Q2008Premier - Trouble with Budget Reporting

Posted by jluther3@anywhere.com on December 22, 2007, 4:32 pm

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Just upgraded to Quicken Premier 2008 on my Win XP sp2 machine and
the first report I open has a problem that I don't see discussed
here, in the Quicken Community, or in Quicken Support.

In my budget report I like to exclude my retirement accounts but
include transfers to/from them. I accomplish this by excluding the
accounts, including the retirement accounts categories, and then
selecting "Exclude Internal" transfers on the Advanced tab of the
Customize window.

This seems to work fine in Q2008P until the "Show All" subcategories
option is selected. When this option is selected, all of the
investment categories (i.e. _DivInc, _IntInc, etc.) blow up. As an
example, I get 5 separate line enteries for _DivInc under Income.
Four of the lines are for individual brokerage accounts (these lines
have actual entries with zero budgeted amounts). The remaining line
entry is for the budgeted amount (zero actual with the budgeted
amount). When I click the actual column for details on any of the
five entries, the entire _DivInc list appears (as it should).

I tried recreating the report from scratch, adding new duplicate
account entries, and even adding a test account (this resulted in a
sixth line entry for _DivInc), but no resolution.

Anyone have any suggestions, besides dropping back to Q2007P.
jluther3

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Posted by John Pollard on December 23, 2007, 10:53 am

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jluther3 wrote:

> Just upgraded to Quicken Premier 2008 on my Win XP sp2 machine

> and

> the first report I open has a problem that I don't see

> discussed

> here, in the Quicken Community, or in Quicken Support.

> In my budget report I like to exclude my retirement accounts

> but

> include transfers to/from them. I accomplish this by excluding

> the

> accounts, including the retirement accounts categories, > and

> then

> selecting "Exclude Internal" transfers on the Advanced tab of

> the

> Customize window.

When I do that, I see no transfers involving retirement
accounts.

Excluding the retirement "accounts" should exclude all
transactions in those accounts, thus all transfers from those
accounts. Excluding the retirement account "categories" should
exclude all transfers into those accounts. And it does for me.
If I exclude the accounts but keep the categories, I see the
transfers into the retirement accounts, but not the transfers
out of the retirement accounts.

> This seems to work fine in Q2008P until the "Show All"

> subcategories

> option is selected. When this option is selected, all of the

> investment categories (i.e. _DivInc, _IntInc, etc.) blow up.

> As an

> example, I get 5 separate line enteries for _DivInc under

> Income.

> Four of the lines are for individual brokerage accounts (these

> lines

> have actual entries with zero budgeted amounts). The remaining

> line

> entry is for the budgeted amount (zero actual with the

> budgeted

> amount). When I click the actual column for details on any of

> the

> five entries, the entire _DivInc list appears (as it should).

> I tried recreating the report from scratch, adding new

> duplicate

> account entries, and even adding a test account (this resulted

> in a

> sixth line entry for _DivInc), but no resolution.

I don't understand "adding new duplicate account entries".

Did you try recreating the report in a New Quicken file?

> Anyone have any suggestions, besides dropping back to Q2007P.

I tried to duplicate your problem, but could not (it didn't
matter if I excluded the account categories or not). Maybe
there is some other report setting that is involved.

Maybe some other factor.

Do you manually categorize some transactions to "_DivInc", etc.?
Do you have split transactions - especially investment account
"Cash Transactions" (bottom of "Enter Transactions" transaction
drop down list) - in investment accounts doing that?

Do you use "Tags" ("Classes" in earlier versions)? Could they
be involved?

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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Posted by jluther3@anywhere.com on December 24, 2007, 11:55 am

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John,

Thanks so much for the prompt reply over the Holidays. Since no one
else was talking about this problem, I was afraid it was confined to
my data file or the conversion of my data to the Q2008P format. Your
response seems to confirm that.

However, after "playing" around with Q2008P some more, perhaps the
problem is the old accounting for transfers between accounts that
plagued earier versions of Quicken. 2004 is the latest to come to
mind.

Humor me this, if you start with a clean budget report and include
everything (i.e. mark all accounts and categories, including
hidden), but set transfers to exclude internal, what do you see? I
see transfers, but only to/from my taxable and retirement accounts
that were budgeted. If I set Categories to non-zero actual/budgeted,
I see all kinds of transfers!! And I see both sides of the
transfers!! Transfers from my checking account to my savings account
show up as both Income (To Savings) and Expenses (From Checking). As
do now my IRA contributions and distributions. How can this be??
Aren't all of these transfers internal?

Oh, and yes, my investment category transactions all blow up (I have
5 lines of _DivInc spread throughout my Income section), unless I
set subcategories to hide all.The only other way to get investment
tranactioon to reprt correctly with Show all ticked is to set
transfers to exclude all.

And don't even get me started on Q2008P tax reporting. That's a
whole set of new problems, at least with my data file.
jluther3

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Posted by John Pollard on December 24, 2007, 4:00 pm

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jluther3 wrote:

> However, after "playing" around with Q2008P some more, perhaps

> the

> problem is the old accounting for transfers between accounts

> that

> plagued earier versions of Quicken. 2004 is the latest to come

> to

> mind.

