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BUG: Investment purchases for new securities are saved incorrectly when using Command-N for saving

jacobs

I just discovered an interesting bug while manually entering investment transactions. I'm wondering if anyone else has run into this? (If you only download your transactions, you probably haven't.) I don't typically have multiple new security purchases to enter at once, so I've apparently never run into this. I also tried an old version of Quicken 2017 and found it worked correctly, so it's not something that was always this way in Quicken Mac, but I don't know when this bug got introduced.

The bug occurs when entering transactions for new securities (ones you don't currently have in your data file). For banking-type transactions, after entering the fields, one can press Command-N to save the transaction and open a new one. This also works for investment-type transactions: enter the Type, security, amount, and number of shares, press Command-N, and the transaction s recorded and a new blank transaction is opened. But what I discovered is that if the Buy transaction is for a security not previously in the data file, Quicken shows the calculated price per share, but then saves the transaction without either the security or the number of shares.

To replicate:

Open an Investing account
Click or select New
Enter Type=Buy, Security=(any security not in the security list), Total Cost, Number of Shares
Note the price per share is correctly calculated
Press Command-N to Save the transaction and open a new one
Observe that the saved transaction did not record the Security or the number of shares, only the amount.

Here's a screenshot of transaction I'm entering. Notice that the Security shows "New" because it doesn't yet exist in this data file; that's normal. It shows a calculated cost per share and everything looks normal.

Expected behavior: the transaction should be saved exactly as shown, with the security and the number of shares purchased. But when I press Command-N to save the transaction, here's how Quicken records the transaction:

Transaction saved without security or shares.png

Notice the Security is lost, as is the number of shares; only the cash out amount was saved.

If you repeat steps #1 through #4 and press Return instead of Command-N, Quicken downloads the price history for the new security and properly saves the transaction.

Note that this happens ONLY if the security is new (doesn’t exist in the data file); if the security used already exists, then Command-N works as expected, saving the transaction properly before opening a new blank transaction.

I will report this via Report a Problem; I'm just curious if others have seen this behavior or can replicate it.

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Comments

Gilles9

What I see is command -n is to create a new transaction, no to save a transaction

I suppose you expect that it would be saved automatically,

Why not just press return to save it and then command - n to create a new transaction ?

Jon

The documentation for Quicken Mac says in regards to entering transactions in the register:

You don't need to click Save to save the transaction—Quicken records the transaction automatically when you press Enter, move on to another task, or close the register.

So I'd argue that it should automatically save the transaction correctly when you press Command-N to move on to the next new transaction the way @jacobs is expecting.

jacobs

@Gilles9 Yes, one can press Save first, then New. This is true throughout Quicken Mac.

But when you're entering a series of transactions, it's nice to do one command to save-and-new. I do this all the time for my bank and credit card transactions. And for investment transactions like reinvested dividends. And as I noted, it works for investment Buy transacitons if the security is already in your database. It only fails if the security is not in your database; it's failing to execute the code to create the security and download the price history.

I did a quick test to verify that it works correctly in the old Quicken 2017. But I haven't tried to mess with downloading intermediate subscription versions through the past several years to see when this became broken.

Jon

@jacobs It looks like this has been broken ever since they changed the way they handled new securities in 7.0. Prior to 7.0, when you entered an unknown security when entering a new transaction it threw you over to the New Security dialog, and when you finished with that dialog & hit Save it not only saved the new security, it also saved the transaction without any amount, price, or number of shares. It's only since 7.0 that you've been able to enter a new security on the fly in the register & continue entering a Buy transaction for that security.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @jacobs,

I see the same thing when following the steps you provided to replicate the issue. It shows the amount, but not the name of the Security or the number of shares. The documentation for Quicken Mac that @Jon linked says that it should automatically save, and I did not see anything specifying that investment transactions are handled differently. However, the documentation on recording purchase of securities in Quicken shows "Click save when you are done" as the last step.

I suspect the mostly blank transaction part of what we're seeing is related to an issue that was already reported: If you are creating a transaction and change your mind (clicking cancel instead of save), it still creates a blank transaction in the register. (QMAC-20745). As for the transaction not automatically saving, since the documentation gives 2 different answers, I will reach out to our teams to find out if investment transactions should be automatically saving or not.

Sorry I don't have a better answer for you, but I'll follow up once I hear back from our teams!

jacobs

@Quicken Kristina Thanks for your reply and testing this. Two follow-up comments:

Clicking cancel when entering a transaction has always (going back to Quicken 2015) left behind an empty transaction. I assume QMAC-20745 refers to users' requests to change this behavior so that Quicken auto-deletes a canceled transaction. I definitely support such an enhancement — but that's a different issue than the one I'm bringing up. With the investment transactions I'm describing, the entry is NOT canceled.

While the Help page you cite says "Click save when you are done", I think it should be noted that Command-N functions as "Save + New" everywhere else in Quicken.

It works as "Save + New" for all banking transactions.
It works as "Save + New" for investment transactions like Type=Reinvest Dividend.
It works as "Save + New" for Type=Buy investment transactions if the security being purchased already exists in the database.
Only when there is an investment Type=Buy transactions with a new security, Quicken performs "Save + New" but records an incomplete transaction which contains the amount but no security or shares. It is failing to execute the code to enter the new security into the database and download its price history.

It does not seem logical for this to be the intended behavior.

Thanks!

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I heard back from our teams that it should be saving, so I forwarded this issue to the proper channels for further investigation and resolution. Thank you for submitting screenshots to contribute to the investigation. If anyone else is encountering this issue and would like to contribute also, please go to Help>Report a Problem, and send a problem report with log files attached.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.

(CTP-10017)