Budget, Actuals-Link pop-up totals are incorrect?

Wind_Woman

Anyone else seeing a change/error recently with budget Actual transaction Pop-Up box totals? aka: I'm in Budget, Annual View (although happening on Graphic view too). I click on a blue 'Actual' link & get a pop-up dialog box. In some cases, the pop-up total (bottom) doesn't match either a) the blue Actual Total link clicked [which is correct total] nor b) the data in the pop-up box transaction.

From my random review-- The pop-up dialog box seems to be having an issue with totally reminders with a time-frame other than a Monthly correctly.

Pop-Up Data looks odd too in that some amounts for future events +, some - entries? I don't remember such variation in that last year?

See attachment.
-Top example, no idea what math is being done? But that entry has annual, every-3-monthes and monthly reminders included.
-Other examples show clearly that Annual Reminders are being doubled. Last example shows =/- thing.


Note:
-I'm using a desktop version of Quicken.
-I have used Budget module for 2022 and now 2023... kinda new to it but reviewed every month in 2022.
-I've been using Quicken since 1990.
-I have no RollOvers set for any Budget categories.

Chris_QPW

Well, one thing I can say is that Quicken never does my non monthly reminders correctly, and this is not only in the budget, but also when the reminder is used.  This has been going on for years and never fixed.

My water bill is paid every two months.  Here is the reminder:


Here it is in the budget.


The 104s in the middle are the "actuals"/reminders.  Notice that they are in every month instead of every other month.

Every month Quicken prompts me to enter this reminder, so whatever the problem is, it is in the actually handling of the reminders, not just in the budget.

Wind_Woman

Interesting. I've only recently noticed an issue.

I have a every-other-month garbage bill which works fine. I assume you have tried recreating the Reminder?

Interestingly enough after posting this, I opened a practice database file from Dec2022 n the Reminders look completely different for February, in terms of Pop-Up showing them as expenses vs. reminders. Pop-Up totals are just as off tho.

I'm a little suspect about some of this in terms of the age of the Reminders... My image top example includes two very new Reminders.

I don't use RollOver on my categories though. Must be another glitch in the programming? Drat.

PS-How do you post the image with your words? Mine always end up an attachment. Oops! Newbie-ness showing. LOL.

DCC1

This may or may not be related, but today, I just added a one-time income reminder for a budget item and in my budget "actuals" the amount is exactly double what it should be. For test purposes, I found that if I recreate the reminder and make it monthly, it works perfectly. I tested this for a bill, and it also doubles the amount in my budget. Am I missing something here?

Snowman

@Chris_QPW Maybe I am missing something but I do not have this problem, if I am understanding the problem correctly. I do not use rollovers not do I have any automatic billers setup. I tried it for a while but it was much more work for very little return. I have a quarterly payment setup as follows:

My Annual view (Planning) is:

Notice the January budget and actual are correct. There is nothing for February or March. April the budget and actual is correct since today (2/7/23) is within the 90 days in advance. June and July are correct as is August but not the actual is not shown as it is outside of the 90 day advance window.

Maybe is is because I have it set up to auto enter the check in Quicken 90 days in advance or is it that by telling Quicken to automatically enter the transaction in a certain time frame I do not have the issue? I manually manage the bills and income. I have weekly, every two weeks, monthly and quarterly reminders set up with no problem and maybe this is why or a combination of all of the above?

Chris_QPW

@Snowman I tried testing with quarterly, and it worked fine.  Then I set it back to every other month and it is right now!
I don't know if it is a change in that release that came out (I doubt it) or some kind of glitch (more likely).

One thing though I will bet on, it will not properly record the reminder.  As in it will still popup to enter this reminder every month even though it is set for every other month.

The truth is though looking at the original post, and mine and @DCC1's they might not at all be related, just all happen to be bugs in the reminder/budget systems.

Snowman

I have not had to enter these as reminders since I have set it up to automatically add the transaction 90 days in advance. I think this is what made it work.

Chris_QPW

Just so you know, the main reason I don't use automatic reminders for these is because they are different amounts every bill and Quicken has the restriction that for automatic reminders you can't edit the coming instance or change anything else for that matter until it is entered into the register.

But I'm 100% sure that wouldn't affect this problem.  Quicken just doesn't handle a reminder that is every other month correctly.

P.S. I know some people like to have their reminders pre-entered into the register long periods of time before.  I don't, I really like the fact that I can have reminders show in the register without them actually being in the register.  This allows me to change how much of them I want to see at any given time.  And 90 days would be terrible for me.  The most important thing I was to see is the current transactions/balance.  With 90 days of transactions in the register, it will go to the bottom and all I would see is these transactions that aren't even "real" yet.

Snowman

I didn’t mean to imply that 90 days was a hard number. I have some that are every other month, and some that are every two weeks. It just seems that this is the only variable that is different. I just put this out there so that maybe it could provide a clue to fix this.

