Can I see my uncat. transactions ?

Gotom

In entering discrete expenses as split categories to pay my credit card bill one category remains at the bottom of the splits as "uncategorized." Many splits are happy with their categories but I suspect that down deep there are mis-spelled category names or other errors forcing expenses into the uncategorized domain. Can I get a report showing the splits that are incorrect?

GeoffG

You can select the Category heading at the top to sort by Category and then just scroll though the list.  Remember to resort back to Date when done.

RickO

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

smayer97

GeoffG said:

You can select the Category heading at the top to sort by Category and then just scroll though the list.  Remember to resort back to Date when done.

This will only show you which transactions have uncategorized lines that are not split. Not sure how well it will work for transactions with split lines and one or more lines are not categorized. Also, if it does work for you, it will not show you which lines alone. For that, you will have to open each transaction to find the blank category.

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

Unknown

Agree with RickO - setting up an account for your CCard is the right way to go. It will also allow you to download/reconcile transactions with your CCard company (if they do that).

But you bring up a good point about Uncategorized Transactions (UTs): for Quicken to properly track your income/expenses, you should be making sure you don't have any UTs. A good way to do this is to periodically check Quicken for UTs using your favorite method.

Mine is to run a Category Summary report and customize the report for the time period I'm checking, and use only the category for UT. Here's a screen shot of those report settings (note: your list of categories will differ from this):



You could save this as a custom report to save time each time you want to check for UTs. 

Then, in the resulting report, just double click each transaction and update its category. It will then be removed from the Category report.

A good housekeeping idea to help keep your Quicken data accurate.

Dawne

Gotom

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Which split items are uncategorized? i.e. which of my categories are messed up? I....


Part of my CC payment ends up in "uncategorized" at the bottom of my splits. I can't tell which categories failed to make the grade, match the ones I created, etc. 
version: Quicken 2019 subscription.

Quicken_Tyka

Hey Gotom,

If I enter a transaction for $100 and create a split and enter 3 transactions. A,B and C.

A= $50
B= $25
C=$10
This only totals $85, an uncategorized transaction is created for $15 so the total of the splits match the amount to equal $100.


Is this possibly what you are experiencing?

Instead of searching for the uncategorized transaction, I would double check the total amount, the split amounts and see if anything is missing from the splits.

Hope this helps!

-Quicken Tyka

Gotom

GeoffG said:

You can select the Category heading at the top to sort by Category and then just scroll though the list.  Remember to resort back to Date when done.

G - sorting by Cat. invokes entire register - all dates - I can't isolate to a single transaction - so got lost right away. Even so, would I be able to drill for more info on why the category was bad? Tom

Gotom

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

1. Rick if I get a transaction report showing only the uncats it doesn't let me drill
down in it to see the split lines Q dint like.

2. Thanks for the sugg. re an account for each CC - I have only one card and use a single transaction to pay each bill, splitting as I go until there are no more uncats. 
This time I've ended up with multiple uncats, 3 lines of them - one amount is (+)
and two are (-) further confusing me.

Gotom

Dawne Holz said:

Agree with RickO - setting up an account for your CCard is the right way to go. It will also allow you to download/reconcile transactions with your CCard company (if they do that).

But you bring up a good point about Uncategorized Transactions (UTs): for Quicken to properly track your income/expenses, you should be making sure you don't have any UTs. A good way to do this is to periodically check Quicken for UTs using your favorite method.

Mine is to run a Category Summary report and customize the report for the time period I'm checking, and use only the category for UT. Here's a screen shot of those report settings (note: your list of categories will differ from this):



You could save this as a custom report to save time each time you want to check for UTs. 

Then, in the resulting report, just double click each transaction and update its category. It will then be removed from the Category report.

A good housekeeping idea to help keep your Quicken data accurate.

Dawne

Thank you Dawne - you encouraged me to generate a new transaction report showing only the uncats - but the report dint let me drill down to find out any more why any assigned category hadn't fit. Maybe a different report s/h been selected (?).

Gotom

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

RickO

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

I have to say again... I really, really recommend against the way you're doing this. Create a separate CC account and try it for a month and I think you'll find it works much better. You pay each bill with a single transaction; it just doesn't need to be split.

That said...

1. Make sure you are using Reports > New Report > Transaction Report as described by Dawne below. It will let you drill down.

2. Are two of the uncategorized amounts in the split the same value but opposite signs? If so, that's quicken trying to make it all add up. Delete one of the pair by clicking the little minus sign icon next to it. That should leave you with one uncat transaction.

