Most Calendar transaction postings are gray (Q Mac)

Bill

Since updating to Quicken Deluxe 6.3.0 the vast majority of posted transactions are gray whereas previous versions displayed these transactions in green, red or other colors.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @bill

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, although I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with the calendar. I was taking a look to see if I could replicate the issue but wasn't able to. I was wondering here if we could get a screenshot to see what exactly could be causing the issue. I'll leave an article down below on how to do so.

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

Once you get the chance please let us know more and we'll see what we can do to resolve the issue you're having.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

Bill

Screenshot attached. Note the number of transactions that are gray.

UKR

This is just a shot in the dark ...
based on your image, the calendar is set to display transactions for the month of July.
Transactions for the month of June are shown in gray, just to visually mark them as "outside of the currently selected month".
Somebody with in depth knowledge of how Q Mac works will have to confirm ...

Bill

Past and future transactions for the current month are also gray (with few exceptions).

lhossus

Not a person with in depth knowledge of what is going on here, but by inspection ...

In Quicken for Mac 6.3, the color scheme appears to be
Gray    Banking transactions
Green  Deposits to Investment and Assets and Loans accounts
Red     Withdrawals from Investment and Assets and Loans accounts
Blue    Net worth change

In Quicken for Mac 6.2, the color scheme appears to have been:
Green  Banking transactions
Red     Assets and Loans transactions
Blue     Investments: transactions, and overall daily gain or loss
Gray    Net worth change

... and a bit of research ...

Quicken for Mac Help (here) has this to say:

• Transactions are color-coded to indicate account type
• Green – Cash and credit
• Blue – Investments
• Orange – Assets and loans

(this help appears to be describing v6.2 colors assignments)

Note:
The calendar has three selections for what data to include in the calendar display:
- Show Transactions
- Show Balances
- Show Investment Changes
Selectively enabling these choices will determine which data, and therefore colors, appear in a calendar.

Some of my observations above are incomplete (e. g., loan accounts) as I don't have any sample data. 

garysmith87

I have Quicken Mac 6.3.1 and ALL my transactions are now in gray. Last month, this month, next month. Scheduled transactions. Credit card transactions. Checking account transactions. EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION IS GRAY.

jacobs

garysmith87 said:

I have Quicken Mac 6.3.1 and ALL my transactions are now in gray. Last month, this month, next month. Scheduled transactions. Credit card transactions. Checking account transactions. EVERY SINGLE TRANSACTION IS GRAY.

Yes, this is what @lhossus wrote above: transactions in banking accounts (checking, savings, credit card) are all gray.  If I set my calendar to only "Show Transactions", almost everything is gray. Transactions in investing, asset and liability accounts are green or red, depending on whether they are increases or decreases. except when I have a transfer. So if I have a paycheck deposit it's gray, and if there's a split transfer to a 401k account, that split amount is green. If I purchase a security with cash, that's red. If I have a cash dividend from a security, it's green.

If I set the calendar to "Show Balances," then the last line for each day is a blue bar showing the balance amount; to the right of the balance, it shows the percentage change in balance for that day, with the number value for increases in black and decreases in red. 

If I set the calendar to "Show Investment Changes," then top top line for each day on which there were any changes to investments (generally weekdays) shows the percentage change in investments, in green with an up arrow for an increase and in red with a down arrow for a decrease.

So there is plenty of color, if you have all three "show" options turned on. It's different from the color scheme previously; it seems like they were trying to make red and green apply to increases or decreases rather than the way they colors were applied before. It's interesting that this wasn't mentioned in the release notes. (I'm a beta tester, but I don't use the calendar often, and because nothing in this release was said to involve the calendar, I don't think I even looked at the calendar while this release was being tested. Nor do I remember others mentioning it; either most of us (a) don't use the calendar, (b) approved of the change, or (c) the change was made late and wasn't in the test versions.)

I suppose my question after digging through all this is: is it a problem that standard banking transactions are now gray instead of green? To me, it seems perhaps a little easier to read with the predominant item -- transactions -- in gray rather than green, but for those who use the calendar a lot, what is the downside of the revised color scheme?

garysmith87

Well, in my case I don't have investment transactions showing in my calendar...because I want to see the daily balance of my cash flow accounts listed...and not my net worth.

So, differentiating between income and expenses (green for income, red for expenses) is now impossible because its the same blah gray in my calendar. There should still be a color difference between the two. There's plenty of colors on the mac spectrum that they could use so that everyone is happy. Or heaven forbid if they allow you to choose which colors you'd like to use for each type instead of the stock out of the box "do it my way" of no choice.

And now a new problem...when I clicked to create a New Calendar (thinking I could have one with ALL accounts including investments in addition to the current one I have that has only checking and credit cards), that didn't create a new calendar at all.

So, that's an issue now too.