Subcategories not included in reports

Raza · January 9

Hi, I am a 3 decade user of Quicken Windows and just changed to a Mac. When I run a transaction summary report in Quicken Mac, the report omits certain subcategories from the4 categories but includes othewrs (apparently randomly). I have tried editing all the preferences and different types of reports to no avail. Does someone have a solution

jacobs · January 11

@Raza Your report screenshot for Transactions by Category above shows a filter for Currency. That indicates that the transactions matching the other criteria for the report exist in two or more currencies. Quicken Mac reports do not (yet) allow multiple currencies; you have to run separate reports for each currency you use. So I'm guessing those vacation home sub-categories have expenses in a currency other than US dollars? If you switch the Currency filter from US Dollar to the currency you use where your vacation home is located, do you then get a report showing the expenses for the sub-categories?

Supposedly, better tools for dealing with multi-currencies are going to come to Quicken Mac… someday. The developers have marked this as a planned enhancement, but it hasn't yet been acted on.

jacobs · January 11

@Raza Glad we got to the bottom of it! Thanks for hanging in and posting additional details. 😁 This is an example where a text descriptions can fail to capture the key missing detail — in this case, that your transactions were a mix of US dollars and Euros.

Quicken for windows has multicurrency support, so surprising they did not put it in for Mac.

Quicken Mac has the building blocks for multi-currency support…

You can designate what currency to use for each account
You can enter a transfer transaction between account sin different currencies and Quicken will do a one-time conversion of the foreign currency to the home currency in the account using the home currency
You can designate which currency to use for reports.
Somewhere along the way, the developers added a preference setting to show the left sidebar balance of accounts converted into your primary/home currency:

But they haven't finished the job of allowing mixed currencies in a report or register or Dashboard card. There is an Idea thread (enhancement request) for this functionality going back many years…

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7321435/add-true-multi-currency-conversion-support-in-quicken-for-mac-317-legacy-merged-votes

…and the good news is that the developer have marked that thread as "Planned". but they have a lot of features they have agreed to and marked as "Planned", and it can take quite a while until such functionality is designed, built, tested and released.

Since Quicken did a complete rebuild of Quicken Mac from scratch starting more than a decade ago, the development team has made slow but steady process in adding features users want, many of which existed in the older Quicken Mac or in Quicken Windows. But there were hundreds of such feature requests, the code is complex, the Mac development team is small, and the result is notable but slow progress towards implementing the many features users want.

jacobs · January 10

This doesn't sound like any issue I've heard of before, so please give us some additional information so we can help troubleshoot the problem you're experiencing.

Which specific report are you selecting in the Reports section? Is it one of the default reports? You said transaction summary, so I'm not sure if you're describing a transaction report (such as "Transactions by Category") or a summary report (such as "Category Summary by Year"). Or are you selecting New > Report and then selecting Transactions or Summary?

Next, let's narrow the test. Create a new report by clicking the Reports tab at the top of the main screen, and then selecting New > Report. Select Summary. Go to Edit > Categories, click Clear All, and then click on just one main category for which you've seen sub-categories omitted; clicking the main category should select all the sub-categories. Set the date range to Last Year, or some time range in which you know there are transactions in all the sub-categories, and then click OK the generate the report.

Are you still missing some sub-categories? If so, it would be helpful if you could capture a few screenshots so we might be able to figure out what's going on. Go to Window > Categories, and take a screenshot of the category you just tested. For example:

Then go to Edit for the test report you created for this category, click Edit > Categories, and get a screenshot showing this Category and sub-categories and the date range at the top. For example:

Capture a screenshot of the report Quicken generates:

In my test example here, you can see that the report includes only two of the three sub-categories I selected; the sub-category Rental is not in the report. But in my test, that's okay, because I didn't use that sub-category for any transactions in the time period, so the report is correct. But you're saying you did use a sub-category, and it's not in your report. So finally, go to one of your account registers where you have a transaction which uses one of the report's missing sub-categories, and capture a screenshot of that transaction which shows the date, category and amount.

