Business Tab | Profit / Loss View | Uncategorized Amount Determination

JoelC

As January 2024 just came to an end I was reviewing the financial results of my OptCo in the Business tab.

I was looking at the Profit / Loss View and notice a very large amount categorized as "Uncategorized" (see the below image).

The amount made no sense to me as i) my testing / tracking spreadsheet excluded this amount and ii) when I ran a Quicken's P&L Report, it did not include this amount (i.e., it matched by spreadsheet).

The next thing I did was click on the amount which resulted on the below pop-up.

There it was — a date! I then ran a Spending By category report, I included all accounts, I included all categories and I limited the dates to Jan. 25 to Jan. 25 (and then Jan. 23 to Jan. 26) and the report again .excluded this amount!

THE PROBLEM: I have — because of the above - lost faith in the P&L View as this amount is significant, I cannot determine its source and it does not appear in the P&L Report.

THE ASK: Does anyone know the cause of the above, seen anything similar to the above and/or have an idea as to how to determine its cause / source?

While I know that I can simply rely / use the P&L Report, it is nice to be able to easily and quickly jump to the Business View to get an indication as to performance.

Thank you.

JoelC

I am post a follow up to see whether anyone has any idea and, if not, I will try given Quicken Support a call to see whether they can figure this out.

Thank you.

mshiggins

My go-to report for locating transactions is the Banking > Transaction report: I suggest you try locating the uncategorized transactions with no payee using the Banking > Transaction report.

One possible culprit: Investment MiscExp transactions with no category, in an Investment account designated as a Business account.

If the problem transactions were MiscExp transactions, you might consider recording those expenses using the Investment "Withdraw" transaction-type instead - where you can record a Payee name.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins , appreciated and on it. I will let you know.

JoelC

@mshiggins I ran the report with Payee = No Payee. The resulting report produced $3,140.83 of realized gains in an investment account with only a portion of which being attributable to a business investment account. This has me thinking that there must be some other culprit. Would you have any further idea / thoughts?

mshiggins

Based on your previous posts (and particularly the screenshots), I'm assuming that your Quicken file has one $27,559.42 transaction with no payee and no category, dated January 25, 2024. 

I think the Banking > Transaction report should be able to find that transaction.

I suggest running the Banking > Transaction report Customized for the appropriate date range, All Accounts, Category=Uncategorized, and Payee=No Payee. 


An uncategorized MiscExp transaction for $27,559.42 in a Business Investment account would produce the result you posted. But I can't say there are no other conditions that could produce the same result.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins , appreciate the input ad response.

I suggest running the Banking > Transaction report Customized for the appropriate date range, All Accounts, Category=Uncategorized, and Payee=No Payee. 

I did exactly this and nothing popped. This is the phantom aspect of this.

I will be calling Quicken shortly.

Thank you.

JoelC

I spoke with Quicken support today for nearly 90 minutes and they too are entirely baffled. The case / problem has been referred up the support food chain, I look forward to seeing what they come back with.

One this that we did try was to do a File / Create a Copy while holding the SHIFT+CTRL as this is supposed to repair a damaged file (I did not know this existed). The result → no change, teh problem was still there.

Will update further once I hear back.

rguiher

@JoelC My suggestion would be to run the P&L for only that date, and then try to narrow it down by telling it to subtotal columns by Account, by Payee, etc. to help you narrow down the issue. You might also try running Reports > Spending > Itemized categories for only that date, and see whether that sheds any light on the situation. Have you tried Accrual vs. Cash? Including / excluding transfers?

rguiher

Sorry - just re-read your original post, and you've already tried the Spending→Itemized categories suggestion, and the P&L report isn't showing it to begin with. The only other thing I can think of is to use the "Expenses" graph at the bottom of the Business tab to see a categorized breakdown, which presumably will tie to your original list (and show "uncategorized"). If you then hit "show full graph" you'll get the pop-out, and then you can click on the "uncategorized" category which will take you to the transaction report that should show you what's behind the $27.5K that's lurking.

JoelC

@rguiher, appreciate the advice and the time. Have tried that as well and nada. I will follow up with Quicken shortly and see whether they have any answers.

mshiggins

Based on my testing, I'm operating under the assumption that the $27,559.42 exists in a single Quicken transaction in your file. 

One thing I don't believe you've tried, is expanding the report search criteria.