Chris_QPW

These are the kind of things I don't really expect that will ever get fixed.  When you have a problem that almost no one else has there is very little chance that the developers will even be assigned it.  I have always figured that almost no one has a bill that is paid every other month, and as such it will not get any attention.  Note that this same bill also never worked in Online Bills.  In Online Bills I could set it up, but it would never pick up the actual bill.

Snowman

Do you know of anyone else with your issue?

Chris_QPW

Snowman said:

Do you know of anyone else with your issue?

Yes, I have seen a few people report it over the years.  But far fewer than it would take to get Quicken Inc's attention.

Wind_Woman

re: Snowman, post on February 7 edited February 7 >> "My Annual view (Planning) is:" <-- click on the Actual blue links... The issue I'm having is with the dialog box totals (aka golden pop-up, lower right totals) not with the budget view itself. The budget screen is totally correctly // the dialog box totals are being augmented if the reminder time-frame is anything but monthly.

Note: I have monthly, quarterly, every 6 months, every other month & annuals.

Thanks for the thoughts on all this.

Chris_QPW

@Wind_Woman I'm sorry I took your thread off track.  I'm looking more at what you posted, and I'm seen strange things in that popup too.

I created a reminder:

Then I created a budget with that category selected:


Now that popup:


There are two things to note here:
First off where did the positive $100 come from?
Here is the register:

And the other part that seems to line up with what you are seeing.  The math when a positive number is involved is wrong.
It treated the positive $100 as if it was negative.

And on one of the ones you showed, here is the crazy math that I have figured out.

365 * 2 + 25 + 20.

Oops that is just rehashing what you already said.  The bottom line is that Quicken is "making up values" and ignoring the signs of the transactions.

Snowman

@Wind_Woman, @Chris_QPW

I noted from your post that Bills & Utilities: Utilities is a subcategory of Bill & Utilities. Is this correct? If so what are the other subcategories of Bills & Utilities? The first thing I would check is to make sure that no transactions were categorized to the parent category Bills & Utilities.

The once had a strange occurrence similar to this with a budget category. The way I finally fixed it was to rename the category but in your case it may be one of the sub-categories that is the issue. I would make a backup copy of your current file and then try to rename the parent category BUT you will have to change the name slightly. For Bills & Utilities I would rename to Bills And Utilities. For my issue I tried renaming it to something else then renaming it back to the original name but that just caused the return of the issue hence the suggestion to rename to something slightly different. Save the file and see if the issue is fixed. If not try renaming the subcategories, again so that they are slightly different. There is no rhyme or reason why this solved my issue but after working 40 years with various database structures in DOS, then Windows you sometimes have to think outside the box for a solution.

It may be a simple as by renaming the category to something slightly different Quicken then recalculates the category(s) and that solves the issue.

If this interests you I can look back in my computer log to see how I did this.

Chris_QPW

@Snowman the above test was done in a data file that literally has one checking account, no transactions, and one reminder.
What's more the category use is the default one from creating a new data file using the "new user" settings/categories.

I just changed it to use a top-level category and there isn't any difference:

Snowman

Was just a shot in the dark!

Wind_Woman

Thanks all for your two cents.

"I noted from your post that Bills & Utilities: Utilities is a subcategory of Bill & Utilities. Is this correct?." from Snowman.
ANSWER:
-Subscription is a root category
-Tax Deductions has sub categories.
... the sub-categories are also showing bad math.

- Electric is sub-category of Utilities
... Utilities is a root category.

I set detailed Category Groups so that my budget is laid out, for example, with discretionary and non-discretionary Group Categories. I didn't rename 'Personal Expenses', just added more. But I don't think that is paying into this. However, will test in another copy of my database.

I never noticed you could see the full years golden pop-up from the Budget's category row. Thanks kind of interesting, though doesn't solve the issues. Still odd that some reminders are + while other's - ? A brief look at mine shows Annual reminders as positive / anything cyclical (monthly, every three months, twice a year) as negative. Again, not that that information helps much.

But all this said:
1) you folks have confirmed that you are seeing the issue too. I guess at least the non-popup totals are right.

2) I will try renaming categories in a test instance of my database. However, I don't hold up a lot of hope, since math issues occurring with long-time used categories as well as new, categories.

Take Care and thanks.

Wind_Woman

re Chris_QPW, Feb 8th- you noted "First off where did the positive $100 come from?"
... Thanks for cluing me into the Category row > Category History golden pop-up, since this shows more of the raw data.

I noted the following. (Sorry if I'm repeating someone else's finding. Oops! )
In Budget > Golden Pop-up boxes, Generally speaking: + entries are normally Actuals || - are Reminders
I'm seeing that for Monthly Reminders during the month of the 'next due' of the reminder (so from Chris_QPW image, for Feb), Quicken is putting both a positive & an negative entry the Category History for the category row and adding them both to the golden-pop-up total. So in Feb, it's like Quicken is anticipating the actual incorrectly, doubling amount on golden pop-up totals. Humph- Unhelpful!
Further:
-- During the Next due month, then entry seeing on the monthly BLUE LINK is getting a + entry (INCORRECT, should be a - entry.)
-- While Future months are correct as a - entry. (GOOD)
You can see this situation moving into the future budget months if you enter your Feb Reminder... you'll then see the +&- situation in March.
*As someone else may have said, entering the Monthly Reminders for the year would resolve this situation. But to me that defeats the purpose of the reminder and I don't want 12 months of clutter in my register (as opposed to using the reminder setting that can limit what I see).

