Why don't imported transactions from QMac show in QWin Report (Dividends)

Zoolook

Hello - this might be a niche issue, but I've noticed that in a comparison report, or any report that is supposed to show _DivInc.

Attached are 3 screenshots. One shows the summary, where you can see for 2024 there is a line saying "Uncategorized" - all items in this list are dividend payments in 2024. There is another line saying _DivInc which are also dividend payments from 2024 (this is YTD Vs Prior Year Period). There are two other screen shots showing an example of a dividend for the same security in the same account, one year apart where the 2024 version is "uncategorized" and the 2025 version is categorized under _DivInc in the report, but you can see that aside from the date and amount, they're identical.

What is definitely different is that the 2024 transactions were imported from Mac Quicken, whereas everything in 2025 downloaded natively in QWin.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Quicken Windows R61.21 Windows 11

[Moved to QMac section since the data was imported from QMac]

Chris_QPW

I think this probably needs to be moved back to a quicken category, because I suspect it is some kind of import error.

it is possible that it’s in no man’s land where it’s hard to tell whether it’s the export or the import that’s wrong.

But the very fact that the transaction shows dividend when edited means that the import had some notion that this dividend. In my book that means that the export was probably OK.

as for what went wrong and how to fix it, I think that this is a illustration of something that people don’t really realize and that is that there is more going on behind the scenes then what you see in the GUI.

You might try running validate and repair and see if that fixes it. If it doesn’t, then the only thing I can think of is deleting the transaction and re-entering it.

Zoolook

@Chris_QPW I did a validate and repair, there only issue it found was an unrelated category.

If I edit the transaction, even just adding a character to the memo, it does register in the report, so it's definitely an import issue. Unfortunately there seems to be no way of bulk-updating investment transactions (so weird to me, you can do this on Mac and any other account type) so I'd have to do this manually to fix it.

One other strange thing is that the Investment Report "Income by Security" which is one of the best reports in QWin IMO, does actually capture these transactions and show them as dividends. So it seems there's something particular about the YoY report that ignores them.

Chris_QPW

On the ability to edit multiple investment accounts. Quicken Windows is showing it history. When they added the investments to Quicken Windows decades ago, they added a simple list not, a register. You will notice that in the preferences and maybe other places they refer to them as "investment transaction lists", not a register. Over time (and not in great way) they added "register like functionality", but it is more of a mix of GUI objects than a solid "register GUI". And the code must be terrible to work with because when they finally added "Edit Multiple Transactions" they did it as a separate dialog. And no, don't get your hopes up for that (it is in the gear icon menu). This all you can do:

In fact, this "register" is the one "known performance area" in Quicken Windows. It doesn't take a whole lot of securities/security lots/transactions in a given register to really slow down any kind of operation in that register.

On your second part. Customers ask for "wizards" and such for like the paycheck and other things, and the developers add these kinds of things. Some might be just automating the process, but others require storing extra information "in the background". This of course has it pluses and minuses. And one of the minuses is that in an operation like an import the developers might miss that they need to add something that isn't "visible". Personally, I'm not fond of this kind of operation. I rather have to do a few more keystrokes than have something hidden from me.

Zoolook

@Chris_QPW interesting insight, I didn't really know why security registers acted so differently, they are definitely far easier to use on the Mac and have much better performance, but the issue with the Mac is the missing reporting and insight, which is why I keep both going. My fondness for Apple is waning so I might be back fully on QWin within the next few years.

I am a bit puzzled as to why Quicken has not grasped the nettle on this and built a new UI, even if it's missing functionality, at least do you can do these kinds of simple bulk changes, or get a faster response. If it's updating the same back-end, you could even have two UIs in theory while the transition is ongoing, which I expect would take years. While it would be a significant investment, it would help modernize the code base, which would be then less costly to manage in the future, and there's a greater chance of convergence to web-ish UI's that could work across multiple platforms (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, Chrome, WebUI etc.)

Anyhoo.

Chris_QPW

Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac share nothing in common other than the "concept" and the "Quicken".

The "missing functionality in Quicken Mac" is exactly why you don't want Quicken Inc to "rewrite Quicken Windows/Mac" to make them converge/modern.

Quicken Mac's "lack of features" is a direct result of it being rewritten from scratch. It takes a VERY long time to put in all the features that you take for granted that have been put into Quicken Windows over all these decades.

And note even though, I doubt they were even considering it, the time to consider a project like this would have been when Intuit (with the more resource) started the rewrite of Quicken Mac, and target both at the same time, so that they had to use libraries and such that would work on best.

But here something the "works on all platforms push" seldom mentions. It increased the difficultly a LOT. What's more to actually get a GUI that looks good on all the platforms hasn't even really been available from the major players until recently. And even then, you have Apple doesn't play nice with anyone. In other words, it is always the other side like Windows or Linux that "makes theirs work on Apple" never "Apple making their work on other operating systems".

And that isn't even bring in your list. You want web, and iOS, and Android. These are all different operating systems with different requirements.

And to top it off I really believe that if Intuit had tried to rewrite Quicken Windows, Quicken would no longer be with us.