Customize the Banking > Transaction report to report on: "All dates", Cents (no rounding), all accounts (including Separate accounts), all categories (including hidden categories), all payees, all tags (including hidden tags), all securities (including hidden securities), and all transfers (Advanced tab).

There are a couple of ways to make locating "the" transaction easier, given the large number of transactions likely to qualify using the above customizations.

1.) On the Advanced tab of the report Customize dialog, select "Equal to" in the Amounts dropdown and enter $27,559.42
2.) If #1 doesn't help; return the Advanced tab Amounts dropdown to "All", then subtotal the report on Payee and look at blank payees
3.) If #2 doesn't help, subtotal the report on Category and look at blank categories

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins I REALLY APPRECIATE your continued assistance on this noting the following:

i) I tried all 3 of your suggestions above and I could not isolate the transactions.

ii) I believe that the amount may be related to investment gains / losses and/or F/X rate changes as weird as that may sound as it changes by small amounts.

iii) And, to add insult to injury, I now have the same problem in my February P/L!

iv) Also weird is that the Uncategorized amount does not appear in the Income / Expense graph and report on the same dashboard as illustrated in the below image (see the red rectangle that I added).

I am hoping that Quicken Support Level 3 show I can have a scheduled call with next week can assist.

I am truly baffled by this!

mshiggins

"I believe that the amount may be related to investment gains / losses ...."

That makes sense: unrealized gains/losses don't exists as Quicken transactions, they're computed on the fly for Quicken reports. When you have an "_UnrlzdGain" category in a report, you can drill down on it and see all the artificial "transactions" Quicken has created to come up with the UnrlzdGain amount.

You could try running the Spending > Income and Expense by Category report, customizing for just your Business Investment account - also to include Unrealized Gains (Advanced tab). With Unrealized Gains in the report, you could find your $73,559.42 there if you drill down.

You might try comparing that to your Profit and Loss Statement - just for Business Investment accounts and including Unrealized Gains.

[FWIW: I have a test Quicken file with a "business" investment account: nothing from that account ever appears in the Profit and Loss report, but it shows up fine in the Income and Expense by Category report.]

If you get tired of trying to find that phantom $27,559.42, I would use Help > Report a Problem to notify the Quicken developers. Send your Sanitized data file and all your log files. You probably won't get any response from them, or ever know what, if anything, they're doing about it; but I think it's the best chance to have the problem addressed.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins again, appreciate your assistance.

That makes sense: unrealized gains/losses don't exists as Quicken transactions, they're computed on the fly for Quicken reports. When you have an "_UnrlzdGain" category in a report, you can drill down on it and see all the artificial "transactions" Quicken has created to come up with the UnrlzdGain amount.

The strange thing should this be the case is that I do not have any equity investments for this particular company (i.e., there should be no unrealized gains)!

You could try running the Spending > Income and Expense by Category report, customizing for just your Business Investment account - also to include Unrealized Gains (Advanced tab). With Unrealized Gains in the report, you could find your $73,559.42 there if you drill down.

I ran the above report for both businesses (as the other business does have equity investments) across all business investment accounts and as can be seen by the below image, the phantom entry is nowhere to be seen.

It is also worth noting that when I run either i) a P/L report or ii) Income and Expense report for the business the phantom amounts does not appear and, in point of fact, the P/L report as well as the Income and Expense report match the Excel spreadsheet which I have been maintaining for text purposes.

The problem is that users can not drill into the reports that are "behind" the below "card".

If you get tired of trying to find that phantom $27,559.42, I would use Help > Report a Problem to notify the Quicken developers. Send your Sanitized data file and all your log files. You probably won't get any response from them, or ever know what, if anything, they're doing about it; but I think it's the best chance to have the problem addressed.

I will never tire of the hunt as I want to the bottom of this (i.e., I don't need to as the P/L reports do not include this phantom amount). I do have a call scheduled with Quicken Level 3 support on February 19. And, if that does not work then I will try your suggestion THOUGH it is very discouraging as you wrote "You probably won't get any response from them, or ever know what, if anything, they're doing about it".

Thank you.

Chris_QPW

THOUGH it is very discouraging as you wrote "You probably won't get any response from them, or ever know what, if anything, they're doing about it".

Unfortunately, that is the nature of "Help → Report a Problem".

The only way to get any feedback really in most cases is by contacting Quicken Support, and that of course isn't guaranteed to get such feedback either. The "best" anyone can get is when they have created an internal problem report for it (and they give you such an Id). Even armed with that, if you call back later the answer to a question like "What is happening with XXX?" will be that there is no ETA.

