Hidden, no longer used categories showing in reports
When I run reports, I'm seeing old, no longer used (in most cases, for years - like Pandemic income accounts!!!) hidden categories showing up. Aside from making my reports longer than they should be, it's really annoying. I hid them for a reason. I know I can't delete them because they've been applied to previous transactions. Can anyone help?
[EDIT: Read posts below clarifying the request to have an option to remove hidden categories from the category selection list when configuring a report.]
Comments
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Hi @TJennings,
Thanks for reaching out to the Quicken Community!Let me ask a few questions to better understand the issue:
- What type of report are you using?
- Is this happening with a saved/customized report, or with a newly created report?
- Are the categories appearing in the actual report results, or only in the Categories customization list?
I look forward to your reply!
Quicken Carlos
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As you may have seen, there is no option to not show hidden categories in the report customization (edit) screens. Hiding categories only hides them from popup menus, but not reports. It can be debated whether this is a bug or by design.
In any case, you can go into the report customization and manually deselect hidden categories. To avoid having to do this each time, you can save the report and the category deselections will be remembered.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
@RickO said: It can be debated whether this is a bug or by design.
I assume it's designed that way intentionally. Although there are categories you no longer use and have marked as hidden, if you're running a report that spans a time period when such a category(ies) was used, you would want to see that income or expense in your report, or the report would be incomplete and not present an accurate total.
@TJennings said: When I run reports, I'm seeing old, no longer used (in most cases, for years - like Pandemic income accounts!!!)
hiddencategories showing up. Aside from making my reports longer than they should be, it's really annoying. I hid them for a reason. I know I can't delete them because they've been applied to previous transactions.@TJennings If you run an income or expense report for a past period when the category you've marked hidden was used, are you wanting the category not to show up in the report? So if you ran a comparison income report for 2021 through 2026, for example, would you want the total income from 2021 or 2022 to be intentionally wrong because your pandemic income account isn't included in the report?
As @RickO said, if you really don't want to show that income, you can edit the report to remove the caegories you don't want to see. And save the report for the future, so you don't have to repeatedly de-select those categories.
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
I assume it's designed that way intentionally. Although there are categories you no longer use and have marked as hidden, if you're running a report that spans a time period when such a category(ies) was used, you would want to see that income or expense in your report, or the report would be incomplete and not present an accurate total.
I agree. However, it would be good if in the report customization there were an option to exclude hidden categories.
Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
@RickO said: it would be good if in the report customization there were an option to exclude hidden categories.
I think hidden categories should show in a report by default, but I agree it would be helpful to have a way to decide to not show hidden categories in the report customization. I think the addition of a simple checkbox would do it, as shown in this mock-up:
Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 19930 -
That would be a useful option for folks that want it, but I personally wouldn't use it. If I accidentally categorize a transaction with a hidden category that I intended to no longer use, I wouldn't want that hidden from me in my reports as it would both hide the expense/income and also prevent me from seeing the mistaken categorization & having the chance to fix it.
At the same time, there's an option on the Payees tab to include or not include hidden payees in a report, so it would be consistent to offer that option for hidden categories as well.
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