Transactions report by account and tag is blank
When i run a "Transactions" report, filter it by tag, and also select an individual account (category), it comes up with nothing even though there are transactions it should find. If i select an account (checking, credit card, etc.) as opposed to a category, it works fine. If I don't filter by tag it works fine. Just the combination of selecting by a category and filtering by a tag causes the report to come up blank.
I'm on Build 743.
2 Posted by ljb on 20 Mar, 2010 12:30 AM
That's an interesting find.
It isn't because of category vs account. It also happens with two accounts. It seems to me that tags are side-specific. If you enter a transaction in account A to transfer funds to account B, and add a tag "X" to the transaction, the tag really only applies to the A-side of the transaction. If you view account B, you will also see the tag but it is in brackets because it came from the other side. A transaction report on account "B" with tag "X" will not find that transaction, as you discovered, because the tag only really exists on the A-side. In fact, you can give it a different tag "Y" on the "B" side, and this tag will match when searching account "B" for tag "Y".
Having different tags on each side is kind of strange, because there really is only one transaction in the database (stored with acount "A").
So that's the way I think it works now. But it isn't really what people would expect, so maybe it should be considered an enhacement request: match tags on either side of a transaction.
3 Posted by eddieb on 20 Mar, 2010 05:05 AM
ljb-
It looks like I may have not explained this issue clearly. My issue has nothing to do with a transfer. I'm merely talking about a standalone transaction where it has a tag. Let me illustrate with a very simple example transaction.
Let's say I have a transaction in an account called "Checking" with a category of "Gasoline", and a tag of "Lexus". Using the Transactions report, if I select "Checking" in the "Account" parameter, or "Checking" in the "Account" parameter and "Lexus" in the "Tag" parameter, or If I just select "Tag" = "Lexus", or if I select just "Account" = "Checking", or just "Account" = "Gasoline", each of these five defined reports would select my transaction as they should.
But if I select "Account" = "Gasoline" and "Tag" = "Lexus", the report is blank when it should have selected my transaction. THAT'S the problem. When you select a specific category in the account parameter and filter by a tag, the report doesn't find anything even though it should.
Support Staff 4 Posted by Ben Spencer on 20 Mar, 2010 02:45 PM
Hi
Plas update to build 743 using th following link:
http://moneydance.com/trac/wiki/Moneydance2010Beta
I am not able to reproduce the problem you ar describing in build 743.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
5 Posted by ljb on 20 Mar, 2010 04:47 PM
eddieb, your first explanation was fine and I did understand exactly what you are doing. What you are missing is that a transfer transaction between accounts is exactly the same to Moneydance as a purchase transaction, or an income transaction. (Read up on double-entry accounting.) I believe my response is still valid. Ben, I am using build 743, so I'm not sure why you could not reproduce it.
Support Staff 6 Posted by Ben Spencer on 20 Mar, 2010 05:05 PM
ljb
My mistake I was looking at the wrong report type. I have created a bug ticket based on your very helpful description of the problem. Here is the link to the ticket.
http://moneydance.com/trac/ticket/2733
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
7 Posted by eddieb on 21 Mar, 2010 03:45 AM
I think I understand everything everybody is saying here. Assuming that, it STILL doesn't appear to me that anyone gets my issue.
I understand double entry accounting (I'm a CPA) and completely understand how that works in MD in that whether you put a category or account (which is a transfer) in the category field of a transaction, it's basically the same thing. I get that. But when I look at the Trac ticket Ben entered (#2733), that's not my issue. I'm not say that's not a problem (I don't know), but it's not my problem I originally detailed in this thread.
Again, my problem has nothing to do with a transfer and/or the fact that a bracketed tag in the other side of a transaction doesn't get selected. Let me try one more time.
If I go to the Transactions report and select an individual account (i.e. bank account, credit card, etc.) in the Account parameter and then filter by a tag, all is good and it works fine. BUT, if I select a category (income, expense) in the Account parameter and then filter by a tag, the report always comes up blank even though there are transactions that should show up. Again, I totally realize that MD treats accounts and categories the same in a transaction. But, in the Transactions report, whenever I filter by a tag, if i select a category, it doesn't work. But if I select an account (Bank, credit card) in the same field where I just selected a category, and filter by a tag, it works fine. Try it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it does appear to be a bug to me.
8 Posted by ljb on 21 Mar, 2010 04:21 PM
The bug report 2733 is the problem you found. The way he wrote it up, describing the underlying problem ("Transaction report does not work correctly with tags on other side") makes it more likely to get fixed.
I'll try again to convince you. Assume you have a transaction in a checking account (50. payment to Bills:Electric) with tag: anytag. Do a transaction report on Checking, filter by tag anytag, and the transaction shows. Do a transaction report on Bills:Electric, filter by tag anytag, and the transaction does not show. OK so far?
Now open the Checking register, right-click on that Bills:Electric transaction, and pick Show Other Side from the menu. You are now looking at the Bills:Electric category register. Find the transaction above: 50. with category Checking, and the tag field will show [anytag]. Double-click to open the transaction, click on the tags box, and apply the anytag tag to this transaction. Press Enter a few times to save it.
What you just did is apply the same tag to the other side of a transaction.
Again, do a transaction report on Checking, filter by tag anytag, and then do the report on Bills:Electric, filter by tag anytag. The transaction now shows up in both reports. This is because the transaction report is not matching tags that were applied to the other side of a transaction. Once we added the tag to the other side of the transaction, the report now includes that transaction.