JoelC

A quick update for those following this thread.

I had a 90 minute call with Quicken support in the US. I showed them the problem in detail and am comfortable that they fully understand the problem. They were honestly perplexed especially when I showed them that there was no such transaction on January 25th! They shared that they had little insight into how the dashboard is configured and would be referring the problem to engineering.

I sent them a sanitized file. I was told they would be back to me with an update (and hopefully a solution) on or before February 20th which is when I have a follow up call scheduled with them.

Will update everyone after that call.

mshiggins

"Unfortunately, that is the nature of 'Help → Report a Problem'."

Actually I don't believe that not getting any feedback from Help > Report a Problem is a meaningful drawback.

Report a Problem is capable of providing exactly the kind of information that the developers need to find the cause of problems and fix those problems.

I believe it's a mistake for users to think that they should get feedback from that source.

There are millions of Quicken users, but only a very limited number of developers and a very limited budget to pay for those developer's time.  

Any time developers spend trying to respond to the Problems that are Reported to them, is time they won't have to fix those problems (or add the new features that users constantly ask for).

While I would love to know the details underlying/causing Quicken problems, I definitely do not want to waste the time of the only people who can fix those problems.

The one related area I think Quicken could improve, is to provide more useful detail about the "Fixes" in Release Notes.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins appreciate the response. I do believe that some feedback would be helpful to encourage people to continue to report a problem along the lines of it is a bug and it will be fixed, it is a bug but low priority to fix, it is operating properly and here is why, etc. so that users avoid going down black holes and wondering where things stand.

Quicken, having gone through such a determining, would expend minimal additional time beyond that spent investigating the problem.

Comments / thoughts?

Diana

I had a similar problem with reports having uncategorized transactions that turned out to be investment purchases.

Try running a report of "Investment transactions" for that time frame. I just did and I get a bunch of "uncategorized transactions" that represent stocks I bought and sold in that time frame.

Check out this discussion. It seems like your problem might be related to this.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7939107/spending-reports-showing-stock-purchases-as-uncategorized-transactions

Good luck. Hope this helps,

Diana

JoelC

@Diana I appreciate the suggestion but I did run the report and the problem remains.

The strange thing is that this company only has fixed income investments and there was only 1 interest credit in the month while the invested assets remain constant (book value = market value), so very easy to reconcile.

With that, fingers crossed that Quicken engineering with throw som light on this.

JoelC

I spoke with Quicken Level 3 support today. I will provide a brief update now and a more detailed response tomorrow (I ahem been at my desk for 16 hours straight)!

The problem is that the Quicken is catching one of the buy / sells in one — and only one — of my business investment accounts. They need to figure why it is happening on 1 account and not the there accounts.

The solution was to classify the business investment account as a personal investment account. I said "no" as then both the personal and my corporate net worth statements would be wrong. I am amazed that they tried this as teh solution. All that to say I have a another call in 48 hours to see what can be done.

Will provide more details tomorrow!

JoelC

A more fulsome update noting I have a another scheduled call with Quicken Level 3 support later today.

i) The problem is that the Quicken is catching one of the buy / sells in one — and only one — of my business investment accounts. The problem is not only that they are picking up the buy n only 1 account but also that i) they are picking up only buys, not sells which make no sense and ii) because investment accounts do have a Tag field all investments are being allocated to the default company (i.e., I have tow companies).

They acknowledged that this is a problem.

ii) The reason the amount varied form day to day is because it is picking up the f/x rate change so essentially I had 1 transaction (i.e., a security purchase in USD) which the P/L card was converting from CAD → USD.

iii) Their proposed solution — as noted above — clearly does not work. It will be interesting to see what they come back with.

Thanks to all.

JoelC

The bottom line to all of this as @Chris_QPW , @Jim_Harman, @mshiggins and others have counselled, the dashboards are great but they are only directional.

The best and, as illustrated above, only way to ensure accurate reporting is to build a custom report and use it! This is easily enough done as these reports can be pinned to the Toolbar.

JoelC

Another update for those interested.

Had a follow up call with Quicken Level 3 support confirmed that it was definitive bug and one that needed to be fixed.

I was advised that engineering would fix this quickly which means +/- 3 months.

I was also told that Quicken Level 3 support will contact me when they think they have it fixed so that I can confirm / test the fix.

I will keep everyone posted.

I hope that this helps.

mshiggins

" ... ii) because investment accounts do have a Tag field all investments are being allocated to the default company ...."


