No true running balance on unreconciled transactions

mellis58

Years ago, by dumb luck, I happen to be sitting on a flight next to a programmer for Quicken. I asked him why Quicken does not have a true running balance for unreconciled transactions. He pointed to the numbers at the bottom which aren’t really a reflection of a true balance. He then acknowledged that they looked at Microsoft Money and have seen how they filtered unreconciled transactions to give a true running balance. The balance is the same for "all transactions" or "unreconciled transactions". He then explained that Microsoft simply hides the reconciled transactions and calculates a balance to start with based on all reconciled transactions in the register, so your ending balance doesn’t change after applying the filter. You simply see less transactions. Quicken made a corporate decision to use a report approach for unreconciled transactions and thus the balance starts with zero and gives a summation of all unreconciled (past and future) in the register. So, for the old Microsoft Money users…. it sucks. It’s a business decision by Quicken and despite its functional usefulness for proper filtering, it will never change.

q_lurker

I asked him why Quicken does not have a true running balance for unreconciled transactions. He pointed to the numbers at the bottom which aren’t really a reflection of a true balance. 

I’m confused by those two sentences, or maybe more directly, I don’t understand what you mean by “true running balance”.

If I have a (checking) account sorted by date, doesn’t that produce a balance column with a true running balance at the end of each day considering when the transaction was initiated (created). (It is a separate discussion about the intra-day order of transactions.)

An alternate sort is on Clr status which groups reconciled transactions first then cleared transactions with uncleared transactions at the end. That too produces a set of rational running balance values more in line with what a bank statement might show.

Note that part of my failure to understand is that I do not see there being one “true” balance associated with any particular transaction. “True” in this context is relative.

QuickUserPSP

@mellis58 - when I read the title of your post, I knew you were a former MS Money user. Only a former MS Money user would understand the concept of a true running balance no matter how you filtered the account register, or what time frame you used. It did come in handy. I used to only show the last 12 months of the account register and it always showed a true running balance. The benefit of this is only having to scroll through the recent transactions, without having the "weight" of all older transaction in your register. I also used the filter to show only unreconciled transactions. This gave me a real picture of bills or expenses that were still outstanding, and a true running balance to show the cash I had left over, without all of the other transactions in the register.

EDIT - after going back and verifying, running totals are correct when specifying a specific time period or shorter time period.

Chris_QPW

This isn't a "new subject", this has been debated endlessly in the past. Whereas the new users coming from MS Money want one thing and the long time Quicken users another. The developers have even taken stabs at trying to please both at times. I think you can guess how well that worked. There are in fact, some compromises that "stuck" (at least the last time I checked, I will check again before posting this).

Yes, are still there. As presented, Quicken used to simply total the transactions in the register. For instance, sort by anything other than the date, or Payment or Deposit, or change either "Any Type" or "All Transactions" or put something in the search box, you are going to get the "report total" (add up what is visible).

On the other hand, you can select any of the date filters and you will find that the starting balance that includes all the transactions before that date.

You don't want to see a ton of transactions? Set the date filter to "This Month".

QuickUserPSP

@Chris_QPW - setting the filter to a shorter or specific time period in Quicken doesn't work because the running balances are not correct. In MS Money they always were. The same for filtering on unreconciled transactions. It was one of the things that I missed when I converted from MS Money.

EDIT - after going back and verifying, running totals are correct when specifying a specific time period or shorter time period.

Chris_QPW

Look again, I tested before submitting the comment, date only filtering maintains the same running balance.

QuickUserPSP

@Chris_QPW - I went back and double checked and you are right, selecting a date range or a time period does maintain the correct running totals. I haven't used it in so long, so I didn't realize that it had changed. It still won't work for me because I have pending transactions that go out 12 months. There is no automatic time period for that. I would need to use a custom time period and update it continually.

The running totals still don't work for filters such as unreconciled transactions, which is helpful when keeping track of outstanding or pending transactions.

Chris_QPW

For the record, they didn't change how the register works as far as totaling up the transactions. What they did do is start the balance for the first transaction shown to being what it would have been if the transactions before it were not filtered out.

Other than other than that one change they could leave the rest of the way it behaves alone. Filtering on things like uncleared would mean they would have to hide things that are in the same date range but include their totals. Which is different than the way the register normally works. As in you do a database query for a certain date range and just display those and total those.