Why is my category summary report not adding correctly?

lawoodrow

Very simple math but the numbers are wrong, and this is not an isolated event. For example, this month we have two items under gifts $229.00 and $955.19. Added together it should equal $1184.19. But the report adds these two numbers and gets $1202.86.

jacobs

rosenh said:

I just updated my Quicken... why on EARTH would they leave a report that creates an inaccurate report???

The old Category Summary report is one of the carry-overs from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials program which provided the core code base for the new Quicken Mac in 2014. Several years later, the developers focused on creating a new reporting engine, and over time, enhancing it to have greater functionality. Last year, they reached a point where it meet or exceeded the functionality of the old Category Summary report (with one feature missing). Somewhere along the way, the old report developed whatever bug causes it to sometimes omit data, but I'm guessing the developers either weren't aware or decided not to put time into trying to fix the old code.

I assumed they would remove the old report from the program shortly thereafter, but they haven't yet -- even though the product manager has said it will happen. I suspect the issue is that they have to write code to convert people's old category summary reports to the new summary or transaction report, and that that's complicated enough that they haven't tackled it yet. And they may or may not be aware of the extent of the problem with the old report. I agree that they should disable the creation of new reports, or insert a warning to users to carefully check the data in their report. Best will be when they remove the old report from the program entirely.

RickO

It appears you're using the Category Summary report from the Other Reports group. This report is an older deprecated report that has since been replaced by newer reports that utilize the new reporting engine under the hood. Category Summary is only included in the program for legacy continuity, but is known to have inaccuracies and errors.

The solution is to change to using the Transactions By Category report which will give you the same information but be more flexible in its display options and most importantly, be accurate.

rosenh

I just updated my Quicken... why on EARTH would they leave a report that creates an inaccurate report???

jacobs

rosenh said:

I just updated my Quicken... why on EARTH would they leave a report that creates an inaccurate report???

The old Category Summary report is one of the carry-overs from the 2010-era Quicken Essentials program which provided the core code base for the new Quicken Mac in 2014. Several years later, the developers focused on creating a new reporting engine, and over time, enhancing it to have greater functionality. Last year, they reached a point where it meet or exceeded the functionality of the old Category Summary report (with one feature missing). Somewhere along the way, the old report developed whatever bug causes it to sometimes omit data, but I'm guessing the developers either weren't aware or decided not to put time into trying to fix the old code.

I assumed they would remove the old report from the program shortly thereafter, but they haven't yet -- even though the product manager has said it will happen. I suspect the issue is that they have to write code to convert people's old category summary reports to the new summary or transaction report, and that that's complicated enough that they haven't tackled it yet. And they may or may not be aware of the extent of the problem with the old report. I agree that they should disable the creation of new reports, or insert a warning to users to carefully check the data in their report. Best will be when they remove the old report from the program entirely.

Siborg81

I'm having the same issue with both reports I add them up in both the Category Summary and Transactions by Category and they both don't total accurately.

RickO

Siborg81 said:

I'm having the same issue with both reports I add them up in both the Category Summary and Transactions by Category and they both don't total accurately.

The Category Summary report is known to have errors, but not the Transactions by Category report. Could you post a screenshot of the Transactions by Category Report that shows the error?