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Why is one category not showing up in a customized Category summary report? (Q Mac)

pburgkid

The report uses all accounts and selected categories. The missing category is selected.

The transactions using this category are correctly categorized.. The transactions using the missing category are both split and single. The category is an expense type.

Help please. Thanks,

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pburgkid

Thanks for the help. I was using the old Category Summary report. I have looked at all the new versions. Sorry to say they are sad bunch of replacements. They have been dumbed down and do not present the data in the clearcut format afforded by the old reports. Also the ability to alter the view from top level to detailed level is missing. For my money they should trash the new reports, fix the bug that causes the old reports to drop categorys and reinstate them. PLease pass this along if you have any influence in such matters.

Again, Thanks. God Bless!

Lowell Grady

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jacobs

Please clarify the exact report you are using. If it is the old "Category Summary", which has a gray icon in the Reports screen, this is a known issue with that report. For some reason, the developers haven't removed it from the program yet, but the solution is to use the newer Category Summary by [Year/Quarter/Month] or Transactions by Category report. Any of the "new" reports should work correctly.

If you are using a "new" report, can you clarify if it's missing a lot of transactions for this category or just one or two? And if not many, can you verify that the tranactions using this category don't also have a Transfer account in the Transfer column?

pburgkid

Again, Thanks. God Bless!

Lowell Grady

jacobs

First, I have no influence on what the programmers do or don't do. (Well, I'm a beta tester, so I can offer my input on features… but whether the developers listen is out of my control!. 😉)

The old Category Summary report was built on a reports engine originally created for the 2010-era Quicken Essentials program which formed the code basis for the modern Quicken Mac. In 2017, the developers re-wrote the reports engine to a more modern and customizable architecture. Over the next several years, they added more refinements and options to the new reports. The fact is that there is simply no way they will abandon the new reports, which most people are using, and return to the obsolete old version.

And I wouldn't encourage them to fix the old Category Summary report, because I think the replacement Summary and Transaction reports can do everything the old Category Summary did — and more. So could we dig into what you find inadequate about the new reports? It's possible that there are things you can do which you're just not aware of, and I'd be happy to try to help get you using the new reports.

You say: "They have been dumbed down and do not present the data in the clearcut format afforded by the old reports." I don't find the new reports dumbed down in any way. Can you be more explicit about what you could see in an old Category Summary report that you don't think you can see in the new report?

You say: "the ability to alter the view from top level to detailed level is missing." No, it's not. And any tweaks you make to a report to have some cateogries expanded and some collapsed are saved with the report, so it will retain your tweaks to the format for future uses. So again, can you share an example of what you don't think you can do in the new reports?

I'm pretty sure once you get configured correctly in the new reports, you'll find you can get everything you are used to in the old Category Summary. (And no data errors! 😉)

pburgkid

I have attached two screenshots. One shows the top of the old category report. Note the window on the bottom right that allows changing the level of detail. This is missing in all the new reports.

The second is a portion of the report showing the output for one of my categories (detailed). It shows how much money has been put into the category and the expenditures in each sub-category. At the top level of detail I can quickly see which categories are in the black and which in the red. I use this report for budgeting (on an excel spreadsheet). (I tried quicken budgets last year. Didn't like it. Very clumsy.) I also can transfer money from one category to another to balance out a category that is in the red. Finally at year end it is very easy to pull the info needed for income tax purposes. I know what is deductible so I don't use quicken's tax related option when creating a category.

BTW you need to know I get these results by splitting the various sources of income into the budget category amounts. I think it is a much more integrated way of managing day to day expenses.

Screenshot 2023-04-20 at 4.22.37 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-04-20 at 4.26.44 PM.png

jacobs

In a Transactions by Category report, shown, here, I can achieve "Top Level Categories" by using the View > Collapse All setting. This will collapse down to Income and Expense levels; one additional click on the little ">" arrow next to Expenses will expand to show all main categories. You can then selectively open categories to see the underlying sub-categories by clicking on ">" next to the category you want to expand. It's really identical to the old Category Summary. (Except that totals are now on the bottom rather than the top, like financial reports and software everywhere else in the world 😉). Here's an example of some expense categories; two are opened to show sub-categories, two are not:

Old Category Summary:

New Transactions by Category:

If you expand some categories and not others, and save the report as a custom report (e.g. give it a name), the next time you open the report, it will open in the same state you left it.

Transaction reports by default do not include the Memo column, but all you need to do to include it is click on View > Columns and check Memo/Notes.

