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Why do I have one category where the to date balance is thousands less than rollover balance?

rkearsley

I have set up me budget to rollover balances at the end of each month. In all categories but one, the current month balance equals the to date balance. One category, on the other hand, shows a negative $13,000 balance in the to date column but the current month balance is a positive $600. With that discrepancy, I can't trust the bottom line totals and rollover reserve. How can I fix the one category that is calculating wrong.

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Comments

Michael Jones

You need to go back in time and find the month, possibly in the past, where it shows you spent a ton of money in that category.

Sorry, that was wrong info!

This is an area where Quicken has had some 'challenges' lately and it seems to affect people differently. For me, it just deleted my current year transfers. For others, it seems to have messed up many back years of data.

rkearsley

I have set up the rollover with a zero rollover balance in January and then rollover from then forward. Do I have to go back 3 or 4 years? It seems to me that a budget that starts in January with no rollover from previous years should not look back beyond the beginning of the budget.

Michael Jones

Sorry, I was not thinking of rollovers resetting at the start of the year. My apologies.

Here is what Quicken's help file says if this helps:

If you underspend in one rollover category, and overspend in another, you can easily subtract from, add to, or reset your rollover amounts to compensate. Here's how:
1. Click the Planning tab.
2. Click the Budgets button.
3. Click the balance amount of a rollover category you want to change.
4. In the Rollover popup, click Edit, change the rollover amount as needed, then click Reset. To remove a rollover amount completely, enter 0.00.
5. Click Save to update the balance of the category.
Note: If you decide later that you want to remove the changes you've made to your rollover amounts, click (the Rollover On icon), and choose Undo all rollover edits for [Year]. This will reset all of your rollovers for the year to their calculated, default values.

You could also try turning off roll over for that category and then turn it back on and see if that changes anything when you do.

Lastly, the line that is negative, is it a summary that has other sub-categories? Sometimes I've seen Quicken not show expenses in sub-categories, especially if that sub-category didn't have a budget. Say 'auto: service' for instance where Auto might show a balance, but i might not see 'service' if I hadn't set up a budget or was showing actuals against it.

Apologies again for my earlier reply.

rkearsley

I have done all the suggestions in Quicken help file. The category in question is a single subcategory Tax:Fed. I set the rollover balance to zero for January. Monthly balances have tracked accurately each month as my Federal Tax withholding is entered from downloaded pay statements. Current end of August balance is a positive amount because withholding will not be entered until end of the month. July end of month balance is negative 1,083. But the To Date BALANCE column still shows negative 13,486. I have turned rollover on and off and back on again several times with no change in the results. I don't know where quicken is getting the numbers to calculate the to date balance on that category. None of my other categories differ from current month balances.

The Summary Tax category shows negative 41 which appears to be the consolidation of Tax:State and Tax:Everything Else but ignores the negative balance on Tax:Fed

Michael Jones

Sounds like you might need to call their tech support and walk through it. Maybe you found a bug?

UKR

If you haven't rebooted Windows since you installed the latest software update, please do so now and then try Quicken again.

Still not working?

Let's try some "Troubleshooting 101" to ensure the Quicken software is installed and updated properly and that your data file is in good working order.
Please perform all the steps in this document:
Troubleshooting 101 - Fixing Software Installation and Data File Problems

richard13

> @rkearsley said:
> I have done all the suggestions in Quicken help file. The category in question is a single subcategory Tax:Fed. I set the rollover balance to zero for January. Monthly balances have tracked accurately each month as my Federal Tax withholding is entered from downloaded pay statements. Current end of August balance is a positive amount because withholding will not be entered until end of the month. July end of month balance is negative 1,083. But the To Date BALANCE column still shows negative 13,486. I have turned rollover on and off and back on again several times with no change in the results. I don't know where quicken is getting the numbers to calculate the to date balance on that category. None of my other categories differ from current month balances.
>
> The Summary Tax category shows negative 41 which appears to be the consolidation of Tax:State and Tax:Everything Else but ignores the negative balance on Tax:Fed

I seem to recall seeing this before in other budget categories where there was no specific budget for the parent category but I did for the sub categories. But then I had spending for the parent category occasionally. Or something like that. I figured it was a bug and adjusted accordingly. Sorry, I can't be more specific as I haven't encountered this in a while and I don't remember the details.

Say, why are you budgeting your taxes anyway? They are going to happen regardless and you have little control over them. I budget only for discretionary expenditures.

linda katz

I'm also having trouble with the "to date" column for at least one income category (salary) and one expense category (dining). In both cases, it's showing the actual total, rather than the difference between budgeted and actual. I think there's a program bug that needs to be fixed.

linda katz

I've determined that using sub-categories is causing problems. You have to include the parent and *all* of the subcategories in order to get it to work properly.