Why do the two "home" tab spending graphs show different spending?

spinnaker

Quicken Deluxe 2019 R19.44 Windows. The small builtin expense report / graph in the Home shows a lower spending amount than the "full graph" or expense report. It is spread across some, but not all, categories. After researching a manageable category I've identified that the built-in version includes ONLY charges to the sub-categories and excludes any charged to the higher level expense category. I've verified that the higher level is checked in the customization for that report, as it is for the "full" report. Very frustrating! Is this a known problem? Is there a cure?

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
Quicken tends to assume (logically, I believe) that when you create child categories (subcategories), you are indicating that you want a more detailed categorization than just a single category can provide. 

Once you create one or more child categories (subcategories) for a given parent category, Quicken wants to use the parent category just for showing the total of its child categories (which also seems logical to me). If you record transactions to a parent category, the parent category amount in reports/graphs will always be misleading: its amount will no longer provide an accurate total of its subcategories, nor an accurate total of the transactions assigned just to it. 

I have no opinion on why Quicken allows the inconsistent displays you report - other than I think it's likely not an easy concept to implement consistently. 

But you can easily work around the specific problem of this discussion: create one more child category for your parent category; call it "All Other" or "None Of The Above", or whatever. Then, instead of recording transactions to the parent category, record them to the "All Other" child category (*).

[ (*) Quicken already anticipates this to some extent. If you have any budgets setup, go to Planning > Budgets, and click "Select categories to budget" in the lower left. Note that all parent categories have a child pseudo-category of "Other" ... without you ever having created such a child category in your Category List. If you have transactions assigned to a parent category and you select the "Other" child category of that Parent in your budget, Quicken will display the amount of those parent-category transactions in Other:Parent Category (and it will also display there in your Budget report). By creating your own "other" child category (such as "None Of The Above", you can get correct accounting of what goes in the "None Of The Above" category ... everywhere, as well as an accurate total of all the child categories of a given parent category ... everywhere.]

mshiggins

From C. D. Bales:
Quicken tends to assume (logically, I believe) that when you create child categories (subcategories), you are indicating that you want a more detailed categorization than just a single category can provide. 

Once you create one or more child categories (subcategories) for a given parent category, Quicken wants to use the parent category just for showing the total of its child categories (which also seems logical to me). If you record transactions to a parent category, the parent category amount in reports/graphs will always be misleading: its amount will no longer provide an accurate total of its subcategories, nor an accurate total of the transactions assigned just to it. 

I have no opinion on why Quicken allows the inconsistent displays you report - other than I think it's likely not an easy concept to implement consistently. 

But you can easily work around the specific problem of this discussion: create one more child category for your parent category; call it "All Other" or "None Of The Above", or whatever. Then, instead of recording transactions to the parent category, record them to the "All Other" child category (*).

[ (*) Quicken already anticipates this to some extent. If you have any budgets setup, go to Planning > Budgets, and click "Select categories to budget" in the lower left. Note that all parent categories have a child pseudo-category of "Other" ... without you ever having created such a child category in your Category List. If you have transactions assigned to a parent category and you select the "Other" child category of that Parent in your budget, Quicken will display the amount of those parent-category transactions in Other:Parent Category (and it will also display there in your Budget report). By creating your own "other" child category (such as "None Of The Above", you can get correct accounting of what goes in the "None Of The Above" category ... everywhere, as well as an accurate total of all the child categories of a given parent category ... everywhere.]