Investment Transaction Reports Break Transactions into Separate, Incomplete Lines

isonclubikin
isonclubikin Member ✭✭✭✭
edited April 2023 in Reports (Windows)

I don't even know how to ask this. When I export an Investment Transaction Report from Quicken to a spreadsheet, it keeps breaking what should be atomic transaction lines into multiple, incomplete lines:

I don't understand why Quicken's doing this, but it makes the report useless as a spreadsheet. I need all of that kind of stuff on one, complete line. But, I can find no setting or way of exporting the data that will do that. Is there something I'm missing?

Answers

  • Rocket J Squirrel
    Rocket J Squirrel SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    You're not missing anything. This Quicken bug dates to the dawn of time and - obviously - has never been fixed. I know of no workaround other than manually editing the spreadsheet. Ugh.

    Quicken user since version 2 for DOS, now using QWin Biz & Personal Subscription (US) on Win10 Pro.

  • isonclubikin
    isonclubikin Member ✭✭✭✭

    I continued researching this after posting and found the same thing. People have been complaining about this for decades.

    It's almost tolerable with very small reports. But, anything significant is undoable.

    Inconcievable.

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't use this report often, but it looks like the two line transactions are the two halves of a compound transaction like a Reinvest, where one line is the distribution and the other is the shares purchased.

    The Excel export would certainly be more useful if the Action column for a 2-line transaction like ReinvDiv showed the individual actions like Bought and Div rather than ReinvDiv followed by a blank entry, or if there was a separate column that showed the individual Actions. The blank entries in the Date, Account, and Security columns should also be filled in with the data from above.

    There may be other subtleties that I am missing.

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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Member ✭✭✭✭

    I think you aren't looking at as as much a bug as a design decision on how to present the underline information.

    It isn't as obvious in the screenshot you have posted, but is in a sell.

    Here is the transaction:

    In this transaction dialog you see the first line above. What you don't see is the fact that Quicken is actually recording two transactions, maybe more precisely, a compond transaction. The second line is recording the realized gain, and it can't be included in the first line because you have two “Cash” entries.

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  • isonclubikin
    isonclubikin Member ✭✭✭✭

    That two-line format is fine as displayed in a Quicken report. But, if I hit that Quicken report's “Export Report Data to Different Formats” button and choose “Export to Excel Workbook (.xlsx)”, then it should actually be exported as a valid spreadsheet. IOW, all those blank fields need to be filled in. Otherwise, once it's in a spreadsheet, it can't be manipulated. And, if it can't be manipulated in the spreadsheet, there's not much use in exporting it there in the first place.

    For instance, I just exported all of a Quicken file's investment transactions to a spreasheet and sorted it. Twelve percent of the “transactions” (1,752 out of 15,057) fall right off the end of the spreadsheet because they have no date (or Account, or Action, or Security) associated with them. And, once that happens (or any other manipulation of the data) the whole export is just a pile of steaming garbage.

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2023

    On the issue of blank cells, one of the methods discussed here might help

    Please also vote on the Idea.

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