RickO

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

Just delete one of the non-last uncat split lines (little minus sign icon next to the line) and the last one should adjust to keep the total correct.

Gotom

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

I've long used that but in this instance it just reappears. At the 
moment there are two such uncat lines - the total of which far
exceeds any amount of invalid categories I can imagine.

RickO

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

Could you post a screenshot of the entire split transaction? 

https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-...

volvogirl

Ok I posted this right when you posted your question but it didn’t go through. And even through a couple of people have said this I want to add my 2 cents and stress the point. And maybe explain it a little differently to make more sense.



The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT and enter the charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account. Then when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.



When you enter the payment in your checking account you put the credit card account name in for the category using square brackets around the name to indicate it is a transfer...like this... [credit card] or newer versions have a Transfer column.



I used to do it the wrong way for years! Then I wised up and now enter them properly. I would split my credit card payment into all the categories on one transaction in my checking account. And since I always pay more than the bill I would need to figure the difference and put it to another category. But then I needed to have them entered on the date the charges actually happened. So I finally set up a credit card account. It makes it much easier to enter and balance!



Here's a list of some reasons why you should do it this way.....


You don't have to wait to make the payment and split it out


You won't run out of split lines (I used to use Q2004 and there was only 30)


You can use both the payee and memo fields for more description


You don't have to figure out the difference if you pay a different amount


Then your Credit Card Account will exactly match your statement


Charges get entered with the right date (better at year end for taxes)


You can enter all charges to date, not just what's on the bill - then you can see what you still owe


You won't forget what a charge was for if you enter it right away from the receipt


And if there are multiple categories purchased on a single credit card charge, you can split that one credit card charge to detail the items purchased each with their own category and memo/note.

Gotom

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

Sure. 

Gotom

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

Well, that's partial - do you need the whole thing - it's way too long to capture in SS . . maybe there's another technique I s/b using  . . . 

Gotom

Thanks volvogirl - I see a sep. account offers a no. of advantages over the way I do it now - perhaps I should change my ways. For the moment, is my current entry irredeemable?

Gotom

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

Thank you sir. Yes, one does cancel out, but re-appears so I'm left with 3 uncats. 

The Uncat Report doesn't drill to show the offending category. 

Even though Q will add add'l split lines the transaction (58 splits) may be overloaded.

Per your strong rec I'll set up an account for this credit card and try to pay it that way.

Right off, the CC account opens to a negative balance - it only goes back to Oct. last year - why I donno.

I always pay my cc bill in full - so how do I relieve this neg balance here?

RickO

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

You can put in a balance adjustment transaction on a date when you know the balance should be zero. Or reconcile the account and accept a balance adjustment to make it correct.

RickO

Gotom said:

Thank you Quicken Tyka - I added up the splits with (-) on a spreadsheet and they balance with the total of the Mastercard bill as well as the amount in the register. It's as if Q dint like the category assignments as there really are no uncats - except several splits of them named "Uncategorized" despite the total of the bill - and the (-) splits, balancing.
I know Q helps you when you categorize by suggesting that a new cat. be created. But no, it seems happy with all my cats. I compared them one by one against my Category List and all were correct. 

Yeah, the number of split lines you have is way out of control. Glad you're going with the separate account method. In theory, if you delete the upper 496.12 line, then the bottom one would go away leaving you with the single 779.95 line. If that's not working, it may be because you've overloaded the number of split lines.

RickO

Dawne Holz said:

Agree with RickO - setting up an account for your CCard is the right way to go. It will also allow you to download/reconcile transactions with your CCard company (if they do that).

But you bring up a good point about Uncategorized Transactions (UTs): for Quicken to properly track your income/expenses, you should be making sure you don't have any UTs. A good way to do this is to periodically check Quicken for UTs using your favorite method.

Mine is to run a Category Summary report and customize the report for the time period I'm checking, and use only the category for UT. Here's a screen shot of those report settings (note: your list of categories will differ from this):



You could save this as a custom report to save time each time you want to check for UTs. 

Then, in the resulting report, just double click each transaction and update its category. It will then be removed from the Category report.

A good housekeeping idea to help keep your Quicken data accurate.

Dawne

It only lets you drill down to the transaction level. Then you have to open the transaction to see the splits within it.

volvogirl

Gotom said:

Thanks volvogirl - I see a sep. account offers a no. of advantages over the way I do it now - perhaps I should change my ways. For the moment, is my current entry irredeemable?

