Payee Missing from Report Settings

MSStateDawg

I have a number of transactions with a merchant named "Pizza Shack". The payee for these transactions is set to "Pizza Shack" and appears a such in the account register. I have a memorized payee also named "Pizza Shack". I have a report which shows total amount spent by payee. It includes a subset of payees which I have selected individually in the report settings, however, "Pizza Shack" does not appear in the payee list. The report includes all accounts, categories, and tags. I've attached several screen captures for reference.

I've already read the "What if I don't see the payee I want" link next to that list and have checked those items mentioned in the help file.

Before I report this as a bug I wanted to ask you folks...is there's something I'm doing wrong or some setting I'm missing?

Thanks.

Jim_Harman

If you have a very large number of payees, they won't all fit in the dropdown list and Quicken does not display some of them. I think the limit is about 2,000. One thing you can do is on the right of the payee selection tab you showed, enter Pizza Shack in the Payee Contains box. Hopefully this will select just the payee you want, but it will also show Joe's Pizza Shack.

The more painful solution is to edit your existing transactions to combine payees that are really the same, for example Starbucks #123 is probably the same as Starbucks #456, unless you really must track the individual stores. This goes faster than you might think. 

See this discussion for more info.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20182313 

Jim_Harman

If you have a very large number of payees, they won't all fit in the dropdown list and Quicken does not display some of them. I think the limit is about 2,000. One thing you can do is on the right of the payee selection tab you showed, enter Pizza Shack in the Payee Contains box. Hopefully this will select just the payee you want, but it will also show Joe's Pizza Shack.

The more painful solution is to edit your existing transactions to combine payees that are really the same, for example Starbucks #123 is probably the same as Starbucks #456, unless you really must track the individual stores. This goes faster than you might think. 

See this discussion for more info.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20182313 

Sherlock

If you haven't already, I suggest you check the filters on the Accounts, Categories, Tags, Category Groups, Advanced tabs.

Next I suggest, reducing the date range to say Month to date.  If this coerces Pizza Shack to appear, you should be able to check it and restore the date range.

If the issue persists, I suggest saving a backup (press Ctrl + B) and attempting to rebuild the Memorized Payee List (press Ctrl + Shift and select Tools > Memorized Payee List).

If the issue still persists, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Troubleshoot+a+damaged+Quicken+data+file

Jim_Harman

BTW the limit for the dropdown is not the same as the size of your Memorized Payee list.

I think by default the dropdown tries to show all the unique payees you have used in the past 3 years. Despite what the Help implies, setting a shorter date range does not reduce the list, and a longer range only adds more entries to the list. You can get a feel for how many similar payees you have by running a Spending by Payee report for the past 3 years and seeing how many pages it has. Mine is 17 pages @ 45 lines/page or about 765 payees.

This is a longstanding issue and if anyone has more or better info please speak up!

UKR

I'm inclined to go with @Sherlock 's first suggestion to check the filters in the Merchants report.

Is the account which you used to pay at Pizza Shack included in the selection list? Newly added accounts may not automatically appear in an older saved report.

If you are indeed working with an old saved report I'd suggest you start from scratch with a report of the same kind and customize only as needed. When the report shows the desired results, save it and replace the old saved report.

Sherlock

Jim_Harman said:

BTW the limit for the dropdown is not the same as the size of your Memorized Payee list.

I think by default the dropdown tries to show all the unique payees you have used in the past 3 years. Despite what the Help implies, setting a shorter date range does not reduce the list, and a longer range only adds more entries to the list. You can get a feel for how many similar payees you have by running a Spending by Payee report for the past 3 years and seeing how many pages it has. Mine is 17 pages @ 45 lines/page or about 765 payees.

This is a longstanding issue and if anyone has more or better info please speak up!

It is my understanding that when the payee list exceeds the limit, a warning appears:



Note: This warning is not present in the Customize Merchants window image provided earlier.

MSStateDawg

Sherlock said:

If you haven't already, I suggest you check the filters on the Accounts, Categories, Tags, Category Groups, Advanced tabs.

Next I suggest, reducing the date range to say Month to date.  If this coerces Pizza Shack to appear, you should be able to check it and restore the date range.

If the issue persists, I suggest saving a backup (press Ctrl + B) and attempting to rebuild the Memorized Payee List (press Ctrl + Shift and select Tools > Memorized Payee List).

If the issue still persists, you may want to review: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Troubleshoot+a+damaged+Quicken+data+file

Thanks. As mentioned in the original post, "The report includes all accounts, categories, and tags."

UKR

Have you followed this advice?

• If the issue still persists, you may want to review and perform these tasks: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Troubleshoot+a+damaged+Quicken+data+file

MSStateDawg

UKR said:

Have you followed this advice?

• If the issue still persists, you may want to review and perform these tasks: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Troubleshoot+a+damaged+Quicken+data+file

I perform a Super Validate about weekly for years.

MSStateDawg

UKR said:

Have you followed this advice?

• If the issue still persists, you may want to review and perform these tasks: https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Troubleshoot+a+damaged+Quicken+data+file

I've been performing a Super Validate about weekly for years.