FIX THIS QUICKEN PROGRAMMERS! Good grief!
+ Fix that Annual Reminders are doubling in Budget (in this case, the Budget row > Category History is NOT showing two entries and it is occurring with all Budget current & future months (i.e. today's date is Feb2023, I have a reminder due in Dec2023, and the Annual Reminder is doubling for the Dec2023 blue link, golden pop-up total)

PS- If a programmer is listening, I'm happy to provide a detailed correction report file regarding both of these situation. OR if someone tells me how to submit myself, I'll do that process.

Wind_Woman

{Yikes, having posting issues. Sorry if repeat Comments}

re Chris_QPW, Feb 8th- you noted "First off where did the positive $100 come from?"
... Thanks for cluing me into the Category row > Category History golden pop-up, since this shows more of the raw data.

I noted the following. (Sorry if I'm repeating someone else's finding. Oops! )

In Budget > Golden Pop-up boxes, Generally speaking: + entries are normally Actuals || - are Reminders

I'm seeing that for Monthly Reminders during the month of the 'next due' of the reminder (so from Chris_QPW image, for Feb), Quicken is putting both a positive & an negative entry the Category History for the category row and adding them both to the golden-pop-up total. So in Feb, it's like Quicken is anticipating the actual incorrectly, doubling amount on golden pop-up totals. Humph- Unhelpful!

Further:
-- During the Next due month, then entry seeing on the monthly BLUE LINK is getting a + entry (INCORRECT, should be a - entry.)
-- While Future months are correct as a - entry. (GOOD)

You can see this situation moving into the future budget months if you enter your Feb Reminder... you'll then see the +&- situation in March.

*As someone else may have said, entering the Monthly Reminders for the year would resolve this situation. But to me that defeats the purpose of the reminder and I don't want 12 months of clutter in my register (as opposed to using the reminder setting that can limit what I see).

FIX THIS QUICKEN PROGRAMMERS! Good grief!

+ Fix that Annual Reminders are doubling in Budget (in this case, the Budget row > Category History is NOT showing two entries and it is occurring with all Budget current & future months (i.e. today's date is Feb2023, I have a reminder due in Dec2023, and the Annual Reminder is doubling for the Dec2023 blue link, golden pop-up total)

PS- If a programmer is listening, I'm happy to provide a detailed correction report file regarding both of these situation. OR if someone tells me how to submit myself, I'll do that process.

khg

A few months ago I also started noticing the same thing @Wind_Woman describes. My problem is exactly as the poster describes. I avoided reporting because it was complicated for me to describe, so thank you for taking the time to map it out!

Wind_Woman

I reported to Quicken from the Help > Report a Problem today. Fingers crossed.

JLP1976

Here is another example: In the current month of March, a bi-weekly bill for $145 on the 1st, 15th, and 29th. In the gold pop-up, the 01Mar is expense, the 15Mar is listed under reminders twice (1 positive and 1 negative) and the 29Mar is nowhere to be seen. The total at the bottom $580 (4*$145). This 3 payments also occurs in Aug, but the pop-up is completely accurate - 3 $145 reminders totaling $435. One more observation: in the Bill and Income Reminders pop-up (Manage Bills and Income Reminders) the 15Mar reminder status is Upcoming (shown in blue) and the 29 Mar reminder status is Upcoming (shown as gray).

KATHLEEN DONOHUE

I don't use reminders. Most of the actuals in my budget are correct, but this month the blue totals are way off. The details are fine, but don't match. I do not have the rollover option on for this line.

This is arithmetic. I'd have thought Quicken could do that. I've been using Quicken for 30+ years and have never seen this error.

KATHLEEN DONOHUE

update - I closed and re-opened the file and the numbers are now correct.

Wind_Woman

Yeah, I haven't heard any response no my submission. Don't know what that means for a software update?

JLP1967- I've notice the + vs. - display too, but no pattern now. I swear it used to show Actuals as + and Reminders were -. But that blew up around time of the golden box totals being off. <-- All my newer reminders show - , old reminders are still +. Luckily, the math never seems to take the - into account for golden box total.

Kathleen D- Glad you got some success with reopening your file. Yeah! It is crazy that this is just bad easy math.

I suspect the fact that Quicken company is selling the Simplfi application (https://www.quicken.com/personal-finance/quicken-simplifi) means their focus on the Quicken budget module is minimized. I can't tell if Simplifi is cloud-based? Looks like it. Sigh. I'm not a fan for all the same reasons I don't use Mint- Security & Privacy. Oh well, Onward everyone!

Wphillips412

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20337246#Comment_20337246

If you make the "Only Once" reminder a "Yearly" reminder which repeats only one time, you will not see two transactions in the budget view. However, the total will reflect double the amount. Clearly a bug with the graphic budget view and reminders.