Reports handle internal "transfers" incorrectly after R34.16 update

tivolo

I just updated to R34.16 and wanted to try out the new capabilities when saving reports. I opened a Net Worth report that I've had for years (decades, actually) and it looked good. But I found that if I click Customize, select the Categories tab (in which "All" is selected) and then close the Customize screen without making any changes, the report is re-rendered and is completely screwed up.

Upon inspection, the reason for this is that transfers between accounts included in the report (i.e. what used to be referred to as "internal transfers" but no longer shows up in Customization screen) are being mishandled. In particular, when funds are transferred out of an account, it seems to mis-compute the account value.

For example, I had an account with $1000 in it. That account was then closed and the money was transferred to another account, meaning the old account's balance is now $0. Of course, there was no change in my net worth due to this transfer. However, after the update and performing the steps I mentioned above, my net worth has dropped $1000 and the report shows the closed account with a balance of -$1000. If I open the account directly from the Account Bar, it correctly shows the balance of $0.

This bug is disastrous to my reports, although it appears this only triggers when I click the Categories tab in the Customization screen. So, it looks like that action causes some migration from the old Categories settings to new ones, and that is triggering this issue.

Chris_QPW

Internal transfers are not transfers between accounts.  They are basically balance adjustment transactions.
As in if you are in account "Checking" they are the transactions with the category of [Checking].


On the other hand there is now a "self-transfer" that was never there before, and the help doesn't explain the changes.  Note this is from the banking -> transactions report.


Note at the top level of the Net Worth report is looks like they filter out all the transfers.  There isn't any option on the Advanced tab to changed this.  It isn't until you drill down on a number in the report that you see the above selection on the Advanced tab.

As a test I went back to R27.1.31.20 and I don't see any difference in the behavior.

I'm not sure why your report is messes up.  I tried selecting all the categories as you suggested and see no difference in my report.

Have you tried recreating that report?

tivolo

Thanks, Chris, although I interpret the "Exclude internal" option differently than you do: "internal" doesn't mean "within the same account," it means "within the set of accounts included in the report." Thus, if Account A and B both included in the report, transfers between those accounts will not be included if "Exclude Internal" is selected (I have verified this in the Banking>Transaction report). If, on the other hand, there is a transfer to Account C, which is excluded in the report, then that transfer will be shown unless the "Exclude all" option is selected.

Quicken's description of the "Exclude internal" option is confusing -- the word "within" (as in "excludes transactions within accounts") is vague. That said, I've always understood it to have the behavior I described above, i.e. that it means that it excludes transfers "among" accounts included in the report. The new "self-transfers" option sounds consistent with what you described: transfers from an account to itself, which is how Quicken generally handles opening balances (note: self-transfers are a type of "internal" transfer, which may be why Quicken included this in their description).

That said, I did take your advice and re-created this report from the built-in Net Worth report and this seems to be working as expected. I literally went screen-by-screen thru the Customization options on the two reports and they are identical. Not sure why my old one is mis-computing the account balances, but it does seem to be consistently related to transfers being mis-handled.

One other interesting thing to note is that because the Net Worth report doesn't explicitly depend on transactions, only account balances, the Advanced tab for this report does not have the option for including/excluding transactions whether they are internal, self-transfers or otherwise. Presumably, this is set internally to "Include all" as this would be the only way to have the balances match whats in the register. So, perhaps their migration of my old report is somehow setting an exclusion option of some kind that's causing problems.

Regardless, thanks for the help. Looks like I'll probably have a few reports to re-create now. :smile:

Chris_QPW

Another person pointed out that some time back they changed these settings without updating the help documentation.  Here is a link to a thread giving the definitions (which line up with your understanding):
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7891643/transfers-including-excluding

From reports in this forum it seems that it isn't that uncommon that saved reports get messed after installing a new release.  That is why I suggested it, and I'm glad that worked for you.

I did try a saved Net Worth report I had and it worked OK, so I don't know exactly what caused the problem for you.

I do know that the patch release before this one had problems with saved reports, where the account selections were wrong especially ones that were on the toolbar.  This patch fixed that problem, but it is certainly within reason that something was changed that affected your reports.