If you would post a reply with those four screenshots, I'm pretty certain we'll be able to identify what's going wrong, or narrow the hunt. 😀

Raza · January 10

Thanks. That is a very detailed response and I am trying to parse it. In Quicken Windows, I used to run a cash flow report whicjh served as an income statement for the year and am trying to do the same. A Quicken Mac report that seems similar is the stantdard report transactions by category (although the same issue occurs if I use the Cash Flow report template)

From there I selected one of the categories that is giving an issue:

The report that comes up not only excludes subcategories that have expenses, but also includes irrelevant transfers that are not from this category

Below is the advanced tab of the report

And here is a screenshot showing the offending categories:

Thanks.

MontanaKarl · January 10

@Raza it is still possible that you don’t have transactions in the subcategories for that time period? In the Category window that you show last… those blue transactions counts are hyperlinks. Clicking on one will show the transactions for that (sub)category. You”re saying that there are indeed transactions shown when you do that for 2024 that (obviously from your screenshot) are not appearing in your report?

Like Jacobs…I’ve never experienced or heard of this happening…

jacobs · January 10

Thanks for taking the time to capture and post all that.

What caught my eye immediately was the transfers. You have selected an option in the Advanced tab to "Include selected transfers with accounts outside of report." That means that the report will show any transfers into or out of the accounts selected for this report to/from any accounts not selected for this report. For instance, if you edit a report to include only your checking account, then the report will show transfers made to credit card accounts, savings accounts, loan accounts, retirement accounts etc. But if you edit the report to include All Accounts, then there would be no transfers shown, because there are no accounts "outside of report".

So since you have transfers showing, it's clear you don't have All Accounts selected. And my guess is that some of your vacation home expenses may have been made in accounts you do not have included in this report. To quickly test this, change the Accounts tab to All Accounts. Do the sub=category expenses now show up in the report. (You may not actually want all accounts in your final report; this is just a quick way to see if this is the issue. Then you can refine which accounts to include, and whether to show the transfers.)

Raza · January 11

Thanks @MontanaKarl , I do have many transactions in that period. I have included just one of the subcategories below:

Raza · January 11

Thanks @jacobs. I had all accounts already selected as I wanted all items from this expense category regardless of mode of payment:

I have tried all variations of this transfers options and the problem persists in all of them.

jacobs · January 11

@Raza Your report screenshot for Transactions by Category above shows a filter for Currency. That indicates that the transactions matching the other criteria for the report exist in two or more currencies. Quicken Mac reports do not (yet) allow multiple currencies; you have to run separate reports for each currency you use. So I'm guessing those vacation home sub-categories have expenses in a currency other than US dollars? If you switch the Currency filter from US Dollar to the currency you use where your vacation home is located, do you then get a report showing the expenses for the sub-categories?

Supposedly, better tools for dealing with multi-currencies are going to come to Quicken Mac… someday. The developers have marked this as a planned enhancement, but it hasn't yet been acted on.

MontanaKarl · January 11

So strange and can imagine your frustration, Raza. I'm sure you've gone through the tabs over and over… but besides All Accounts selected as shown - do you have all tags and all payees also?

My only other guess (jacobs will be better at this) is that it is related to the new business features in QMac and the import process from QWin. When you say you just moved over… were you using Business and Rental Property on Windows? And are you using Business & Personal on Mac? Or were you and are you on a lower product tier? (If you're not running the Business edition, then I won't take the time to speculate more right now.)

Raza · January 11

@jacobs , thanks. I think you solved it. Those transactions are indeed in Euros and quicken mac excluded those. In quicken pc, these would have been automatically converted to report currency. Quicken for windows has multicurrency support, so surprising they did not put it in for Mac.

Raza · January 11

Thanks @MontanaKarl , i was using quicken deluxe on pc without the rental property function. THe answer seems to be that Quicken Mac only includes transactions from one curreny in a report.

jacobs · January 11