The Quicken Mac rewrite started in 2007 (old Quicken Mac 2007 was released in 2006), and "Quicken Mac Essentials" was release in 2010. It took the small group they had assigned to that, that long. And in between Intuit wasn't getting any Quicken Mac revenue. When Quicken Mac Essentials came out and of course was compared to Quicken Mac 2007 almost no one switched (note it didn't even have support for investment accounts at the time).

And as not to upset people Intuit kept up the "downloading transactions" support for Quicken Mac 2007 until something like 2014, where I guess was more about the fact that the changes Apple made killed it more than anything else, but the bottom line is if they had done the same with Quicken Windows at the time, there wouldn't have been any revenue and I'm sure Intuit would have just killed either the rewrite or the product outright.

Intuit sold off Quicken for a reason, the revenue to them was trivial, and I'm sure they got tired of all the complaints about connection problems and such.

Zoolook

"Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac share nothing in common other than the "concept" and the "Quicken"

I am aware of that - I had both running way before Mac Quicken 2007 was dropped. I was on the original Heathrow Beta, and even the original Quicken web (Essentials) you mentioned that was sold to Mint when that was in Beta and I used it for a short time, while using QWin and Quicken Mac 2007 (so 3 platforms at the same time) and even started using Banktivity (then iBank) at that time. It was hard work keeping all 3 in sync!

It seemed for a while like Intuit was going to unify all three products, but they had other plans. When Quicken was sold by Intuit in 2017-ish, I thought this strategy might continue. To their credit they've improved Mac Quicken a huge amount since then, but recent work seems to indicate they're going after the Quickbooks market on Mac, which might be a good commercial move but doesn't help people who just want comprehensive personal finance.

"But here something the "works on all platforms push" seldom mentions. It increased the difficultly a LOT. What's more to actually get a GUI that looks good on all the platforms hasn't even really been available from the major players until recently. And even then, you have Apple doesn't play nice with anyone. In other words, it is always the other side like Windows or Linux that "makes theirs work on Apple" never "Apple making their work on other operating systems".

I don't agree with this - I manage a full stack development team (DB, API, UI) and it's easier now than ever before to develop UIs that work on all platforms - even basic ReactJS (there are literally millions of people who know this library) could replace most of Quicken's front end functions, particularly the registers, just use React Grid!).

It's also completely untrue that Apple makes this interoperability difficult today. Sure for macOS and iOS development they encourage UIKit and AppKit but you can use Electron, Qt or even JavaFX. You make concessions of course using 3rd party tools with performance and some functions, and this takes a lot of forward planning and deciding on a strategy of universal design language and functionality, but it is possible. If the effort spent on the Mac UI over the last 8 years had been spent on a Web UI instead that either version could use, we'd be almost there by now. However I have to concede they kind of started this issue with their determination to end support for Carbon / OS9 (it wasn't the move to Intel that most people attribute it to) that started all of this. One does have to wonder though, if they had not done that, we'd still have something that looked (and performed) like Quicken 2007.

I do honestly genuinely understand Quicken's reluctance to change anything on Windows, because the user-base skews middle-aged and they'll squeal if (heaven forbid) check printing vanishes, or some other antiquated functionality almost no-one new to the software would ever use. However, what I also know is that .NET 1.0 and, VB6, Winforms and others are no longer supported, or won't be soon. So while I don't know exactly what code is keeping QWin's front end going, it looks like they're using unsupported tools to maintain it, which means one day MS will change Windows in such as way that it won't work, or at least remove the tools needed to maintain the code, citing 20 - 30 years of opportunity to make a change. Quicken will ignore this at its peril.

Chris_QPW

I don't agree with this - I manage a full stack development team (DB, API, UI) and it's easier now than ever before to develop UIs that work on all platforms - even basic ReactJS (there are literally millions of people who know this library) could replace most of Quicken's front end functions, particularly the registers, just use React Grid!).

I do agree that now easier (but frankly still a pain in my book), but the point was that it wasn't in 2007. Unless you wanted all your programs to look like Java and not match any look and feel of any of the operating systems.

Mostly really hasn't been the backend code, it has mostly been the GUIs.

And to my reference about Apple, show me one of their libraries that runs on Windows?

Not a third-party library, one of theirs.

But even dismissing this, I wasn't just talking about an "Apple problem" (I just consider them the hardest to work with), I was talking about an industry problem. And yeah, all the major players are at fault as far as I'm concerned.

Endless different GUI libraries with no standardization across different companies (not including the third-party libraries, which frankly most are well supported, "open source" with at least one major company supporting it isn't my idea for a pick).

it looks like they're using unsupported tools to maintain it, which means one day MS will change Windows in such as way that it won't work, or at least remove the tools needed to maintain the code, citing 20 - 30 years of opportunity to make a change. Quicken will ignore this at its peril.

I'm sure they are very aware of this, and that is in fact why they developed Simplify. There is where they think their futures is, online only.

Quicken is for the "over the hill" folks. And yeah, someday it will "die", but here is another fact, Quicken Inc doesn't have the resources to rewrite Quicken Windows, and do Simplify (maybe not even Quicken Windows if it was the only thing they were doing).

They will milk Quicken Windows as long as they can. The more interesting one is actually Quicken Mac, since its rewrite it has the potential of going on longer, but I wouldn't bet on it. Quicken Windows has a better history of backwards compatibility than Mac does.