I understand what you are saying about how you mix real income and expenses and budgeted income and expenses by moving money around. I personally think this is working uphill against the way Quicken is designed to be used, but if it works for you, that's all that matters. Using the new reports won't change any of that. But it will solve the problem of any omitted data.

pburgkid

In 2022 i decided to do it the Quicken way. Reported income separately, set up budgets etc. Fortunately through the new transactions by category report I was able to salvage the information I needed for 2022 tax reporting and budgeting for 2023. The transactions by category does contain the same information as my old report does but in a less usable format. The new report sees income and expenses differently putting some categories under income and others under expenses for no reason I can discern. The old report shows money in and money out. It also has a view option that is missing from the new report called "Top Level Categories Only" that lists all the categories that are in the black under money in and all that are in the red under money out. Speaking of color, all negative numbers in the old report were in red which is much easier to see as opposed to a minus sign, especially if there is no subcategory to separate the income and expenses.

Yes, I am using Quicken differently than it was designed to be used. It works for me so as you said, that is what matters. Fortunately the one category that is missing can be easily managed outside of Quicken so I will stick with my old report.

Thanks for the help and conversation. I give you and the Quicken Community a 10.

jacobs

@pburgkid said: The new report sees income and expenses differently putting some categories under income and others under expenses for no reason I can discern. The old report shows money in and money out.

In the new reports, categories appear as income or expense based solely on how you identify them in the setting for each category. It's the old report which I find odd from an accounting/bookkeeping perspective. One would expect that if you create an account for, say Household Supplies expense, it will always show up as an expense. In the new reports, it does. But in the old reports, if you returned a purchase and got a credit, the Household Supplies category would switch from "Money Out" to "Money In". That's accurate in terms of cash flow, but most people want to see their income categories always under the income heading and their expense categories always under the expense heading, even if there's an ocassional transaction in the opposite direction. If my Household Supplies category has only the refund for a past purchase, I want to see that as a 'positive' value in my expenses, not as income. (It's not income; it's a reduction of a prior period expense.)

As I noted, you can get the equivalent of the old "Top Level Categories Only" by selecting Collapse All, and clicking once to expand Income and oncd to expand Expenses. So it's three clicks instead of one, but yields a similar top level categories report.

I get it: you prefer a strict cash flow report, such that income and expense categories are fluid to move to either Money In or Money Out depending only on the category balance for the reporting period. But that makes doing things like columnar reports comparing two or more time periods impossible, because a category could have Money In in one period and Money Out in another period; in the modern reports, income categories and expense categories never switch places no matter what the category amount may be.

If you're happy with the old report because you're using categories as budget envelopes rather than tracking pure income and expenses, great. I'd just note two things to leave you with to be aware of:

(1) As you've seen, the old report has some bugs. It sounds like for you, it's one category is being omitted. I don't know the nature of the bug, so you can't be sure it only omits one category all the time. you might want to periodicaly generate a new report to see if the balance differes from the old report by exactly the amount of the category you've found is missing, or if there are other discrepancies you might need to investigate.

(2) At some point, the developers have said the last of the old reports will be removed from the program. I have no idea if this will be in two months or two years; I'm just letting you know you will likely need to adapt your approach at some point because the old report is now considered obsolete and will at some point disappear.

Best wishes!

pburgkid

Well, I thought the conversation was ended but here goes.....

Re paragraphs 1 & 2: Returns are not a problem. I just enter a return as a positive transaction. It appears that way along with the expenses. So total expenses for the category or sub category remain accurate. As for the three clicks to get the TLCO view it does contain all the information but all jumbled together with only minus signs to differentiate expenses from money in. Eliminating the window that made it easy to access the different views and sticking it three clicks away in the in the View window could hardly be considered an improvement nor could eliminating red with minus signs. The old TLCO report is easier to use and far better for my purposes.

Re paragraph 3. I have no need to run the type of report you describe. I suppose a business might need this type report but I doubt the average home user would. Which brings up the point that Quicken seems to have moved more and more to the business side and to tools for the CPA's and away from the average home user. I suppose that is where the money is.

Thanks for the tips. The old report seems to be stable but I will keep an eye on things. I've been at this long enough that I can usually catch it if anything gets out of wack. As to the old reports being eliminated I will just avoid future updates. The current version does everything I want it to do. I hadn't thought about it that way but you are right. I am just doing money in envelopes electronically and that is really all I want to do.

Thanks and goodbye?

unknown

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