but subsequently deleted the other account: Quicken will retain the name of the other account in the Transfer column (along with the red arrow denoting an invalid transfer), and change the Category to an unlinked "Transfer".

None of these transfer transactions will be included in a standard Category report, which only shows income and expenses, but not transfers of money between accounts. You can force the report to include selected transfers in the report by clicking the option in the report's Advanced tab to include transfers with accounts outside of report, and then excluding in the Accounts tab the account for which you want to see transfers. Transfers will show up on the report below Income ad Expenses, in a Transfers section.

If you are using a Transfer and a Category on a transaction, which Quicken allows in some circumstances, you should be aware that the product manager has stated that the ability to do so will be removed at some point in the future, because Quicken management has agreed that a transaction should not be able to be both a transfer and have a category; it violates the rules of accounting. Over the past year, the developers have created the way to include transfers in reports and more recently, to include transfer in budgets. Those two changes pave the way for Quicken to block users from having transfer transactions with categories. They haven't blocked this yet, but they will, and I suggest not creating such transactions. (We don't know what they will do with them when they eliminate categories with transfers.)

AlecFairhurst

I just realized the the Transfer column could be added to my account view. After I did so, I could see the red arrow you mentioned. For one of my bad transactions, I cleared out the "Account not synced" value and that transaction now appears in my report. All of the transactions I am trying to report on are Interac e-Transfers from probably a variety of different banks. I am guessing that there must have been a temporary glitch with either my bank or with the download process which must have incorrectly populated the Transfer column. I quickly scanned my 30-years worth of transactions for that account and didn't see anything similar.

So it looks like I'm good to go after I update the other rows. Thanks for all your help with my issue.

jacobs

@AlecFairhurst  I'm glad you've got it partly fixed and know what more to do to get your transactions and reports accurate.

One thing to keep in mind when you download transactions from a financial institution is that Transfer transactions will never be correct inherently -- that is, they won't download into Quicken as a linked transfer to a different account. All a bank or brokerage knows is that money went out or came in from somewhere else. The text of the Payee field might tell you the source/destination of the transfer, or perhaps not. But it will never create an actual linked transfer transaction in Quicken, because it doesn't know the name of your Quicken accounts, and the OFX standard for financial transactions doesn't attempt to deal with transfers. You will always have to fill in the Transfer account.

Except there's a way to automate this to a large degree, by create a QuickFill rule for a transaction from the specific Payee used in the transfer, if there's a unique Payee name for your transfer. Your QuickFill rule can include the linked transfer to another account. This way, when the transfer transaction downloads, the QuickFill rule is applied, and you get your transfer coded properly in Quicken. Alternatively, you can manually enter the transfer transaction when you make it, and have Quicken match the download to your existing manual transaction.

But you still have to keep an eye on such transfer transactions because they are, of course, happening in two different accounts at once. If you download from both financial institutions, it's quite possible for one of the downloads or the other not to auto-match correctly, so you could end up with two transfers in one account, and you'll need to manual drag the transactions together to merge them, or delete the one downloaded from the financial institution. Fortunately, most people aren;'t doing transfers every day, and once you know what to look for, it's pretty straightforward to keep things accurate.