Bug in Account Balance and Net Worth Reports

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david.casper
david.casper Member ✭✭
edited July 2018 in Investing (Windows)
I would like to report a bug in the Account Balance and Net Worth Reports for Investment Accounts.  Below I describe the bug and a workaround. However IMHO the bug is serious and should be fixed.  I am using Windows Quicken Deluxe 2016 R10 (25.1.10.1)

The bug is that "XIn"s are not being correctly processed in these two reports and so the value of the accounts can be reported as severely diminished or even in the red.  This bug was not there in reports generated in October, so I can only imagine it was introduced in the R10 distribution. What has happened is that an XIn without an account is ignored!  I can guess that a developer would think that there should be a transfer account (if all one's accounts were in Quicken), but as this has not been a requirement for over a decade, why make the change now?  Also, since the balances are being shown correctly on the accounts tab on the 'home' page, it shows that these same balances are being calculated in two different ways - it is only in the report that the Xins are ignored.

The workaround is to go to the account page, sort on 'actions' and examine all Xins. If there is no account, just put it in as an Xin from the same account itself, and magically the blances are corrected.  Hooray.

IMHO I can see why a conscientious (but ill-informed) developer would make this mistake - but it should have been picked up by QA in regression testing.

Cheers.... David

Comments

  • ericweiner
    ericweiner Member ✭✭
    edited July 2018
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    Yes, I believe there are many issues with the processing of investment related transactions. I have noticed many instances of incorrect totals when I compare quicken to the financial institution. I am not inclined to believe its the financial institution. I believe much of it is inconsistent rounding to different decimal positions. Impossible for me to fix, so I just assume if its close its fine.

    The forum is not bug reporting for Quicken. This is a community of users who try and help other users. I would take your summary and go directly to quicken.com to report the issue. Dont expect to much from them. These types of issues have existed for some time.
  • david.casper
    david.casper Member ✭✭
    edited February 2017
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    Well Eric I would guess you have not experienced this problem which is why you infer that my posting is not of help to others.  It is not about rounding errors which you talk about, in my case the discrepancy was over $100,000!!  You have to imagine the plight of others who on trying to get a year-end print out find the report is bogus.  My posting gives detailed instructions on how to work around the problem which I trust will be of benefit to others.

    And yes it would be good to report this directly to Quicken/Intuit, but going directly to quicken.com as you suggested did not reveal to me how to do this.  If you actually know how to report a bug, the URL would be useful.   
  • Unknown
    Unknown Member
    edited January 2017
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    david.casper said:

    Well Eric I would guess you have not experienced this problem which is why you infer that my posting is not of help to others.  It is not about rounding errors which you talk about, in my case the discrepancy was over $100,000!!  You have to imagine the plight of others who on trying to get a year-end print out find the report is bogus.  My posting gives detailed instructions on how to work around the problem which I trust will be of benefit to others.

    And yes it would be good to report this directly to Quicken/Intuit, but going directly to quicken.com as you suggested did not reveal to me how to do this.  If you actually know how to report a bug, the URL would be useful.   

    To report a bug, you need to contact Quicken Support (see the links at the bottom of the article). They will be able to collect the relevant data from you and log into their system.

  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited May 2018
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    What has happened is that an XIn without an account is ignored!  
    An XIn without a transfer account should not be possible.  I cannot create such a transaction in QW2014 through either the Enter Transactions button or directly as a line item entry.  That is the way it has been for the decades I have been using the program.  How you got to that state is an open question.  It may relate to your deleting an account or corruption in your data file only remotely likely to be associated with the R10 upgrade.  

    If I were recording movement of cash into an investment account from a source not otherwise existing in my Quicken data, I would be using a Deposit transaction, not an XIn transaction.  The Deposit transaction would have a suitable category and memo line description.  The other choice would be to use the XIn but enter the same account as the transfer account as you indicate you have done.  This is NOT a workaround - it is proper use of the program.
    I can guess that a developer would think that there should be a transfer account ... 
    No need to guess.  That is the way the program was developed.  That is the way the programs has always operated.  
  • david.casper
    david.casper Member ✭✭
    edited January 2017
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    q.lurker said:

    What has happened is that an XIn without an account is ignored!  
    An XIn without a transfer account should not be possible.  I cannot create such a transaction in QW2014 through either the Enter Transactions button or directly as a line item entry.  That is the way it has been for the decades I have been using the program.  How you got to that state is an open question.  It may relate to your deleting an account or corruption in your data file only remotely likely to be associated with the R10 upgrade.  

    If I were recording movement of cash into an investment account from a source not otherwise existing in my Quicken data, I would be using a Deposit transaction, not an XIn transaction.  The Deposit transaction would have a suitable category and memo line description.  The other choice would be to use the XIn but enter the same account as the transfer account as you indicate you have done.  This is NOT a workaround - it is proper use of the program.
    I can guess that a developer would think that there should be a transfer account ... 
    No need to guess.  That is the way the program was developed.  That is the way the programs has always operated.  Mr/Ms Lurker poses an "open question" so I would like to suggest to some possibilities that may not have been considered by him/her.

    There are numerous ways to enter information into a register besides manually typing it in which q.lurker so rightly says could not be the way this problem was caused. There are various forms of direct electronic/internet transfer from financial institutions such as Wells Fargo, Chase, etc.  Also there are imports of data files provided by institutions such as these in quicken exchange formats. Now we know that Quicken is not well structured internally, since it demonstrably calculates the same value in different ways giving different results.  It is not too far a stretch of the imagination to suppose that the input data validation performed on manual data entry is not the same on these electronic transfers, even if an "accept" manual event is involved.

    So I would be so bold as to modify Mr. Lurkers assertion
    That is the way the program has always operated
    to
    That is the way the program has always operated in the limited ways I have been able to exercise it.

    Well structured regression testing would catch flaws such as the one I have described.  I still hope the workaround proves useful to folks.

    Cheers... David
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