Serious error in QMac Tax Reports - uncleared transactions are not excluded

MontanaKarl · February 2023

Being "tax season", I strongly encourage anyone using any QMac reports - tax or otherwise - for tax information gathering to enable the 'cleared' (CLR) column in their reports to manually make sure that no uncleared transactions are included. (Right click the report header and check Clr.)

Quicken Windows has a report filter that allows uncleared transactions to be excluded from reports. Quicken Mac has no such filter. Because of this, your Form 1040 report could list taxes paid that were not actually paid - perhaps due to entering a payment twice, a scheduled entry being made for which you didn't actually submit a payment, etc. Here is the report filter option present in QWin:

We need that in QMac. Add your vote here:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7929630/reports-need-the-ability-to-filter-by-cleared-uncleared-status/p1?new=1

But, it is a bug, in my view, that the current QMac (6.12) tax reports would include ANY uncleared transactions even if we don't have such a filter yet. No individual can use accrual accounting for their personal taxes - only cleared transactions can be reported on a 1040 or any of its schedules.

jacobs · February 2023

MontanaKarl said:

No individual can use accrual accounting for their personal taxes - only cleared transactions can be reported on a 1040 or any of its schedules.

Actually, that's not quite correct. The IRS says you can count something as paid if a check was "delivered" by December 31; it does not have to have clear the bank by December 31. Now, simply dating a check December 31 doesn't make it count in that year, but as long as you drop the check in the mailbox in sufficient time for it to be collected and postmarked by midnight Dec. 31, you secure a deduction for the year — even if the check is not cashed/deposited/cleared until after the start of next year. That rule applies to payments of charitable contributions, medical bills, interest expenses and all other deductions. (Credit card payments have tricky rules depending on what type of card it is.)

That said, I think it would be good to see reports able to filter based on cleared or not cleared status. (Additionally: a longstanding desire to be able to search/filter reports based on text in the Memo field.) In the meantime, you can filter on cleared transactions in a register, and print or export from the register.

MontanaKarl · February 2023

Thanks for the correction for itemized deductions! I knew about charities (although I doubt many people retain proof of postmark), but didn't realize it also applied to medical etc. I could only find the IRS postmark reg on charitable contributions, but not for the other deductions...but I trust you.

I don't think sorting every register on the cleared column to find uncleared transactions is a realistic solution with dozens of registers.

For people who only download transactions and never either (a) enter manually or (b) have scheduled transactions that enter manually ... this isn't an issue, as there can be no uncleared transactions - only cleared ones are downloaded.

With manual or scheduled entries, mistakes can be made. A recurring annual donation might not actually have been made. A tax payment might have been doubled up, or not sent in the mail or tax portal. Etc.

I agree now that the tax reports should do what they do by default, then... but it only reinforces the need to be able to filter reports by uncleared and cleared transactions, so that to verify one's data, the report could be generated each way to make sure any uncleared transactions included in the report satisfy the IRS guidelines you cite.

jacobs · February 2023

MontanaKarl said:

I don't think sorting every register on the cleared column to find uncleared transactions is a realistic solution with dozens of registers.

That's why we have the All Transactions (or in this case, probably, Banking) group register!

That said, I certainly think it would be good to add the option to use transaction cleared status (open, cleared, or reconciled) as a report criterion, on ALL reports.

Just for reference, in the venerable Quicken Mac 2007, this selection screen allowed for much more flexibility in defining the content to be included in a report; the cleared status is on the right.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/uc/dpq0acg4sseo.png

MontanaKarl · February 2023

Duh. Thanks! I keep forgetting about using the All Transactions... or even the account group title (e.g. just Banking, or all credit card transactions). Great reminder / tip!

Quickly saw that our petty cash accounts had never reconciled with the reconciliation process, so all transactions are uncleared. Quick reconciliation to clear/reconcile all of them and now can see that I have no uncleared transactions affecting TY 2022.

Re: QMac 2007 Content filter screenshot... that is, and would be, perfect.

It shows the other things that I am missing from Quicken Windows... most importantly the 'tax-related only' checkbox, and the ability to filter on amount criteria, and more.