After reading your comment below, my answer here would be,
basically yes.

> Humor me this, if you start with a clean budget report and

> include

> everything (i.e. mark all accounts and categories, including

> hidden), but set transfers to exclude internal, what do you

> see? I

> see transfers, but only to/from my taxable and retirement

> accounts

> that were budgeted. If I set Categories to non-zero

> actual/budgeted,

> I see all kinds of transfers!! And I see both sides of the

> transfers!! Transfers from my checking account to my savings

> account

> show up as both Income (To Savings) and Expenses (From

> Checking). As

> do now my IRA contributions and distributions. How can this

> be??

> Aren't all of these transfers internal?

No.

Starting in Q2004 the Quicken definition of "internal transfers"
was changed. The original definition was "transfers between
accounts included in the report", The new definition is
"transfers within accounts included in the report". The key
words are "between" and "within". Transfers "within" an account
are basically "Opening Balance" or balance adjustment transfers
(transfers back into the same account where the transfer is
recorded) ... and those are the transfers you are excluding when
you elect to "Exclude Internal" transfers.

[For some strange reason, while the new definition has been the
same in Quicken Help since Q2004, Q2005 reverted to using the
old definition in reports even though its Help file used the
new. Since Q2006, the new definition has been in effect in Help
and in reports.]

> Oh, and yes, my investment category transactions all blow up

> (I have

> 5 lines of _DivInc spread throughout my Income section),

> unless I

> set subcategories to hide all.The only other way to get

> investment

> tranactioon to reprt correctly with Show all ticked is to set

> transfers to exclude all.

I don't know why transfers would create the problem you
describe, they didn't for me. But I don't think you answered
some of my questions (though I grant they were just long shots,
but all I could/can think of).

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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Posted by jluther3@anywhere.com on December 30, 2007, 9:26 pm

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John,

Just got back from some unexpected and unplanned holiday travel. Time to hit
this problem again
if you're still around.

Thanks for the refesher on "internal transfers". Remember the issue, but had
forgotten the
details.

Now for the questions you had asked earlier......

> John Pollard wrote:

> Do you manually categorize some transactions to "_DivInc", etc.?

I assume you mean manually entering "_DivInc" transactions. Sometimes, but that
is true for all
accounts. If you will remember, the problem I am seeing with my Budget report
(with "Show All"
for subcategories selected) is a "_DivInc" (and "_IntInc") line for each
investment account and a
separate one for the budgeted amount. Most of the time I just accept the
downloaded transactions.
When I first saw this problem, I entered some new, duplicate dividend
transactions into several
of the investment accounts. The new, duplicate entries appeared in the _DivInc
and _IntInc lines
for the investmant account along with the ones that were converted by Q2008P
from my Q2007P data
file. Conclusion - I won't be able to re-enter data to get around this problem.

> John Pollard wrote:

> Do you have split transactions - especially investment account

> "Cash Transactions" (bottom of "Enter Transactions" transaction

> drop down list) - in investment accounts doing that?

I rarely use this feature on investment account transaction enteries. Almost all
of my cash
transactions in investment accounts are transfers (XIn and XOut). And even the
ones that I have
entered are not the problem in my Budget report.

> John Pollard wrote:

> Do you use "Tags" ("Classes" in earlier versions)? Could they

> be involved?

I do use "Tags/Classes" extensively in my data file, but not with investment
category
transactions. None of the "_DivInc" or "_IntInc" transactions have tags and/or
classes associated
with them. The transactions that do have tags/classes associated with them are
reported correctly
in my budget report.

> John Pollard wrote:

> Did you try recreating the report in a New Quicken file?

At your suggestion, I did. I did not have any problems with Budget reporting in
the new data file
using downloaded transactions from two of my investment accounts. Even the
budgeted amount
appeared on the same line. After this exercise, it definetly appears to be an
issue with my data
file and validating and super-validating it doesn't correct the problem, either
before or after
converting.

So, I went back and did a Year-End Copy for the fifteen years that are in my
account(i.e one copy
for year 1, one copy for year 1 and 2, etc.). Thought I would see if I could
isolate any
particular transactions that could be causing my problem. No luck. Still have
separate "_DivInc",
"_IntInc", and budgeted amount lines even for year one. Conclusion - my Budget
Reporting problem
is not transaction based. It's apparently a problem with Q2008P converting my
Q2007P category
list.

So, I did some more looking around my categories and associated reports. To my
dismay, I find
that I have tax category reporting problems in Q2008P also. Such as Q2008P not
being able to
distinguish between _IntInc and _IntIncTaxFree and _DivInc and _DivIncTaxFree in
the Tax Schedule
(for export to Turbo Tax) and Schedule-B Reports. Q2008P also doesn't recognize
my IRA
contribution for 2007 which was a ContribX transaction from a taxable investment
account.

With tax season starting, this is going to be the straw that will break the
camel's back. For the
firest time in fifteen years, I will pass on upgrading to the new Quicken unless
a quick fix can
be found for my category reporting problems.

jluther3

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