Delete Obsolete "Required" Categories

Shelster

@jacobs I'd like to be able to use the "Investment interest expense" subcategory for the occasional times I am hit with margin interest. It seems like a reasonable use of that subcategory. Alas, it doesn't appear in my dropdown; only ESPP shows up as a selectable option under Investments. Thus, I had to create my own category and map it to the same tax form and line. The same goes for Investment Management fees. It's really quite ludicrous.

I cannot imagine how Quicken can perform calculations or report on transactions with these subcategories when it's impossible to assign them.

I will add, however, that I did finally find a workaround. I am not a fan of manual data entry, which is synonymous with user error and dirty data in my book. Further, I've intermittently found that Quicken behaves differently (in a bad way) when pasting "<cat>:<subcat>" vs selecting the subcat from the menu. For these reasons, I ctrl-click and use menus whenever possible.

BUT, in this case, manually typing the whole shebang did "take". Since it's "required," the number of uses is not displayed in the Categories window, but reporting by category does include this handful of manually-coded transactions.

I find it troubling that some category-coding issues are solved by selecting from the menu and yet doing so isn't an option in others.

jacobs

 I'd like to be able to use the "Investment interest expense" subcategory for the occasional times I am hit with margin interest.

It sounds like you're trying to do this as a banking-type transaction instead of an investment-type transaction. In a brokerage account, pull down the transaction Type menu and you'll find Margin Interest Expense is right there in the list:

You're trying to swim uphill against the way Quicken Mac is designed. Investment transacitons are a different species inside the database; they were created as a closed system when the original Quicien Essentials was reborn into modern Quicken Mac a decade ago. I personally wouldn't trust that all aspects of reporting on investments would be correct if I didn't use the built-in investment type transactions, but if you've found a way that works reliably for you, then good for you. I'd just suggest trying to stick with the tools that are already offered rather than find a loophole in something that wasn't designed to do what you want it to, unless there is truly no alternative.