Spending Reports

torgerme

I did a 2018 spending report to view spending by category. My child support spending shows $11K for the year instead of the $16K I actually spent because there was $5K in the opening balance, which I need to balance with my bank...? Why does Quicken subtract the opening balance from spending when it is clearly not accurate? 

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

[You neglected to include your Quicken Edition (example: Deluxe) and your Quicken Build (example: 16.1.16.2). That information can be important to diagnosing your problem: you should always include that information when you initiate a discussion here.]

Here's a tip: an opening balance transaction is not "spending" (nor "income"). 

Also, an opening balance transaction is a "transfer".

Quicken - logically - excludes ALL transfers from Spending by Category reports ... by default. And Quicken excludes all opening balance transactions from virtually all Quicken Spending reports ... by default.

Quicken does NOT "subtract" opening balance transaction from reports; but Quicken sometimes does not include opening balance transactions in reports ... by default. See above.

You can elect to include opening balance transactions in most reports, using the Advanced tab in the report Customize dialog. In the "Transfers" dropdown, select "Include All".

torgerme

Thank you for the response, but I'm still having the same problem. I agree, the opening balance should not be considered income, (but actually it is income - just carried over from from 2017). I want a spending report for 2018 only, but if I don't include the opening balance I don't reconcile with my bank. . . If I do as you suggest and click on the drop down to make it a  transfer, my only options are the accounts, so I selected Child Support.  So, the $5K is deducted and I can't figure out what to do about it. I am using Quicken Deluxe, Build 27.1.18.15, it is new. 

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

A Quicken account "opening balance" transaction represents the balance of all activity that occurred prior to the entry of transactions in the account. 

A Quicken account "opening balance" transaction is recorded in Quicken as a "transfer back into the same account". That means its Category is the name of the account where the opening balance is recorded ... in square brackets. If what you are calling an "opening balance" transaction is not recorded that way; it is not, what we would refer to as, an account "opening balance" transaction.

How did your "opening balance" transaction get into your Quicken account; and how, exactly, is it recorded?

If the date of your Quicken account opening balance transaction is prior to the beginning date of your report, that transaction should not appear in the report. Amounts received (income), or spent (expenses), prior to the starting date of a report ... should not appear in the report.

I have no idea why you are suggesting that excluding such a transaction from a report would have anything to do with causing you to be out of balance with your real-world account. The date-range of Quicken transactions you choose to include in a Quicken report has nothing to do with keeping your Quicken account balance in sync with your real-world account balance.

[And - as I noted previously - if you want the Quicken opening balance transaction to appear in the report (despite the fact that it does not seem, based on your problem description, that it should be there), you can control that with the report Customize > Advanced dialog for Transfers, or the Customize > Categories dialog by selecting/deselecting the appropriate transfers into/out of specific accounts.]

torgerme

I linked all bank accounts for 2018, the balance of my account on Jan 1 was $5,000, so I entered the opening balance, correctly in the square brackets. I guess I could change that date to 12/31/17, so it wouldn’t appear in a 2018 spending report. Thanks. Can you tell me how to expand the Other category? It represents 24% of my spending, so I would like those categories to also appear in the graph. Is there a limit? I did go in and customize to select the categories I want to appear, but it is grouping about 8 categories into other.  

torgerme

thanks for pointing out that a spending report doesn’t matter/affect reconciling with my bank balance, I was missing that, duh! Also, I did more research and it appears that the spending graph is limited to 10 categories. Thanks again for your help.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:

"I guess I could change that date to 12/31/17, so it wouldn't appear in a 2018 spending report."

Yes, you could do that - and sometimes that may be the best way.

In general, you can usually handle those transactions differently for reports.

Quicken calls transactions that transfer funds back into the same account (typically, opening balance transactions and adjustment transactions), "self-transfers" (that's a new name for them, starting in Q2018, I believe).

You can exclude self-transfers from most reports by going to the Customize > Advanced tab and selecting "Exclude self-transfers" from the "Transfers" dropdown. [If you have a version earlier than Q2018, try "Exclude internal" in the same dropdown.]