After January 2022update, some saved reports are not functioning correctly

Treasurer Steve

Use HB& Rental Property. Been using Quicken for 30+ years and never had a problem. Starting in January, after one of the updates, some reports I've been used for years is showing data improperly. I use tags extensively, and a profit & loss report, with Tags as the column heading started including transactions in Columns that were not used in the transaction. An example, a transaction may have the tag 01:general office, another may have 16:outreach. The report column headings will have things like 16:01:general office. When I drill down the first level will display the tag as such, but when drill down to the transaction, it is recorded correctly. Very frustrating. Many of these transactions have splits, yet again, the transaction is recorded correctly. I have also noticed that some of my memorized transactions recently have dropped some of the information previously stored. Wonder if that is related.

Tom Young

Updates have been known to hose saved reports.  You might try Customizing the saved report in some fashion, re-saving it, then closing and re-opening Quicken to see if that set things to right.  If that doesn't work then starting over from scratch in the new version might be necessary.

Treasurer Steve

Thanks, tried that. I am thinking it goes back to memorized transactions, especially those with splits. They seem to be acting up as well. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Was there an upgrade that messed with those in the last two months? Almost seems like it is criss-crossing tag info in splits from one row to another. I've been using versions of Quicken, in this file, since 1991. Never had anything like this before. Sometimes features may come and go, but never harmful changes.

Treasurer Steve

Also, do you know if internally Quicken uses holding files or some similar cache for reporting purposes, and maybe those need resetting? Because usually the transaction itself look fine, but the reporting is getting it wrong.

Jim_Harman

Also, for multicolumn reports, sometimes hitting the Reset Columns button on the report customization View tab fixes strange behavior.

Treasurer Steve

Thanks. I had read something like that elsewhere, but I don't see the Reset Columns button. Can you describe where that is please? I'm in the report, hit the Customize gear, and within there on all the various tabs, I don't see a reset button.

Jim_Harman

Another thing you might check is that a recent update messed with the widths of columns in reports. So where you are seeing a column heading like 16:01:general office, could that be two columns squeezed together, with the 16 header partly visible but its numbers not visible because the column is too narrow?

Jim_Harman

Treasurer Steve said:

Thanks. I had read something like that elsewhere, but I don't see the Reset Columns button. Can you describe where that is please? I'm in the report, hit the Customize gear, and within there on all the various tabs, I don't see a reset button.

The Reset Columns button is on reports like the Banking Transaction report that let you pick which columns to display. That may not apply to your reports, but it should not hurt to hit the button anyway.

Treasurer Steve

Thanks again. But I don't think column width is the issue. When I expand the width on the screen, it show 16:01:general office. When I drill down on one of the transactions in the column, the next screen shows the incorrect tag, when I click through to the transaction, the transaction is correct.

Jim_Harman

If you go to Tools > Tag list, is the list of tags correct, or has it been corrupted?

Treasurer Steve

Thanks. Just checked, the tags list looks fine. I'm thinking now it may go back to Memorized Payees. I'm noticing some of those have gotten messed up. Particularly those with splits. After this researching I'm beginning to think that is where the trouble starts. Also, when viewing Memorized Payees, are the columns Lock and Show new? Some are check and others not. I've rarely gone to this screen in the past.

Treasurer Steve

Thanks again. So what I've had to do, is first go through Memorized Payees, and get rid of records that somehow got messed up. And I think most if not all, had splits. Then for a few transactions, I had to delete them and reenter. That is not a process I enjoy nor feel comfortable with, this being used as a church business system. So I somehow think the root of the issue has to do with Memorized Payees. Was there an upgrade that impacted that table? Smells like a bug to me.

Jim_Harman

The Lock and Show columns in the MPL have been there for years. The Lock setting prevents the memorized payee from being updated each time you use it. The Show setting controls whether the payee is shown on the Calendar (I don't use this)

Changes to your memorized payees should not affect reports, except to the extent that the transactions would be entered incorrectly. Of course if the transactions are wrong in the register, they will also be wrong in the reports.

Tom Young

There have been reports (and it happened to me) of the syncing process messing up memorized payees.  Have any Accounts in the file made a switch in downloading methods from Direct Connect to EWC, or maybe you mistakenly closed down a file while it was syncing, or something else along those lines?

Jim_Harman

@Tom Young let's be clear when we say "syncing". Are you talking about the downloading of transactions, or what Quicken calls "Syncing to the Web", which is for the mobile app and Quicken on the Web? 

Treasurer Steve

Tom, thanks. If by syncing you mean with banking or credit card systems, I don't do that. I do think a Quicken update or patch messed with the MPL.

Jim, thanks. I agree that memorized payees should not affect reports, but it seems it has. In tracing the issue backwards, that seemed to be at the root of the problem. I rarely use the MPL, unless I'm trying to find something. I mostly rely on autofill when creating and entering transactions. And I will use Control-M to memorize something as needed. The Lock and Show settings are a mixture of checked and unchecked. I do not recall ever selecting or unselecting either. So I don't know how the many records came to their current state. I still think there is or was a bug introduced recently.

Jim_Harman

@Treasurer Steve
Perhaps the issue with Tags in your reports is related to your use of colons in the Tag names. Quicken uses colons as separators when a transaction has more than one Tag, and maybe your colons are confusing the report generator. This issue could have started just recently, and you are the first to discover it.

Could you provide a little background on how you are using Tags? The names you are using sound more like what would normally be Categories in Quicken.

Treasurer Steve

To Jim's question to Tom- I don't not use Quicken on a mobile app nor the web, nor to download transactions. I'm kind of old school in that regard. Now I do get, and this started recently, a pop up on exiting Quicken about syncing data to the cloud, which I let happen. I would think that is for backup purposes only?

Jim_Harman

Treasurer Steve said:

I agree that memorized payees should not affect reports, but it seems it has. In tracing the issue backwards, that seemed to be at the root of the problem. I rarely use the MPL, unless I'm trying to find something. I mostly rely on autofill when creating and entering transactions. And I will use Control-M to memorize something as needed. The Lock and Show settings are a mixture of checked and unchecked. I do not recall ever selecting or unselecting either. So I don't know how the many records came to their current state. I still think there is or was a bug introduced recently.

When you are using Quickfill, Quicken looks in the Memorized Payee List to get the information to fill in, so you are using the information in the MPL and if it is wrong, the transaction and thus the report will be wrong.

If you don't want the data that goes along with the memorized payee to get updated each time you use the payee, you should check the Lock box in the MPL.

If you don't want new memorized payees to be created automatically, you should un-check the box in Edit > Preferences > Data entry and QuickFill > Automatically memorize new payees.

Treasurer Steve

Thank you. Good advice. Perhaps a work-around!

Treasurer Steve

Oh, one final thing. While I had noticed autofill pulling up weird looking entries from the MPL, I would correct the information in the actual transaction, in the split transaction rows, and save the transaction. At that point all looked good. The transaction looked fine. However, the reports were getting the wires crossed from somewhere somehow. And as I mentioned earlier, when I drilled through the report to the transaction, the actual transaction appeared fine. Hence, why I think this is the result of a bug in the software. Should I try a call with the support folks at Quicken, is it worth the effort?
Thanks.