Please: no report should default to "All Dates" - Default to "This Year" or "YTD"

MontanaKarl

In Quicken Mac Classic, you can right-click on a register line and generate a quick report on the Payee or the Category. Handy! Less handy is that the generated report defaults to "All Dates"…

For those of us with years of data… this results in a spinning beachball while decades of transactions are retrieved and formatted for a report that probably nobody is interested in. This wish is for the default date to be - ideally in Quicken > Preferences - "This Year" or "Year to Date" which is probably what most people want and which would generate quickly. If that is the wrong date, the report can be quickly changed to the desired date range.

Example: I right clicked on a gas charge and chose a report for category "Auto:Gas". Now, while it is shocking to see that I've spent $58,000 on gas in the last 30 years… it isn't what I was after 🙄

Similarly, from the credit card register, if I request a report for "Amazon" as a payee… do I really want to know how much I've ever spent at Amazon? Probably not.

A similar issue exists with the various Summary reports. The Category or Payee Summary by Year reports also list All Dates (starting in 1961… so there are dozens of empty/zero columns - which is just nonsense). Talk about a beachball waiting for the report to generate! How about the last 5 years as a default?

jacobs

I agree; I've cursed a number of times while waiting for Quicken Mac to generate a huge report I never wanted or intended.

Chris_QPW

I voted for this even though I'm not a Quicken Mac user. It is a terrible choice to select all the data as the default!

NotACPA

Looking at several "menu originated" (i.e., not Saved) reports in QWin, the default seems to be "Custom Dates" which is interpreted as YTD.

I'd think that QMac should do the same. I'll vote for this idea.

MontanaKarl

Thanks guys. For the non-Mac users… a spinning colored 'beachball' is what Mac users see when a process is taking a long time (and possibly even wedged indefinitely) where Windows users (used to) see an hourglass. (Don't know if Windows still does the black hourglass thing or has something else now?)

Chris_QPW

 (Don't know if Windows still does the black hourglass thing or has something else now?)

We get what might be called an arrow wrapped around a circle. 😀

Jim_Harman

In QWin the default date range for most reports is set at Edit > Preferences > Reports and Graphs.

Unfortunately the "Register report" accessed from a Banking register's gear menu defaults to Include all dates. With almost 10.000 transactions in my main checking account, the report takes about 60 seconds to open. It opens much faster on an account with fewer transactions.

I voted for this and I wish Quicken would do the same for QWin.

jacobs

As noted in the original post above, this is not just an issue when generating a quick report from a register; Quicken Mac defaults to all dates for some stock reports, yet not others. Here's one example…

I just wanted to get a quick count of how many different charitable organizations I contributed to last year. Okay, that should be easy: create a summary report by payees, with only the category=Charity, set to last year. But if I select Payee Summary by Year and click Edit to set the date range and category restriction, Quicken does a deep dive to first generate a report of all Payees for all years going back to my earliest data in 1983! So I'm stuck watching Quicken spin for some time while it generates this massive 42 column report — before I can tell it I only want a single column for last year!

Yet if I select Payee Summary by Quarter, Quicken Mac intelligently defaults the date range to Last 12 Months. If I select Payee Summary by Month, is defaults to This Year. So who would expect Payee Summary by Year (or the similar Category Summary by Year) to default to All Dates stretching back, in my case, over 42 years?! I like the suggestion that the "by Year" reports should default to past 5 years, not All Dates.

Of course, what would be far better — but would likely involve a bigger programming change — would be to allow the user to click Edit and enter their report criteria before generating a report, instead of generating the default report first and then having the user edit the criteria.

MontanaKarl

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20474068#Comment_20474068

Great example… and why I hope that the QMac team just implements better defaults without waiting for enough "votes" on this wish. It is a no-brainer user-experience fix (vs improvement) that should take minimal time to implement.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20474074#Comment_20474074

As I understand the system, the developers don't usually actively look at this forum, and it is the moderators that watch for the count to get to the "right point" and then they forward it to the developers.

jacobs

As I understand the system, the developers don't usually actively look at this forum, and it is the moderators that watch for the count to get to the "right point" and then they forward it to the developers.

Yes, that's the way it has been explained to us. I don't think managers at Quicken want the programmers to spend time actively engaging (or even passively reading) all the posts on this site. As those of use who hang out here regularly know, it can be a pretty big time suck! 🤣 And while just reading posts might suck less time, there are often incorrect assumptions- or theories or statements of fact made in posts on this site, and it would be hard to read posts promulgating incorrect information and not respond. So it's a better use of time for them to keep their heads down programming, and wait until something is pushed to their attention, whether it's an Idea post here reaching a critical number of votes, or problem reports from their support teams or a moderator here calling their attention to a problem users are experiencing.

I do think it would be beneficial if the developers (or their product managers) would once or twice a year collect some of the requests which are genuinely quick and easy to fix/implement — and we users often think something is easy when it actually is more complex — and devote a week or two a year to knocking out a bunch of small "quality of life" things. This "feature enhancement" would be a perfect example. Meanwhile, the way the system works, we need to get enough votes for an Idea to be sent the the developers, and sadly, this Idea as far has only 7 votes. More votes are needed to get the developers' eyes on this.

MontanaKarl

I never said or expected any developers to look at this. They don’t make any decisions about what is included in the product. Product Managers, on the other hand, neither code, nor supervise developers…. being big picture people, linked to marketing as well as UX, and feature definition, it is appropriate for PMs to know what users are experiencing.. and, as you say, for the moderators to alert the PMs of relevant topics,

clgary11

Please add this option in the settings for default report dates! It is a lot of extra time to have to update this EVERY time I run an adhoc report. The option is there in Windows. Thank you!!

jacobs

@clgary11 If you didn't already, please make sure you add your vote for this enhancement by scrolling to the top of the page and locating the vote counter in the yellow box beneath the first post. If the up arrow is black, you haven't yet voted and you should click it.

Unfortunately, even "common sense" change suggestions like this need to go through this cumbersome process of acquiring 30 votes in order to get officially reviewed and considered by the product development team.