I don't know if the Canadien version works the same as the U.S. version; and even if it does, I'm not sure this will help, but ....

Try making your "other" business the default business.  Or try making none of your businesses the default business.

See  Business > Manage Business Information  and Edit the option "transactions without a tag belong to this business" as desired.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins great idea, wow do I feel stupid for but thinking of that.

JoelC

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20420279#Comment_20420279

@mshiggins I tried it out late last night and thankfully I had a backup. Changing the default business account is not Quicken friendly. All / most of teh data in the newly designated default account got scrambled. It seems that once the use has selected a daft account that they need to stick with thedefault account.

mshiggins

"The problem is that the Quicken is catching one of the buy / sells in one — and only one — of my business investment accounts."

I am now able to consistently reproduce your problem. 

In my tests there is a specific characteristic that determines whether a Buy transaction will be used in the Business > Profit/Loss display. Quicken includes Bought transactions in the Profit/Loss display, but does not include BoughtX transactions.

I also tested with, and without, having a "default business": it did not seem to matter.

"The problem is not only that they are picking up the buy  [sic]n only 1 account but also that ... they are picking up only buys, not sells which make no sense".

There's probably not much of a benefit to looking for the logic behind bugs - they're just mistakes. In this specific case, I don't see the failure to count Sells as a problem: since Quicken should not be "picking up" either Buys or Sells, it is treating Sells correctly. Utilizing Buy transactions is a bug - not utilizing Sell transactions is working correctly.

" ... because investment accounts do have a Tag field all investments are being allocated to the default company (i.e., I have tow [sic] companies)."

It was that sentence that immediately triggered in my mind the idea to change default companies. Now I wish I had read the Quicken Help and tested before I made that suggestion. Sorry - and glad you were wise enough to backup before making those changes.

"Changing the default business account is not Quicken friendly."

My initial thinking was that Quicken would check for a "default company" each time it encountered an untagged business transaction as it produced output that depended on that condition. But I think now that Quicken marks (behind the scenes) untagged business transactions when they are entered as belonging to the default company. I believe that would account for the issues you experienced when switching default companies.  See the Quicken Help for editing a Quicken "Business" below.

How do I edit a business?

Caution

When you enter a business transaction in Quicken, Quicken looks to the business information to see which business the transaction belongs to. Editing the business name and owner won't affect your historical data, but changing the business tag or the setting about whether business transactions require a tag could. Make sure you understand the ramifications before you change either of these settings.

Click the Business tab.

Click the Business Tools button and choose Manage Business Information.

Click Edit.

Modify the business name or description as needed.

In the Owner field, modify the business owner.

What happens to my past transactions for this business?

All past and future transactions for this business are associated with the new owner in the Tax Planner.

If you misspelled the name of the business tag or selected the wrong tag when you added the business, modify the business tag.

How do I correct a misspelling or other naming mistake?

Rename the tag in the Tag List. After you do, Quicken automatically applies the new name to all the transactions that use the tag and updates the tag name in the business information.

What if I assigned the wrong tag to the business when I added the business to Quicken?

If you select another business tag in the list, Quicken changes only how it displays your business data; Quicken doesn't change any of the transactions that you've already entered. For example, say you added a business for candles and you accidentally selected a tag named catering to go with it. As you've entered business transactions for the candle business, you've included the candle tag. To make sure you see the candle transactions when you view data for the candle business, all you need to do is change the business tag for the candle business from catering to candle.

What if I select or add another tag after I have already entered transactions for this business?

This can compromise your historical data and isn't advisable. The old transactions retain the original tag and will no longer be associated with this business. This means they are grouped with the business for which you've selected the check box called Untagged business transactions belong to this business unless you edit the past transactions to use the new tag.

In the ‘Business Documents’ tab, select any particular document that you want to edit, click on the ‘Gear’ icon on the far right. Take actions as appropriate and click on OK.

If you incorrectly selected or cleared the Untagged business transactions belong to this business check box when you added the business, modify it now.

What if I select this check box for another business after I have already entered transactions?

If you initially had this check box selected for another business, and you entered transactions for that business without a tag, you'll need to edit those transactions now to include the tag if you want to retain the historical integrity of your data. Otherwise Quicken will have no way to know which untagged transactions go with which business and will display them all together. 

Can you give me an example of how my historical data can be affected?

