Wrong balance in sidebar with future dated investments (QMac v6.4.4)

williamhouk3

Hi, I have a problem that was explored previously (without public response)...

I have a future dated investment, where the sidebar only reflects the future balance REGARDLESS whether I select "Show Today's balance..." or "Show Projected Balance"...

Curious that Bank Accounts adjust to Today's or Projected Balances... just not investment accounts...

Anyone else have the same problem?

garysmith87

You are not alone.

I also have the same issue with Quicken Mac.  If I add an investment transaction in the register with a future date, the CURRENT balance in the sidebar changes and does NOT reflect the current balance...but does include the balance with those future dated transactions.

This is NOT how Quicken Mac should be working.

And this is NOT something new with the latest update.  It's been happening for years now.  

I've reported it within Quicken's Report a Problem area... but have not ever seen a fix.  

williamhouk3

Thanks for the confirmation Gary…

Quicken Alyssa

Hello @williamhouk3 & @garysmith87,

Thank you for coming to the Community with your questions and concerns. 

The investment accounts display this way in the sidebar because they only have one balance option in the top of the account (pictured below).


Unlike other account types that have multiple balance choices. If you enter future transactions it changes the Market Value, and in turn, changes the balance in the sidebar. 

Side note: Reporting an issue via Help>Report a Problem, sends in your report and log files, but you do not get a response from Quicken regarding those. 

Do let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.



Quicken Alyssa

williamhouk3

Hi Alyssa, Here's where this gets confusing... your arrow points to the (future) Market value (with future transactions), while the account balance at the bottom account listing (in your picture, Google + Vanguard + cash) actually returns the Current value. If you add a future investment transaction, you'll see this...

So, I'm not buying the argument that the sidebar can ONLY return a single value, since they both exist (and that's what triggered this discussion)...

Thoughts? Bill

Quicken Alyssa

Hello again @williamhouk3,

I did some more digging and this issue is a bug that has been reported to our Development and Product teams for further investigation and is still being worked on. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when a solution will be available.

Once a solution is created it will be made available as part of a future release.

Thank you!
(QMAC-20199/CTP-1343)



Quicken Alyssa

williamhouk3

Thanks for confirming Alyssa... going back to Gary Smith's earlier comment, this doesn't appear to be a "new" issue... any clues why it would take sooooo long to resolve? Seems like all of the "numbers" are available; coding shouldn't be an issue.... confused why the bug would still be "unresolved"...

garysmith87

Alyssa...I think it might be prudent for Quicken to enact either of the following from the investment Portfolio selection page.

1 Include BOTH the current market balance and ending market balance at the top right of the page.  Then select the correct balance in the sidebar depending on the user selection of Current balance or Projected Balance.

or

2 Just display the the one market balance in the top right of the account Portfolio page, dependent on the sidebar selection of Current balance or Projected Balance...and then port that amount to the sidebar.  

Considering that the Market Value actually changes if I change the "Price and holdings as of date", this really should not reflect future dated transactions, in my opinion.  As of date is the modifier here...and future dated transactions should not be included if I select the date as today.  

Thanks for looking into this issue.  I look forward to a fix in the future.  

jacobs

williamhouk3 said:

Thanks for confirming Alyssa... going back to Gary Smith's earlier comment, this doesn't appear to be a "new" issue... any clues why it would take sooooo long to resolve? Seems like all of the "numbers" are available; coding shouldn't be an issue.... confused why the bug would still be "unresolved"...

There are hundreds of bugs which are unresolved, in Quicken and any other major piece of software. Some have major impact; some are really tiny issues. And there are hundreds of other missing features or functionality which also adversely affect usage of the program. It's always a matter of how high a priority any issue is perceived to be. Not because they're ignoring an issue, but because all these issues are competing for scarce development time. How big a problem is it? How many people use it? (In some cases, they get clear metrics about usage of certain elements of the program; in other cases, they're guesstimating.) How much time would it take to address it? (It's often more complicated than it might seem on the surface.) If there are other changes planned for the same are of the program, they may wait to tackle multiple related issues at once. So what gets attention in what order is pretty much impossible to predict or understand from outside the developers' room. 

And you can't go down the road of what seems obvious, a no-brainer, or most important. This might be very important to you, while for someone who never uses a future setting, it's a non-issue. But that person may rely of budgeting and think the inability to print a date-specific budget-versus-actual report is an obvious top priority, while you might not use budgeting at all. 

I'm not suggesting this shouldn't be addressed, just trying to address your question about why it hasn't been yet.

garysmith87

jacobs---

I think you're confusing "need" in context to "demand" ... with the issue that exists here.

Clearly, Quicken Mac is pulling in numbers into the sidebar that are available in the individual portfolio view...but those numbers are incorrect as it uses the wrong field.  It clearly uses Market Value at the top of the portfolio page (which includes ALL transactions, past and future dates), when it should be using the Market Value total at the bottom of the page (which includes the total as of today).  

As a matter of fact, the Market Value shown at the top of the page is an INCORRECT value anyways, because the filter setting "Price and Holdings as of" date is the current date...yet displays the amount "as of" in a future date.

What Quicken's programming team needs to do is just use the already available field from the list at the bottom and have it entered into the sidebar.  

In my esteem...and I'm certainly not a programmer...this does seem like an easy fix as all it takes is to reference the correct already available field (Market Value at the bottom of the securities listed) instead of the incorrect available field (Market Value at the top of the page).  

So, really there are TWO problems here.  Wrong sidebar amount (which includes Market Value with future transactions when Current Balance is selected) and wrong Market Value at the top of the page (which includes future transactions that should be excluded by the date shown). 

jacobs

@garysmith87 It may -- or may not -- prove to be an easy fix to resolve these issues; I wasn't trying to offer any opinion on that. What I was saying is that if this issue is not perceived to be a major issue at Quicken, it may sit in their queue for months or years while they have their engineers spend their time on issues they perceive to be more pressing. Because the demand for programmer time exceeds available programmer time, they are constantly making value judgments on which issues to address. That includes things they define as bugs, which are strictly things not working as designed, and enhancements, which are all things to make the program work better. (Note that what is "not working right/well" to you or me may not be considered a bug if they consider it is "working as designed"; what you or I would consider a bug might go in their database as a request for an enhancement.) 

garysmith87

Quicken Alyssa said:

Hello again @williamhouk3,

I did some more digging and this issue is a bug that has been reported to our Development and Product teams for further investigation and is still being worked on. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when a solution will be available.

Once a solution is created it will be made available as part of a future release.

Thank you!
(QMAC-20199/CTP-1343)



Quicken Alyssa

jacobs...

I'm guessing you missed where Quicken Alyssa clearly stated "I did some more digging and this issue is a bug..."

So, it's not an issue of whether its not working how WE want it to work, it's not working how it SHOULD work.

I'm hoping this clarifies this discussion...and really should put an end to the conversation.  

jacobs

I won’t go around further about how they classify things in their database. The original question was why this hadn’t been addressed yet, and my replies above address how/why that happens. 

quartet

OK. I read (scanned) most of these posts and I'm just going to add my name to the list.

I have an investment account from which I pay bills. I enter the payments manually and at the end of the Balance column I have, as far as I understand it, the Projected Balance. However, in the Sidebar and at the top of the transactions window I get the current balance.

It seems like this is an error. Perhaps in a future update it will be fixed.