Huh? A separate account is what you need.

Gotom

Gotom said:

Thanks volvogirl - I see a sep. account offers a no. of advantages over the way I do it now - perhaps I should change my ways. For the moment, is my current entry irredeemable?

ok, will do that . . . thanks

smayer97

You can add your VOTE to Add an option to warn when a transaction line is entered without a category.

First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click VOTE at the top of THAT page, so your vote will count for THIS feature and increase its visibility to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version.

While you are at it, you may want to add your VOTE to related IDEAS found on the 
List of Requests for Data Entry and Usability Options and Features. Click on the underlined link, then follow the instructions to add your vote to more related ideas. Your VOTES matter!

(If you find this reply helpful, please be sure to click "Like", so others will know, thanks.)

Gotom

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

 Rick, . . . . do I reconcile the online or statement balance to zero ? (FWIW I use statement balance when reconciling the checking account). I'm not sure how to proceed here - should I pay the CC account before accepting a balance adjustment (which would make it zero as of the date it was paid, assuming no current charges are put on from online - but isn't the cc account online - isn't that the essence of it, so you needn't reconstruct transactions? Here are my questions 1. Should I use online or stmt balance to reconcile the card (to total of the charges - or to zero?) 2. How do I turn the reconciled balance into a transfer in the checking account? 3. How does the actual payment get made to bank (I'm used to doing a manual transaction on bank website). The foregoing is all I can think of right now . . . 

RickO

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

If the CC account is connected online (which of course it wasn't before this change since there was no separate CC account), then you can do it either way. Personally, I do my checking account vs the online balance since I don't have to pay it. But I do my CC accounts vs the "paper" statement as kind of a reminder that I need to pay it. But I could do it vs the online too. If you are doing it against the statement balance, you would normally balance it (and accept the adjustment), and then pay it.

You pay the bill the same way you always did and enter that transaction in the checking account as a negative number. However, you will not have any splits. Instead, click the Columns button at the bottom and turn on the Transfer column. In the transaction in the checking account, use the category "Transfer:Credit Card Payment". In the Transfer column, put the name of the CC account. After you save that transaction, go over to the CC account and you will see a new positive transaction of the same amount reflecting the payment. 

Here's what it will look like in the Checking account:



And here's what it will look like in the CC account:

Gotom

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

I added Transfer column but now both Category and Transfer columns read "Split"
and I don't know how to edit them. Here's the Credit Card view:


and here's the Register view:

Gotom

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

RickO, maybe you're telling me to create an unspilt one-line transaction in the check register for the payment, thus that side isn't a split and the Category column can be edited. At the same time the Credit Card transaction will show the splits - which will will play into any reports I need, right?

RickO

RickO said:

That will work. You can also customize a New Report > Transaction Report to include only uncategorized transactions.

BUT.... Gotem.... This is not how you should be handling your credit card. You should set up a separate account for the credit card. Record all its transactions there. This will let you list each credit card transaction with it's own date, payee, category and notes. This will also let you have a running balance of how much is on your card at any given time.

Then when it's time to pay the bill, you reconcile the credit card account and you show the payment as a Transfer transaction from your checking account to your credit card. If you are paying the card in full and there are no new transactions, then the card balance will again be zero.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcoI3I85cY

(some of the video is based in QM2007, but the concepts are the same)

Gotem... It looks like you are showing two views (collapsed and expanded) of the same transaction in your checking account. Is that right?

If so, just delete it. Then create a new transaction that looks like the one dated 1/10/19 in the Checking Account example I posted above. The payee will be "MasterCard Advantage". The Category will be "Transfer:Credit Card Payment". The amount will be "-6539.04". The memo will be whatever you want. And the Transfer column will contain the name of the Credit Card Account.

The corresponding transaction (as a positive amount) will automatically appear in the Credit Card Account when you create the one in the checking account.

In the credit card account, you will have a bunch of transactions for the charges you've made (negative amounts). One of these would have the category "Med:tom" and the Payee "St. John's" with the memo maybe being E-Room.

Make sense?

By the way, when you create the new checking transaction with payee MasterCard Advantage, it will try to pre-fill the last transaction for that payee which has all the splits. To prevent this, after typing "MasterCard Advantage", and before you go to the next field, hold do the Option key and hit the Tab key. This will give you a new blank transaction for payee MasterCard Advantage.