I added a service for a prescription that I wanted to have listed under drugs. The prescription name is now a service which I want to delete or move under Drugs. I have been under lists, services and I can edit the name, but I cannot remove the prescription name.
I can hide the name, but that is just adding data that is not needed to my file. Anyone find a better way to delete a service that was added in error?
I added a service for a prescription that I wanted to
have listed under drugs. The prescription name is now
a service which I want to delete or move under Drugs.
I have been under lists, services and I can edit the
name, but I cannot remove the prescription name.
I can hide the name, but that is just adding data
that is not needed to my file. Anyone find a better
way to delete a service that was added in error?
Thanks,
Gary
Someone <url=http://www.quickenforums.com/message.jspa?messageID=600036280&tstart=0> posted recently</url> with this exact problem. My best idea was:
"Edit the faulty service entry and give it a name that doesn't conflict with the drug. You can give it either a nonsensical name, or a name of a service you may use in the future. You can then choose to hide it or leave it visible for the next time you want to add a service. Then add the drug with its proper name."
You can read the full thread yourself, but I don't remember seeing any better options.
Right, that's what I ended up doing. I renamed the entry to "bad" until I had new entry. Then I renamed "bad" to my new name. Hide worked only marginally well, because "bad" still appeared in many of ther report lists.
I usually like to use "zzzz1" "zzzz2" so that they fall to the bottom of an alpha list. We use this type of naming convention at work for "internal" field names & works well for me here too. Still, a delete feature would be nice.
Rhetorical q: lack of feature was it an oversight to begin w/? Or is it for legal purposes so that a virtual paper trail is always available at a later date? Just in case? (yes, I've gotten cynical in my old age)
As you probably know, Barrie (but others might not), you can "hide" any item on the lists: People, Services, Reasons, Drugs, Providers or Insurers. (To do this, click on the Lists drop-down menu.) That item will not longer be in the drop-down list when you're entering expenses, but it will show up in Reports.
The thinking was that one of these items might no longer be relevant, but you might have older expenses that used it. (An example is Hiding a child who moves out and gets their own insurance... this is an example close to my own heart with four kids who are nowhere near moving out).
Meanwhile, because everything is so inter-related, we were leery of deleting List items, both from a database/technical standpoint and from a usefulness standpoint.
There's a balance we're shooting for, of being easy to use and having all of your data at your fingertips, obviously. Strict ease of use for new expenses would mean one had only one's current providers, drugs etc available in drop-down menus. But to have all of the data available in the reports, one may want to be able to pull up old doctors or drugs, for example.
This also gets at the point brought up elsewhere of archiving past years' expenses. Some MEM users want to be able to look at past years' expenses (note the scrolling concerns), some do not. So the Expense Log is one big file linked to all data that's been entered -- but one can choose to view only the current year (or any other time period) by selecting the Date at the top.
What's been brought up in this thread are really good points. Deleting a mistyped Drug name is pretty obviously something one needs to do... but the way we deal with it is slightly non-obvious (the Hide button) and slightly non-simple, unfortunately. I've tried to explain a little bit of why we did things the way we did, and what you can do instead.
Thanks for explaining, Bruce. That clears things up quite a bit. I do want to keep drugs/services that I may have used in past, but not recently. So your solution works for me. I'll try to watch my typos before hitting OK.
longer be relevant, but you might have older expenses
that used it.
This thinking is right, and the hide functionality is welcome for exactly these reasons. The thinking IMHO is incomplete.
Meanwhile, because everything is so inter-related, we
were leery of deleting List items, both from a
database/technical standpoint and from a usefulness
standpoint.
<snip>
What's been brought up in this thread are really good
points. Deleting a mistyped Drug name is pretty
obviously something one needs to do... but the way we
deal with it is slightly non-obvious (the Hide
button) and slightly non-simple, unfortunately. I've
tried to explain a little bit of why we did things
the way we did, and what you can do instead.
What I'd rather see is deletion from a list take a long time as QMEM looks through all of the data to make sure that it's not used anywhere before deleting it. I'd also expect to walk through a warning box or two that yell about the dangers of doing the delete.
Deleting from a list should be a very rare event, so I don't see a problem in it being painful and inconvenient. Of course, it can't corrupt the data file either. ;-)
I understand your logic and I renamed the expense as Z1, Z2, ect.
An option would be to delete the service, but only if the service has no entries under it. I believe this is a feature in QuickBooks. Also Quickbooks has a Data integrity check, so if you create a database problem you can identify it and fix it.
