Having participated in a number of beta tests for Intuit products, at the request of an Intuit VP after finding a significant calculation error in TurboTax a few years ago, I've had the privilege of working with both Mac- and Windows-based products before they are shipped.
One bug I found—and reported—for the 2012 Quickbooks Pro software continues to be a problem. I wasn't chosen for the 2013 Quickbooks Pro beta tests for either operating system platform, but I've since confirmed that the bug is persistent in 2013.
The error stems from the "Downloaded Transactions" matching feature in Quickbooks. For those unfamiliar with "Downloaded Transactions" this feature allows credit card (or other bank account transactions) to be downloaded into Quickbooks and then matched against entries in the linked account.
For example, if I eat at McDonald's and enter the McDonald's transaction into my AMEX card account in Quickbooks, then later download all the most recent AMEX charges, the matching feature will note that I have a dollar amount and date matching between the "Downloaded Transactions" and the linked QuickBooks account.
It almost works like magic, with the matched charges automatically highlighted by the presence of an orange dot in the Downloaded Transaction window (as opposed to those that aren't matched being represented by a white dot).
I say "almost works like magic" because it turns out that the bug will automatically match transactions with the same amount, even if they are from a date weeks before and from a completely different vendor. This might not be a big deal for some transactions, but it leads to mass confusion when multiple wrong "matches" are registered, and can even lead to doubling up on erroneous entries, since the intended matches are left unmatched in the Downloaded Transactions window.
Here's the real-world example that shows the bug, present in the 2012 Quickbooks Pro beta, is still present in the 2013 shipping versions of QuickBooks Pro.
Having taken an extended trip, where I didn't have time to download transactions every few days, but did have downtime to enter the credit card receipts into QuickBooks (on a few train rides in India and Europe where I didn't have always-on data connectivity), I felt good about keeping up with the expenses for various expense reports.
When I finally reached a place where I could pull down transactions from the past three weeks of multi-continent travel, I noticed that the Downloaded Transactions window had "matched" several earlier transactions with entries in my QuickBooks credit card account register. But rather than matching the ones closest to the date of the transaction, it was matching to transactions from several weeks prior.
In other words, it was a bug around first-in vs last-in (FIFO and LIFO, to use two old computer and Finance 101 terms). Where QuickBooks should have matched to older transactions (FIFO) it was actually matching to the more recent transactions (LIFO).
I was able to repeat this a few weeks later, with a new set of data, where the downloaded transactions contained two pairs of transactions that were both for the same dollar amount ($1.10 for the first set and $2.19 for the second set).
The earliest transactions, one each for $1.10 and $2.19, had both been for McDonald's purchases, one day apart (12/4 and 12/5, respectively, for the $1.10 and $2.19 amounts). In the credit card account register, those two transactions had been entered, splitting out the tax and food, but equaling the total amounts noted above (although you'll never find those using the Find function in QuickBooks, but that's another bug story for another day).
In addition to the 12/4 and 12/5 McDonald's purchases, there were two other transactions already entered into the credit card account register, a 12/21 McDonald's purchase for $1.10 and a 12/23 Subway purchase for $2.19. The McDonald's is a repeat of an exact same order two weeks later, and the Subway was a promotional deal. Each were clearly entered as McDonald's and Subway, respectively.
When I checked the automated matching for the 12/4 and 12/5 McDonald's transactions, they did not show as marked in the credit card register, but they did show matched in the Downloaded Transactions.
On further inspection, QuickBooks had once again marked off two more recent charges, the 12/21 and 12/23 McDonald's and Subway duo.
To see the "matched" transactions side by side, note the check marks and orange dots in each of the next two images:
The average user of QuickBooks isn't going to pick this up, but will be seriously confused when automated matching mis-matches transactions, leaving the intended transactions without a mate and perhaps causing a QucikBooks user to assume a large check or credit card amount has cleared when in fact it's just's Intuit's ongoing matching error that's at fault.
I sense a liability issue for Intuit if someone's set of matching $9,013.42 transactions are inadvertently mis-matched, especially since the issue has been present for at least two shipping versions of QuickBooks Pro on both Mac and Windows platforms.
