After having updated my Quicken software from 2001 to 2006, I noticed a big difference between the Income/Expense accounts produced with the same settings by the two versions of Quicken. I was first annoyed by the se differences but found a way out and produced those reports I produced with Quicken 2001 with Quicken 2006 by switching few accounts/category settings.

I have just installed Quicken 2006 DeLuxe on my computer migrating from Quicken 2001 DeLuxe. The first thing that I noticed was a significant change in the user interface which, I must admit, is an improvement that I will get used to.

However, I found a major difference between the Income/Expense reports that I produced with Quicken 2001 (Q2001) and those produced with the same settings by Quicken 2006 (Q2006). These now contain a rather long list of transfers which appeared to be internal transfers in Q2001 but show up despite having the switch "Exclude internal" checked on the

"Exclude internal" transfers

I am trying to figure out how the Internal Transfer switch in the Income/Expense Customize>Detail tab works in Quicken 2006, and why I'm not getting the report results I've been expecting based on 13+ years of using earlier versions of Quicken (my previous one was Quicken 2001).

Intuit has made a very small, but VERY significant change in the way the Exclude Internal Transfer switch works. You will note in the two quotes below from the 2002 and 2004 Help files that the definition of "Exclude Internal" has changed ever so slightly. In 2002, it refers to "transfers between accounts," and in 2004, it refers to "transfers within accounts." This is a huge difference, yet nowhere in the "What's New" document, or anywhere else that I could find, is there a mention of this.

• Quicken 2001: Excludes transfers between accounts that are included in the report or graph. (Such transfers cancel each other out)
• Quicken 2006: Excludes transfers within accounts that are included in the report or graph (such as the opening balance or adjustment transactions).

My solution to this problem appears in the following message that I have sent to the Quicken Support Forum.

Message to Quicken support forum

I upgraded from Q2001 to Q2006 recently and found that my I/E reports were comprised of a long list of what Q2001 considered as "internal transfers" which were excluded by checking the switch "Exclude Internal transfers".

Through a search on newsgroups, I found out that this problem has surfaced with the release of Q2004, that it was considered as a "bug", that it was reported to Intuit but has prevailed since.

In my mind, it is not a bug: it has been intended by Intuit as the definition of "exclude internal transfers" was changed in the help file. Prior to Q2004, it was:

• Excludes transfer between accounts that are included in the report or graph. (Such transfers cancel each other out) with Q2004, it became
• Excludes transfers within accounts that are included in the report or graph (such as the opening balance or adjustment transactions).

The gist of the change is with the change from "between" to "within".

If you like the "old style" I/E reporting, there is a work around to this problem. It has to do with the meaning of exclusion from the account and the category list. Excluding an account from the account list removes all transaction to and from this account from the report/graph whereas excluding an account from the category list removes all transfers (and only transfers) to and from that account.

If A is the set of accounts included in the account list and B the set of accounts excluded from the same list, given that "exclude internal transfer" is checked, for all a and b in A, transfers from a to a and from b to b will be excluded but all transfers from a to b will be included. They are no useful as their sum will be zero.

Since you want to exclude there transfers from the I/E report, exclude all a in A from the category list leaving the set B included. This way, all the transfers from a to b, for all a,b in A will disappear from the I/E report.

A problem remains. If you add a new account c to be part of A, it will automatically be included in the list of account and in the list of category. You will have to deselect it from the category list.

I hope it helps

Georges

References

1. In August 2003, John Pollard explains ...
2. In a question raised on the alt.comp.software.financial.quicken forum on December 3, 2003, John Blaustein initiates a debate on the behaviour of the switch "Exclude Internal" which he considers to be a "bug" in Quicken 2004.
3. On 7 February 2004, a new thread was started by speedlever alt.comp.software.financial.quicken forum. He noted the appearance of bogus transfers in his Income/Expense reports. On the same day, Steve Larson noted that such phenomenon existed since Quicken 2004 was introduced.
4. In January 2004, replying to a question raised by Dave Argust, John Pollard again ...