Reports are not showing new entries in category

txbdan

Hi all,

I'm having trouble with reports. I just cleaned up my mortgage transactions in my checking account. Every transaction is shown and the category is Home:Mortgage & Rent. If I look at my checking account I can search by "mortgage" and they all show properly.

Using preexisting (new style) reports or creating new reports in various ways, the transactions that I recently updated with the category do not show up in any reports. Is there some way to refresh the transactions so the categories are updates internally or something? I've restarted Quicken, created new reports, modified old, etc. They just won't show up. Or about three transactions that previously had the correct category show up. There are no splits in any of the categories. I can't find anything unique about the ones that show.

Any ideas?

jacobs

Just checking: do these non-split transactions contain also show a Transfer to your loan account? If so, that's likely the problem. Quicken should not be allowing transactions to have both a transfer and a category, but if you enter it in a certain order, it does. If these transactions have Transfers, then the fix is to remove the category entries, and to set your report to show transfers to the mortgage account. Transfers aren't truly expenses in an accounting sense; paying your loan transfers funds from an asset (checking account) to a liability (loan account). But of course paying the loan feels like an expense from your cash-flow standpoint; this is why Quicken allows you to add Transfers to reports. If this is what's happening in your case and you want help with how to configure a report to contain transfers, please post back.

txbdan

> @jacobs said:
> Just checking: do these non-split transactions contain also show a Transfer to your loan account? If so, that's likely the problem. Quicken should not be allowing transactions to have both a transfer and a category, but if you enter it in a certain order, it does. If these transactions have Transfers, then the fix is to remove the category entries, and to set your report to show transfers to the mortgage account. Transfers aren't truly expenses in an accounting sense; paying your loan transfers funds from an asset (checking account) to a liability (loan account). But of course paying the loan feels like an expense from your cash-flow standpoint; this is why Quicken allows you to add Transfers to reports. If this is what's happening in your case and you want help with how to configure a report to contain transfers, please post back.

Hmm that might be it. For some reason some of the transactions were transfers and some were manual. I replaced the [Mortgage Loan] transfer tags with the category so they were all simply the category. For some reason the Mortgage in Quicken isn't updating right so I just let that auto reconcile and don't use actual transfers anymore. I'll check this out soon and report back. Thanks

jacobs

@txbdan Typically, a loan payment is made from a checking account, and that transaction contains at least two splits: one for a transfer to the loan liability account and one for interest expense. (If an escrow account is involved in the loan, then there would be a third split for a transfer to the escrow account.) The interest expense will show up in an expense report; the transfers won't, unless the settings of the report are tweaked to include transfers. 

txbdan

> @jacobs said:
> @txbdan Typically, a loan payment is made from a checking account, and that transaction contains at least two splits: one for a transfer to the loan liability account and one for interest expense. (If an escrow account is involved in the loan, then there would be a third split for a transfer to the escrow account.) The interest expense will show up in an expense report; the transfers won't, unless the settings of the report are tweaked to include transfers. 

Yeh, I have it set up that way in Quicken for Windows, but for some reason it never worked right on this Mac version. It seems that each month there is a credit in the Mortgage account for the full amount, this was the transfer, and then there are occasional "adjustment"s to reconcile the account basically subtracting out the interest so its not deducting from the principle. If I were to delete the account, would it make it so the existing transactions in my checking account are not transfers (fixing the report) and if I add it back will it sync back up properly somehow? I refinanced about a year ago so that's all the history I really need.

As it is now, I can't figure out any ways to distinguish a checking account transaction as having been a transfer or not and see now way to fix them.

jacobs

Do you have a scheduled transaction which automatically creates your entry each month? If so, it sounds like you just haven't specified that you want what Quicken calls a "detailed reminder" — a transaction with a split for interest and principal. In your loan account, click Edit Loan and Payment Terms, and click on the Bill Reminder tab. This is where you should have is clicked for Detailed Reminder, which makes the split terms visible on the right side:

With this setting, your next payment from your checking account will be a split, with a transfer to the loan account and interest income.