One bug I found—and reported—for the 2012 Quickbooks Pro software continues to be a problem. I wasn't chosen for the 2013 Quickbooks Pro beta tests for either operating system platform, but I've since confirmed that the bug is persistent in 2013.
The error stems from the "Downloaded Transactions" matching feature in Quickbooks. For those unfamiliar with "Downloaded Transactions" this feature allows credit card (or other bank account transactions) to be downloaded into Quickbooks and then matched against entries in the linked account.
For example, if I eat at McDonald's and enter the McDonald's transaction into my AMEX card account in Quickbooks, then later download all the most recent AMEX charges, the matching feature will note that I have a dollar amount and date matching between the "Downloaded Transactions" and the linked QuickBooks account.
It almost works like magic, with the matched charges automatically highlighted by the presence of an orange dot in the Downloaded Transaction window (as opposed to those that aren't matched being represented by a white dot).
I say "almost works like magic" because it turns out that the bug will automatically match transactions with the same amount, even if they are from a date weeks before and from a completely different vendor. This might not be a big deal for some transactions, but it leads to mass confusion when multiple wrong "matches" are registered, and can even lead to doubling up on erroneous entries, since the intended matches are left unmatched in the Downloaded Transactions window.
Here's the real-world example that shows the bug, present in the 2012 Quickbooks Pro beta, is still present in the 2013 shipping versions of QuickBooks Pro.
Having taken an extended trip, where I didn't have time to download transactions every few days, but did have downtime to enter the credit card receipts into QuickBooks (on a few train rides in India and Europe where I didn't have always-on data connectivity), I felt good about keeping up with the expenses for various expense reports.
When I finally reached a place where I could pull down transactions from the past three weeks of multi-continent travel, I noticed that the Downloaded Transactions window had "matched" several earlier transactions with entries in my QuickBooks credit card account register. But rather than matching the ones closest to the date of the transaction, it was matching to transactions from several weeks prior.
In other words, it was a bug around first-in vs last-in (FIFO and LIFO, to use two old computer and Finance 101 terms). Where QuickBooks should have matched to older transactions (FIFO) it was actually matching to the more recent transactions (LIFO).
I was able to repeat this a few weeks later, with a new set of data, where the downloaded transactions contained two pairs of transactions that were both for the same dollar amount ($1.10 for the first set and $2.19 for the second set).
The earliest transactions, one each for $1.10 and $2.19, had both been for McDonald's purchases, one day apart (12/4 and 12/5, respectively, for the $1.10 and $2.19 amounts). In the credit card account register, those two transactions had been entered, splitting out the tax and food, but equaling the total amounts noted above (although you'll never find those using the Find function in QuickBooks, but that's another bug story for another day).
In addition to the 12/4 and 12/5 McDonald's purchases, there were two other transactions already entered into the credit card account register, a 12/21 McDonald's purchase for $1.10 and a 12/23 Subway purchase for $2.19. The McDonald's is a repeat of an exact same order two weeks later, and the Subway was a promotional deal. Each were clearly entered as McDonald's and Subway, respectively.
When I checked the automated matching for the 12/4 and 12/5 McDonald's transactions, they did not show as marked in the credit card register, but they did show matched in the Downloaded Transactions.
On further inspection, QuickBooks had once again marked off two more recent charges, the 12/21 and 12/23 McDonald's and Subway duo.
To see the "matched" transactions side by side, note the check marks and orange dots in each of the next two images:
The average user of QuickBooks isn't going to pick this up, but will be seriously confused when automated matching mis-matches transactions, leaving the intended transactions without a mate and perhaps causing a QucikBooks user to assume a large check or credit card amount has cleared when in fact it's just's Intuit's ongoing matching error that's at fault.
I sense a liability issue for Intuit if someone's set of matching $9,013.42 transactions are inadvertently mis-matched, especially since the issue has been present for at least two shipping versions of QuickBooks Pro on both Mac and Windows platforms.
2 comments:
Is there a way to fix the problem/bug? or do I have to buy the 2014 version?
The problem persists in Quickbooks 2014 as well...
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