Duplicating Budget Month to Month?
A very easy question, I'm sure but I want to duplicate my budget month to month with a few minor tweaks here and there for things I don't set to roll over. Can someone explain the most efficient way to work with your budget (largely staying the same) when a new month rolls around?
Thanks!
Quicken 2016, Windows, R8
Thanks!
Quicken 2016, Windows, R8
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To fine tune your budget, go into the Annual View.
You can copy the budget values of a selected month for all categories and
- either copy them forward to the rest of the year
- retroactively apply them to the prior months of this year
- or copy them over the entire year
To do so click the "BUDGET" column header for the month that contains the monthly (already fine tuned) budget and decide on how to copy it forward / backward over the entire year.
You can do the same copy forward / backward for a single category. Click on the budget amount in a month. Click the gear icon that shows after you selected the amount and select from the options.
So, yes, you can set up a monthly budget that's your model for most of the year, populate it across all the months of the current year and then go in and fix the budget for those months where you have exceptional income or expenses, like year-end-bonus pay or annual home insurance payment.
When you extend your budget into 2017 by clicking the right arrow in the "< 2016 >" button you will be asked about how to populate the new year's budget.
If you're unsure on
how to do something, you can find more information about a specific task,
function, feature or report in Quicken Help.
To access Quicken Help simply press the F1 key from anywhere in Quicken (or
click Help in the Menu bar, then click Quicken Help).
Use the Contents tab to see the available books in Quicken Help. Click on one
of the books to open it. Click on a chapter to drill down to more
details.
Or use the Search tab to search using keywords, e.g., "buy
security".
Some Quicken view screens may have a yellow button with a question mark. Click
it to get view - specific help.
I'm using Quicken 2017 and it doesn't automatically carry over to next month. For example, I made a budget for Nov. When I switch to Dec, the budget is blank. The categories carried over, but the dollar amounts are empty, read zero, instead of the amount I set for it. Is this a bug, or am I missing something. Also, this is the first time I got Quicken early, is it usually this horribly buggy when first released that it's almost useless to use?
Have you any specific examples of horrible bugs that are making Q2017 almost useless, or is that just a non-specific complaint?
What is challenging for me is that I suck at budgeting to begin with. Month to month seems easy enough to conceptually understand and manage, but it's the simple things like looking at my monthly total being off because I got paid on the last day of previous month. The overall average of my income is consistent, I understand that. But, it becomes abstract when I need to understand how I am doing with my budget tactically.
What I'm learning is that adaptation takes a while and, that getting everything set up correctly is absolutely required. I've spent more hours in the last few months on managing my finances than I have, cumulatively, my entire life; probably.
I have to laugh when I see that Quicken is able to reconcile my accts down to the penny. Each time I see it successfully reconcile, I think to myself..."Seriously?? It reconciles??" LOL.
If you clicked on the arrow to switch to 2019 and did not get the dialog in Image 1, then it is likely that you have previously selected an option for 2019. That's been my experience. Pls. note that the image shows references to 2019/2020 - Should show 2018/2019 in your case.
Once the 2019 option is selected (for the new budget) you will no longer get this dialog when moving between budget years. So maybe that explains your current situation.
If you haven't invested too much effort in 2019....you might consider starting the 2019 budget over again by deleting it. Deleting 2019 budget can be done in "Budget Options" menu, shown in Image 2. Once 2019 is deleted, you can arrow over to 2019 from 2018 and you should get the options dialog showing strategies to populate the new 2019 budget.
Of course, be sure to backup your Quicken data file before starting this. Its easy to mistake budget years and work on the wrong one. Done that....
Hope this helps gets you restarted.
Scott
2019 QW HBR R17.5
IMAGE 1
IMAGE 2
First, print out a copy of the 2018 budget figures you want. Then, go to Planning>Budgets. With Jan 2019 budget open to
graph view and the budget you want to modify selected, click on “Budget Action”
and choose “Select Categories to Budget.” A box will come up with a number of
options, including “select categories.” Using your Dec. 2018
budget as a reference, adjust the Jan 2019 budget categories & amounts to match your printed copy.
Next, change the view from Graph to Annual. When you
That should give you a replica of your December 2018 budgetclick in the blank spaces of the first column (categories), one of the icons that appears is
a gear. If you click on the gear, there’s an option to copy the amount budgeted
for January to the rest of the year. I did this for each category or item. The whole process didn't take long.
amounts; categories can then be further adjusted by month, as needed.
"When I am in the 2018 annual view and click on the arrow in the header to switch to 2019, no questions came up about my preferences".
If the real-world year is 2019 (for example), the first time you open a Quicken budget whose most current budget year is earlier than 2019, Quicken will automatically create a year 2019 budget (and a new budget for all years between the original budget year and 2019) ... without offering any options (meaning the default option will be used).
To see the Add Budget (year) options, click the next-year arrow in your most current budget year: you can cancel the resulting dialog after viewing it.
"Also, the budget that appeared only carried income categories & amounts over - everything else was totally different".
When Quicken automatically created the 2019 budget in my Q2017 test file, all the 2019 categories and their budget amounts (income and expense) were exactly equal to the categories and budget amounts in the 2018 budget that was the source of the Copy - which is exactly what the default selection is when you manually initiate the creation of a new budget (year) by clicking the next-year arrow to a year that does not yet have a budget.
If you're experiencing something different, you could try Validating a Quicken Copy of your data:
_ File > File Operations > Copy
_ Open the Copy
_ File > File Operations > Validate and Repair
_ Put a check mark in "Validate file"
_ Click OK
If the Validated Copy does not exhibit the problem, make that your regular Quicken file.
Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list