Keep in mind that there is only one transaction here: 50. from Checking to Bills:Electric. When we added the tag from the other side, we were changing that single transaction. Moneydance is storing the tags applied to a transaction differently depending on which side they were added from, and is only looking in one of those places when matching tags for a transaction report.
9 Posted by eddieb on 21 Mar, 2010 07:05 PM
I finally got it ljb. Your detailed explanation without using the transfer between accounts (checking, credit card, etc.) as en example made sense to me. Thanks for taking the time to clear it up for me.
As a side note, do you by any chance know why does MD even put the tag in the other side of a transaction in brackets in the first place? I'm guessing there must be some reason they do it, but don't know what it is and am curious.
10 Posted by ljb on 21 Mar, 2010 09:24 PM
It looks like the tags, memo (below the description in 2-line register mode), and the Check# field (an actual check number, or keyword such as Trn) are all displayed in brackets if you view the transaction from the other side from where it was created. Maybe this is just to tell us that the information came from the other side of the transaction. Or maybe this is to tell us that these fields should not be changed from that side. (In fact the memo field can't be changed from the other side, but the check# and tags can, for some reason.)
11 Posted by Ray J on 28 Mar, 2010 08:16 PM
I seem to have a similar problem as described for tags above, but for the memo field for account transfers.
If I search for a memo text from the home screen I find all matches (from the viewpoint of all the accounts where the transactions were originally entered.) However if I repeat the search in a specific "other side" account to try and limit the matches, I actually get no matches at all even though the text is visible in the square brackets.
12 Posted by ljb on 28 Mar, 2010 09:33 PM
Nope, I'm not seeing that. I can match against a memo contents with the account set to either side of the transaction. This is using either Edit => Advanced Search or the Search report.
OK, I just figured out you are probably using the quick-search box in the upper right, not advanced search or a report (which is what this thread/bug report were about). Different problem, most likely. It looks like the quick-search box will not find anything - tags or memos - which are in square brackets, meaning they came from the other side.
13 Posted by Ray J on 29 Mar, 2010 12:01 PM
Thanks LJB you are right - I was using the quick-search, so maybe I have posted in the wrong place. At first sight this appeared to be related to my query, as it seemed (generically) to do with searching/filtering not working with a bracketted item. (I am quite new to Moneydance and haven't explored the advanced search or search report yet.)
14 Posted by DC on 26 Mar, 2011 02:52 AM
Any update on this bug? I see that the bug ticket was filed a year ago. However I still see the same problem in the beta version on MD2011.
Thanks.
15 Posted by eddieb on 26 Mar, 2011 03:25 AM
I forgot about this. So I just tried it and, if I'm remembering correctly the issue, it seems to be fixed. I just selected by one tag and one category and it found the correct transactions.
16 Posted by DC on 26 Mar, 2011 06:23 AM
The problem was when the tag is applied on one side of the transaction, but when you do a report on the side of the transaction account, it does not find the transaction. As mentioned, this was due to the fact that the tag was only applied to one side of the transaction. On the other side, the tag is not matched and only shown in square brackets. I just posted a related post regarding the generation of the income and expense report in the beta of Moneydance2011 which is essentially the same issue. However I just found this post hence i was asking about it. This issue is definitely not fixed yet.
Thanks.
17 Posted by DC on 26 Mar, 2011 06:34 AM
What would help is using the batch change function to add the tags on the other side. Unfortunately, I tried this and it doesn't work either. It seems the batch change will only work from the account that the transaction originated from. You can't batch change the tag on the other side of the transaction. Of course the real solution would be tag matching on the other side of the transaction automatically as previously mentioned.
18 Posted by eddieb on 28 Mar, 2011 01:27 AM
I just tested this again and you are right - it is still an issue. But what is strange (and why I thought previously that it was fixed) is that when I reported this problem originally, if I filtered by tag and a category, it wouldn't come up with anything. But filtering by account (checking, credit card, etc.) and tag, it worked fine. Now it's the opposite. I don't get any results filtering by tag and account (credit card, etc.) but I now do get results when I filter by category and tag.
I'm sure it's still the issue with the brackets thing on one end of the transaction, but why is it working the opposite of what it was before? Are the brackets on a different side of the transaction now or ??? It supposedly has something to do with which account, category, etc... you originally entered a transaction into as to where the brackets end up. But I always enter transactions from the checking, credit card side and not the category side.
19 Posted by DC on 28 Mar, 2011 02:24 AM
Thanks for confirming eddieb. I hope this can be resolved soon as it makes the reports a bit useless if it can't find the necessary transactions.
Thanks.
Support Staff 20 Posted by Angie Rauscher on 30 Mar, 2011 08:02 PM
Hey all,
I believe that this has been fixed in the new reports in Moneydance 2011. Would those of your looking for this tag functionality check out the Moneydance 2011 preview builds? You can find details on where to get the new version on our blog. Let me know how it goes, and what's still missing, and we'll work forward from there.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,
Angie Rauscher
Moneydance Support
21 Posted by DC on 04 May, 2011 01:18 PM
Unfortunately, this behavior of the tag only applying to one side of the transaction still applies to Moneydance 2011. For the moment, I have to manually change the tags on each transaction the other side of the transaction. It's a bit annoying since batch change tags don't even work in this case. I do hope it can be fixed soon.