Serious bugs in Reports filtered by Category

thompson87

I'm using Quicken Classic Premier for Windows. For months now I've been having continuing trouble with categories in reports.

For starters, the Categories list in the "Customize" dialog for reports does not match the master categories list. In particular, all sub-sub-categories (i.e. those of the form A:B:C) show up twice with the second entry appearing to be a fourth level subcategory of itself. I suspect this is just a display bug since otherwise the category list in the Customize dialog matches the master categories list.

However when I actually review a report filtered by category I get strange and inconsistent results. For example I just created a transaction report from scratch customized to show the last 12 months for the category "Taxes" (and all of its subcategories). Quicken reports...

5 transactions categorized as "Taxes:FIT"
3 transactions categorized as "Taxes:FIT:Estimated"
4 transactions categorized as "Taxes:Foreign"
1 transaction categorized as "Taxes:Local"
1 transaction categorized as "Taxes:SIT" and
4 transactions categorized as "Taxes:SIT:Estimated"

for a total of 18 transactions with a net total of $165,366.64

If I then ask Quicken to subtotal by Category some additional transactions show up. The new ones are:

1 transaction categorized as "Taxes:FIT:Scott"
2 transactions categorized as "Taxes: Property Taxes"

so that the subtotaled report shows 21 transactions with a net total of 194,322.88. When I then switch back to "Don't subtotal" I continue to see the list of 21 transactions and the higher net total.

That is, by turning on subtotaling and then turning it off, the number of included transactions and their net total value changes. Obviously a serious bug. It means I can't rely on the accuracy of the reports I use most often.

I find additional weirdness in the Itemized Categories report when I filter to "Taxes" and all of its subcategories as before. It shows the larger total from the transaction report, but when I set "Update to Show" to either "Category Summary" or "Transaction Detail" it shows one of the "Taxes:FIT" transactions as a separate entry under the sub-subcategory "Taxes:FIT:Other Taxes:FIT" instead of grouping it with the other entries categorized as "Taxes:FIT." Similarly the "Taxes:Property Tax" entry is moved to "Taxes: Property Taxes:Other Taxes:Property Taxes" and the "Taxes:SIT" entry is moved to "Taxes:SIT:Other Taxes:SIT."

I could see some logic in Quicken creating "other" subcategories for purposes of a report if not all subcategories of a selected category were selected for the report. Otherwise the subcategories would not total to their category. But keep in mind that in this case I already included all subcategories in the filter. So there is no reason to create "other" subcategories. Nor does it explain why just one of the five "Taxes:FIT" transactions got moved to the "other" sub-subcategory.

Finally, when I look at the "Spending by Category" report with the same date range and category filters I get different subtotals from the "Itemized Categories" report and the heirarcy between categories and sub-categories does not display correctly. For example, if I "Collapse All" I should just see one number for "Taxes." Instead I see "Taxes:Foreign" "Taxes:Local" "Taxes:Property Taxes" and "Taxes:SIT" all displayed as if they are independent top level categories. They do not collapse into their parent category, and are not indented. "Taxes:FIT" behaves as it should and collapses properly into the top level. A consequence is that the "overall total" correctly matches the "Taxes" total, but is not the sum of the displayed categories because subcategories are being improperly displayed as categories.

On the other hand, when I "Expand All" the problem with indenting of subcategories persists. Furthermore, the total for "Taxes:FIT" does not include transactions from "Taxes:FIT:Estimated," "Taxes:FIT:Scott," or "Taxes:FIT:Other Taxes:FIT." All of those are displayed as if they are independent subcategories of "Taxes" rather than as subcategories of "Taxes:FIT." As a consequence, the total for "Taxes:FIT" is inaccurate.

All of this used to work perfectly in Quicken. Something has changed and been messed up. I tested using both the new and old report creation interfaces but that did not seem to matter.

Rocket J Squirrel

Good catch, @thompson87 .

I didn't try to reproduce all the various cases in the above post, just the first one, and I see this also. In my case, I believe the bug might be triggered by some of my transactions being splits, but that's just a guess. The original transaction report shows the splits explicitly as "—Split—". Enabling Subtotal By Category displays each split as its own transaction. That would be OK if the total was the same as the un-subtotaled report, but it isn't.

BK

I have seen a few similar posts on this issue and I became aware of it just recently as well. Here is one post in the Mac forum which I was able to reproduce it on Windows as well. Great details @thompson87 !