Simple Expense Report Showing Year To Date Actual vs. Annual Budget By Category

Tim Theisen

Quicken 2019 - Is there a way to create a YTD report that shows 3 columns - Category,  YTD Spending, and Annual Budget Amount for the category?  

I want to compare year to date spending against an entire years budgeted amount and have not been able to figure out how to do this.  The standard budget report shows Category, YTD Spending, and YTD budget amount for that category, but I like to see how much of the entire yearly budget has been spent.    Is this available, and I just have not figured out how to do it?  I guess I could put the entire annual budgeted amount into January, and run their standard YTD budget report, but that seems strange to have to do that.  I wish there was a way just do annual budgets, rather than having to specify  amounts for each month for each category.

Jim_Harman

Is Reports > Spending > Historical budget with Budget year set to this year and the interval set to Year what you are looking for?

Jim_Harman

To help make questions and answers easier to find, it is best to start a separate discussion for a new question.

Hint for your question: There are a lot of ways to populate the monthly budget columns. Search Quicken Help for "work with budget" (without the quotes)

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
" ... you have to click on the gear at the top right to customize it, and on the Display tab next to Column, pick None."

I think the original poster did not notice that "Date Range" and "Interval" are two different parameters - and I forgot that that parameter has a different name in the Customize dialog than it does in the top row of the report.

I suggested setting Date Range to "Yearly" - and "Interval" to "None" (or "Year"); both of which will produce just one set of Actual/Budget/Difference columns.

[Note: if the Budget report window is not wide enough, the "Interval" dropdown will not appear. Either the window must be widened, or the Customize dialog (and the "Column" dropdown) must be used. It would be better if that parameter were given the same name in both places.]

Jim_Harman

Is Reports > Spending > Historical budget with Budget year set to this year and the interval set to Year what you are looking for?

Tim Theisen

Wow - this is exactly what I am looking for!  I had no idea "Historical" would give me this type of report.   Thanks!  

A follow on question, if that is allowed ... do you know if there is a way to create a budget with just entering an annual amount instead of an amount for each month for each category.  Maybe I should post another question for that, or maybe that has already been answered. I am a bit of a novice on asking questions here.   Thanks again.  

Jim_Harman

To help make questions and answers easier to find, it is best to start a separate discussion for a new question.

Hint for your question: There are a lot of ways to populate the monthly budget columns. Search Quicken Help for "work with budget" (without the quotes)

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
"I had no idea 'Historical' would give me this type of report."

You can produce the same results in the Spending > Current Budget report.

Set the Date Range to Yearly, the Interval to None (or Year), and choose the Budget Year of interest.

Tim Theisen

Inmshiggins said:

From C. D. Bales:
"I had no idea 'Historical' would give me this type of report."

You can produce the same results in the Spending > Current Budget report.

Set the Date Range to Yearly, the Interval to None (or Year), and choose the Budget Year of interest.

I tried this, and at first I didn't think it worked because I see all the columns of months (even though I made the settings Yearly  like  you specified) but then realized that if I scroll over to the right all the way it shows the annual totals to the right of all the months columns. Thanks.

Jim_Harman

To get the annual-only display in the Current Budget report, you have to click on the gear at the top right to customize it, and on the Display tab next to Column, pick None.

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
" ... you have to click on the gear at the top right to customize it, and on the Display tab next to Column, pick None."

I think the original poster did not notice that "Date Range" and "Interval" are two different parameters - and I forgot that that parameter has a different name in the Customize dialog than it does in the top row of the report.

I suggested setting Date Range to "Yearly" - and "Interval" to "None" (or "Year"); both of which will produce just one set of Actual/Budget/Difference columns.

[Note: if the Budget report window is not wide enough, the "Interval" dropdown will not appear. Either the window must be widened, or the Customize dialog (and the "Column" dropdown) must be used. It would be better if that parameter were given the same name in both places.]

Tim Theisen

Your note is what I was missing ... I made my window wider, and now I see the Interval field.  Thanks all! 

Jim_Harman

In QWin 2019, when I open the stock Current Budget report the Interval option is not visible because the report window is too narrow.

I now see that widening the window makes the inverval option visible, and it defaults to Month. Changing that to None gives the desired result.