What happened to my balance column?

"Uninstall - Reinstall"

That's also the title of Chapter One in the Customer Support Training Manual... to be used in any and all situations where the "tech" does'nt have a clue. Just like most commercial stores these days when faced with any kind of customer confrontaions, they whip out the old "but That's Our Policy" statement. That's about the most pointless, stupid and meaningless statement I've ever heard.

dieHard® wrote in news:bse2o5t7hqhrei6rlr040iaem8dpr78ls0 @4ax.com:

Just like reboot. It takes a lot of time, the victim has a chance to consider his crimes and maybe figure out what he/she did wrong.

As a victim, I have had to go this route (reboot, and/or uninstall- reinstall) several (ahem) times. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not so well.

HI, Don.

Seems to me that the time sequence is the only one that would produce a balance that means anything.

I may choose to sort by Payee, for example, but why would I want to see my "balance" after all my checks to AAA but before all my checks to USAA? Any interim "balance" would be pure arithmetic trivia, not meaningful in any way that I can see.

Similarly, sorting by Memo or Category or Tab would produce meaningless numbers in the "balance" column. There IS an "Ending Balance" below the final line of the Register. That should always be correct, no matter which sorting sequence is used. There are valid reasons to sort transactions in other orders, of course; that is what we do in Reports, not in Registers.

The only Register sequence that seems meaningful to me is one based on chronology. Even the Date column shows a temporarily "wrong" balance when a deposit gets credited before or after a check that clears on the same day. The "Num" column would approximate - or supplement - the Date sequence IF all transactions were numbered. If all checks were numbered and written in order. BUT...what about deposits? What about credit and debit memos and monthly interest credits or bank charges? Those are not numbered. They would impact the "balance" in some sequence that would be hard to predict - and the "balance" produced would still be meaningless.

I don't recall any different behavior pre-Q2010.

What am I missing here?

RC

Hey R.C.,

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't know that you are necessarily missing anything there, and I am sure you are spot on in your assesments. However I do know, prior to updating to R7, there was a balance column to the right that showed my balance after each transaction. After updating to R7, that column is now gone, with only the ending balance being show at the bottom right.

So in effect, from this update, a whole column of information I have been used to seeing, for years really, is now gone with release R7 for Quicken

Hi: R.C.

Actually, that was my very first thought and I almost dashed off a reply along the same lines until I realized that a sort by cleared status, with balances shown, does provide useful information.

If you sort by cleared status the sort order is "R", "c" then " ", and then by date. The register also provides a visual clue as to the separation of "today's date and prior" vs. "after today's date." Having balance figures gives you "today's" balance as well as an easy calculation of checks outstanding (in my case, I don't have any deposits in transit or other un-cleared transactions). That information can be useful if you're really managing your cash tightly.

But, the bigger issue is that it's fairly obvious that Quicken wasn't thinking along the lines of "a balance column for a sort by cleared status doesn't mean anything, so we'll eliminate it." It's just another goof.

Tom Young

I sort REGISTER sorts quite often by different columns for good reasons - not in REPORTS. One example is that at the end of the month when I have my bank statement returned, there's a section of check included in numerical order with amounts at the end. I therefore sort by CHECK NUMBER and those that have cleared I move my PAPER copies (modern day carbon copies) into my 'month' file.

If I wish to find a 'large' denomination deposit without remembering what the value was or what PAYEE I might have used, I sort by DEPOSIT column. Granted I don't use the ending balance in these register sorts, but I am not sure I agree with the earlier statement "There are valid reasons to sort transactions in other orders, of course; that is what we do in Reports, not in Registers." Why run a report to sort, when the information is readily available by clicking a column heading in the register? That's what it's there for!

Or maybe I missed R.C.'s point about only sorting in REPORTS?

Yes, I think you did miss his point. The OP was bemoaning the disappearance of the balance column when he sorted by "cleared" status. R.C. pointed out that any sort other than by date makes the balance column pretty meaningless, "correct" only in a mathematical sense, so why be upset if the balance doesn't appear?

Do a sort of your register by "Amount" and you'll see what he's getting at. That sort starts with the largest deposit and works down to the smallest deposit, then switches over to the smallest payment and works up to the largest. Every number in the balance column for this report is meaningless, except for the very last balance figure.

Tom Young

Speaking just for myself, my sort by cleared status sorts all cleared by date, with only the uncleared not necessarily being by date - of course once they clear, then they get sorted by the appropriate date.

Perhaps it is meaningless, but I myself found it useful rather than just having one ending balance at the bottom... and it was there, in Quicken 2010 prior to R7, and many Quicken versions preceding it. Now it is not.

I updated yesterday, the field is still there?

I know that's not much help but it's not R7, it's something you did that made the field vanish.

See my first post on this topic. I thought sort by "cleared" status useful.

Tom Young

You are probably not sorting by cleared status? I can change my sort to " sort by date ", and the column is there. Only when it is " sort by cleared" does it no longer exist, which is the sort I prefer - and this chanced with R7.

Thanks,

Oh, ok Tom. Yes, I understand about the balancesdiscussion. I was only commenting on the comment about the line "There are valid reasons to sort transactions in other orders, of course; that is what we do in Reports, not in Registers." without tying it to ALSO thinking the balance was in play here (not sure why doing that in a REPORT would be different in that case, but whatever).

My only point was that there's lots of reason to sort data in registers. You also cited a good reason too.

Peace to all.

Hi, Don.

When you "sort by cleared", you should get what is essentially a bank reconciliation. That is, after your last Cleared transaction, the balance on that line should be exactly what is shown on your bank statement at that point. Items in your Register after that line represent "reconciling items". Those are items that YOU know about, but the bank does not yet. When your bank clears these items, the bank's balance will be the same as your Ending Balance. (Of course, the bank may know about some items - such as direct deposits and bank charges - that you haven't learned about yet. Until you enter these, they won't show up in your Register or balance, no matter how you sort.)

This MAY be of some value if you need to know the BANK'S balance between statement dates. But if you know which items have cleared, that information must have come from the bank - so you probably already know the bank's current balance, too, without having to go through this "record-then-sort-by-cleared" exercise.

RC

Quicken 2010 R8 has restored the balance column when sorting on cleared.

Thanks for the heads up, I will grab it now. Glad to see they got this fixed!