Export reports showing $0 categories

TZQuick

I use 3 Quicken files, all have identical income & expense categories. Is there a way to export reports to Excel including zero dollar categories? My goal is to merge the reports in Excel to provide a report with income & expenses from all 3 files. If I can't export the zero dollar categories then there is a lot of row insertion in Excel that is time consuming and error prone. I recall a check box for 'include zero dollar categories' when customizing reports in previous versions, but it seems to have disappeared. Is there a way to do this?

Sherlock

TZQuick said:

Dummy transactions sound like the trick. Is there a way to use a spreadsheet (or some other program) to create a .qfx file to import the transactions? I'll have to create a transaction for each unused category for each file for each reporting period. That ends up being a lot of manual input. It would make it simple if I could start with a spreadsheet with a zero dollar transaction for each category then change the date each reporting period to import the transactions.

I suggest using a QIF file.  If you're good with text processing, you could export the categories and produce a QIF file to import to create a category account.  If this is something you intend to do regularly, you should be able to script it.

Sherlock

The reports filter transactions.  For a category to appear in the report, the category must appear in a transaction in the report.  To coerce your desired behavior, I suggest you create one or more dummy transactions.

Note: The prior functionality you recalled was expanded to an Amounts pull-down menu on the Advanced tab.

TZQuick

Dummy transactions sound like the trick. Is there a way to use a spreadsheet (or some other program) to create a .qfx file to import the transactions? I'll have to create a transaction for each unused category for each file for each reporting period. That ends up being a lot of manual input. It would make it simple if I could start with a spreadsheet with a zero dollar transaction for each category then change the date each reporting period to import the transactions.

Sherlock

TZQuick said:

Dummy transactions sound like the trick. Is there a way to use a spreadsheet (or some other program) to create a .qfx file to import the transactions? I'll have to create a transaction for each unused category for each file for each reporting period. That ends up being a lot of manual input. It would make it simple if I could start with a spreadsheet with a zero dollar transaction for each category then change the date each reporting period to import the transactions.

I suggest using a QIF file.  If you're good with text processing, you could export the categories and produce a QIF file to import to create a category account.  If this is something you intend to do regularly, you should be able to script it.

TZQuick

Thank you very much Sherlock. I found a nice Excel Add-In called XLS2QIF which, as the name implies, converts an Excel file to QIF. I exported my Category List to Excel, then create a $0 transaction for each category, created a Category Account in each of my Quicken files, as you suggested, then imported the transactions using the QIF file into the Category Account in each file. I run my reports quarterly, so I simply change the date on the transactions in the Excel file, use the utility to create a new QIF file and import them into the Category Accounts. My report exports now line up easily making my task SO much simpler! Thanks again.