Jon · February 2023

A Dashboard panel showing Uncleared transactions might be a useful thing to have, similar to the Uncategorized panel. Especially if it could be configured to only shows uncleared transactions more than a few weeks old.

jacobs · February 2023

Jon said:

A Dashboard panel showing Uncleared transactions might be a useful thing to have, similar to the Uncategorized panel. Especially if it could be configured to only shows uncleared transactions more than a few weeks old.

I don't think I'd see value in a Dashboard card showing uncleared transactions, since they're easy to find in registers. There'd quite often be a lot of transactions in this card, just from checking and credit card transactions. Add in that not everyone reconciles all investment accounts, and that loan accounts can't be reconciled. I guess I'm not sure where such a card would be useful. I reconcile my accounts monthly, so I see my uncleared transactions each month. Just my 2¢…

Jon · February 2023

jacobs said:

I don't think I'd see value in a Dashboard card showing uncleared transactions, since they're easy to find in registers. There'd quite often be a lot of transactions in this card, just from checking and credit card transactions.

I agree it wouldn't be useful to see uncleared transactions from just a day or two ago since you'd expect them to still be uncleared; that's why I said it would be better to make it transactions more than a few weeks old.

I reconcile all my accounts, although the cash account only gets reconciled once or maybe twice a year so that would need to be excluded. I hadn't thought about Loan accounts, so you'd probably need to exclude those as well if they can't be reconciled.

I was just thinking about it from the perspective of not wanting to have old uncleared transactions lingering in my accounts, just like I don't want to have old uncategorized transactions. If I write a check & a month later it hasn't been cashed I want to follow up on that & find out why - do I need to send another check? or cancel the check? Am I about to get hit with late payment fees? A ding on my credit report? It's not something I want to fall through the cracks; an uncleared check could lead to lingering negative consequences. It seems like the sort of thing the dashboard could bring to my attention - an uncategorized transaction seems like a minor blip in comparison.

jacobs · February 2023

Jon said:
I agree it wouldn't be useful to see uncleared transactions from just a day or two ago since you'd expect them to still be uncleared; that's why I said it would be better to make it transactions more than a few weeks old.

I think it's unlikely they'd build it that way, because users would disagree over what's useful o not to include. For you, maybe transactions > 2 weeks old would be useful, but someone else would argue for > 4 months and someone else would argue it should show everything.

. And there would be the same disagreements over which accounts to show — some would want cash accounts, some wouldn't — so they'd need to build in account selection, and a time range. Not impossible, to be sure, but it goes against the "simple overview" approach they seem to be creating Dashboard cards for.

Jon said:
I was just thinking about it from the perspective of not wanting to have old uncleared transactions lingering in my accounts, just like I don't want to have old uncategorized transactions. If I write a check & a month later it hasn't been cashed I want to follow up on that & find out why - do I need to send another check? or cancel the check? Am I about to get hit with late payment fees? A ding on my credit report? It's not something I want to fall through the cracks; an uncleared check could lead to lingering negative consequences.

But don't you see these things when you reconcile your accounts? I agree that I would want to be aware of an uncleared check a month later — but I see that when I reconcile my bank statement. (And if there's a check I'm particularly concerned about, I probably have logged onto my bank's website to see if it's cleared.) Same with credit card transactions. So I'm just saying I can't think of an instance where seeing uncleared transactions in a Dashboard card would be useful to me.

I see this as different from uncategorized transactions. Those aren't things I'd spot in a monthly reconciliation, so they could easily slip by and I'd be unaware of them until /unless I noticed something missing from some report of data. So I find the Dashboard card a good tool to alert me to uncategorized transactions which need to be fixed. I don't see uncleared transactions in the same way, since eI will spot them doing reconciliations, and they won't mess up my data while they remain uncleared.

Jon · February 2023

jacobs said:

But don't you see these things when you reconcile your accounts?

I do, but I reconcile all my accounts once a month at the beginning of the month and depending on the timing of the check it could be well over a month before I see something that looks wrong on the reconciliation screen. In the majority of cases the first hint that a payment didn't get made will be when I get the next bill & it's overdue, because I didn't look at the reconciliation screen again the rest of the month.

Serious error in QMac Tax Reports - uncleared transactions are not excluded

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