For example, say you initially had this check box selected for a candle business, and you entered transactions for the candle business without a tag. Then let's say you decide to close the candle business and open a catering business. If you want to select this check box for the catering business, you need to do two things: 1) Edit the candle business information and clear the check box, and 2) Edit all the business transactions for the candle business to include a tag. Otherwise Quicken will have no way to know which untagged historical transactions go with which business and will display them all together.

-JP

JoelC

@mshiggins as always, let me start with a thank you for the deeper investigation and response.

I am now able to consistently reproduce your problem. 

In my tests there is a specific characteristic that determines whether a Buy transaction will be used in the Business > Profit/Loss display. Quicken includes Bought transactions in the Profit/Loss display, but does not include BoughtX transactions.

I also tested with, and without, having a "default business": it did not seem to matter.

Appreciate the confirmation. This further confirms that it is a bug.

There's probably not much of a benefit to looking for the logic behind bugs - they're just mistakes. In this specific case, I don't see the failure to count Sells as a problem: since Quicken should not be "picking up" either Buys or Sells, it is treating Sells correctly. Utilizing Buy transactions is a bug - not utilizing Sell transactions is working correctly.

I understand your point and thinking.

It is my view that they should not be picking up buys (and therefore should not pick up sells). The point I was reaching for is that if they do decide to pick up buys then they should also pick up sells. Things need to be symmetrical.

It was that sentence that immediately triggered in my mind the idea to change default companies. Now I wish I had read the Quicken Help and tested before I made that suggestion. Sorry - and glad you were wise enough to backup before making those changes.

All good, no apologies needed. I learnt long ago — and, unfortunately the hard way — to always make back ups before trying something new. That said, the inability to change default companies is likely a bug in and of itself. 😂

I appreciate the Quicken Help file extract. I have read it and find it flawed. There should be the ability to change the default company; for example (and this is my exact situation), I had a previous job where my ownership insurance in Employer 1 was help in my Company A, I changed jobs and Employer 2 insisted that my ownership interest in Employer 2 be held in my new Company B to avoid the very possibility that any issues with Employer 1 / Company A could impact them. This is a real case where I would need / want to change my default company yet Quicken will not allow me to do so. 😕

Thank you.

mshiggins

"This is a real case where I would need / want to change my default company yet Quicken will not allow me to do so".

I think you may not be perceiving "default company" the same way as Quicken does.

Just to make sure we're on the same page: I believe the "default" business concept is intended to tell Quicken that ALL "business transactions" that have no Tag, are to be treated as if they had the Tag of the single chosen "default business".

In Quicken, I believe the "default company" option is intended to address a situation such as the following.

When the user begins using Quicken they have only one company, so they have no need to establish a Quicken "Business" - all Quicken "business transactions" will belong to the only "company" in the file, so there is no need to assign a "Business Tag" to those business transactions to distinguish them from any other business ... because there is no other business.

But later, the user starts a second business. Now the user must make a decision: how to distinguish the transactions for one business from the transactions for the other business. Obviously the user can create 2 Quicken businesses, and assign Business Tag 1 to all Business 1 transactions, and Business Tag 2 to all Business 2 transactions.

But a simpler approach would be to leave all the original (and future) Business 1 transactions with NO tag, while assigning the new Business 2 tag to all the Business 2 transactions. And in order to let Quicken in on that logic, the user can tell Quicken that Business 1 is the "default business" (that all non-tagged "business transactions" belong to Business 1).

If the user later wants to effectively switch the "default business" from Business 1 to Business 2 (though, as I have given this further thought, I'm not sure that this would make any sense), there is a problem to overcome.  

Just changing the "Manage Business Information" option "Business transactions without a tag belong to this business" from Business 1 to Business 2 is likely to create a problem, if the user does nothing else. All of Business 1's existing non-tagged transactions will become assigned to Business 2 - which cannot be right.

So before making a different company (Business 2, here) the "default business", the user must make sure to Tag all the original "default business" transactions (the Business 1 untagged transactions) with the appropriate Business 1 tag. And to do the same for all future Business 1 transactions.


Having said all that, I no longer think that changing the "default business" will change your results. To quote myself in an earlier post in this discussion: "I also tested with, and without, having a "default business": it did not seem to matter."

To me that means that your underlying problem is not likely to be caused by the Quicken "default business" choice.

[While I doubt it's feasible; based on my tests, if you could find a way to replace your "Bought" transaction with a "BoughtX" transaction, you MIGHT be able to eliminate the current problem.]

-JP