Categories with parentheses in the name showing amount of "$[object Object]"/$NaN (edited)

Kseniya

I keep seeing $NaN show up instead of dollars in subgroup totals. This happens in the app and on the website both. It has happened in categories where expenses are offset by credits, but it's also happened where that is not the case. Often, there is one category (Dining Out) that is always showing this error across all months in a report that looks at spending over time. Maybe there is some bad data in one month, but I can't believe that is the case in all months. Also, in the spending report, I have a subcategory for work expenses that are offset to zero by reimbursements. Up until yesterday, that total showed up as zero and today it is $NaN in the app spending report, and no new transactions have been added since. It's been happening for a long time - months - and isn't a huge issue but it's annoying. Thanks

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for reaching out! I haven't seen this bug myself, but to help clarify can you please share a screenshot showing the bug within the Quicken Simplifi web application? This would be helpful in determining a solution.

-Coach Jon

SRC54

This will be of no use to you, but I've had this happen. I don't remember exactly what I did, but probably I created a new category, moved all the transactions to the new category and deleted the old one. I've had to do this several times when Simplifi gets corrupted.

When it comes to Simplifi problems, you often have to fix them yourself if you can. I suggest waiting to see if the coaches can help you. Good luck!

Kseniya

Here you go, one instance from the Android app

Kseniya

Here's another instance - this is from the desktop app on windows. The Groceries and Dining Out subgroup totals are not showing up when i cover over the report. This is a "spending over time" report, by category, last six months.

You might also notice that I clicked first on November and got the pop-up info. Then I clicked on September and got another pop up, but the first pop-up didn't go away. It's a bug but handy in this case so you can see that it's a problem across all months.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for the screenshots! Is it just Groceries, Dining Out, and Work Expenses where this issue is showing up? Or does it happen with more categories? Is it sporadic, or consistent in this behavior?

Thank you,

Coach Jon

Kseniya

I've had an issue with Dining Out for a long time. I think it's consistent.
Groceries - that's new.

Work expenses - that's sporadic. It was fine a couple of days ago and I don't think anything changed in terms of the tranaction entries.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for the information. So to clarify, this problem only appears in subcategories. What we may try doing is having you delete and recreate the subcategories to see if they still show this way afterward.

Let us know if that works,

Coach Jon

Kseniya

I created a new category called "grocery" (as opposed to the old Groceries). I reassigned all the transactions to the new category. And I continue to have the same issue.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for following up. Can you supply a screenshot showing the categories in Settings > Categories & tags? Additionally, can you supply a screenshot showing the issue for the category you just created in both the web and mobile applications? This would be helpful going forward.

Thank you,

Coach Jon

Kseniya

Here are the desktop screenshots. I don't think the same views exist in the mobile app.

Kseniya

Here's the category

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for the screenshots! One thing I have noticed is that the categories are utilizing symbols in their naming. If you update the category names without the parentheses or #, does the problem still exist?

Let us know!

-Coach Jon

Kseniya

All my categories use symbols and that's for a purpose. Most of them don't have this reporting problem. I would highly prefer not to have to rename a few hundred categories by hand to end up with loss of filtering functionality due to the change.

Kseniya

Also, please review the screen shot from the "total spending" report. The Groceries category reports a value there without an issue. It's only in the "spending by month" report where there is a problem. It's a report-level issue.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

I understand. Maybe let's have you try just renaming one or two of the categories to exclude the symbols, and then sign out and back into Quicken Simplifi, to see if the amount then shows up. We will want to narrow this down as a possible cause.

Thanks,

Coach Jon

Kseniya

I experimented with renaming categories. Parenthesis appear to cause the problem. # is ok. - is also ok.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thank you for confirming! I have reported this issue to our product team. I will be sure to follow up with status updates here when we receive new information going forward.

Thank you for your patience,

Coach Jon

SIMPL-24531

SRC54

Happy you got it fixed with Jon's help. I'll try to remember we cannot use parentheses in category names. Special characters can cause problems. For a long while, Reports couldn't handle hyphens or multiple capital letters in payees. ADT would be Adt and AT&T would be Att. That finally got fixed.

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

I am following up with an update from our product team on this issue. It seems this is a known limitation in regard to parenthesis. They recommended using brackets, [ ], in place of parenthesis going forward to work around the issue.

Thank you,

Coach Jon

Kseniya

Thank you. That's a good solution.

Might I suggest they add some data validation or guidence to users during data entry?

Coach Jon

Hello @Kseniya,

Thanks for the reply. Your suggestion might be a good thing to submit an idea post for!

https://community.simplifimoney.com/discussion/998/creating-and-voting-for-ideas-in-the-community

Thank you,

Coach Jon