Checked categories do not show up in my budget - how do I fix this?

susan.cassagne

I had a budget set up and expenses just stopped showing up for some months. I created a new budget and some categories just don't show, even though they are checked. How can I fix this? I am using a Mac, with Quicken Deluxe 2019. Thanks!

jacobs

@susan.cassagne Speaking specifically about loans, the issue here is that paying an auto loan payment is typically split into two parts: part of the payment is Interest Expense, and part is a transfer to reduce the principal of your loan. Do you have a separate loan account in Quicken, and is your payment transaction set up as such a split?

If yes, then you've run into the problem many Quicken Mac users have complained about: while Quicken is correct from an accounting standpoint treating the principal portion of your loan payment as a transfer between checking (an asset) and the loan (a liability), the budget shows only income and expenses, and a transfer between assets and liabilities is neither. What you (and many others) want is a way for the budget to function more like a cash flow statement, where transfers can be included. This makes complete sense, because you're budgeting for your cash flow, not an accounting income statement. And so as you've discovered, it's not possible to do this currently in Quicken Mac. The good news is that the product manager has said they're going to implement a way to do this; however, we have no idea how soon this functionality will appear in the program.

Aside from a transfer like this loan, are there other categories you're having problem sight in your budget?

Some people get frustrated at not being able to budget for a monthly credit card payment -- which again, is a transfer from checking to a credit card, and is not an expense. The individual charge transactions on the credit card are the expenses, and you can probably see that if Quicken included both the categorized expenses and the payment of the credit card, your budget would include these expenses twice. From a purely cash flow standpoint, the transactions on your credit card are jot relevant, only the payment of the credit card bill. So the Quicken developers have to find a way to allow people to practically do their budgets without tossing aside all rules of accounting.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello Susan,

Sorry, you haven't received a response.

Are these categories missing in the main budget screen or are they missing in the Edit budget screen?

Are these all income or expense categories or a mix?

Are the missing categories related in any way? Do they have the same parent category?

Let us know!

-Quicken Tyka

susan.cassagne

Hi! Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The categories show up in my budget, but the actual expenses for some categories do not. For example, Auto:Loan has expenditures, but the category shows with no expenditures. Is there no way to distinguish which accounts are reflected in a budget?
Thanks!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello Susan,

Thank you for the clarification.

Currently, the budget includes all accounts that are listed in the file unless the accounts have been hidden. There isn't an option to exclude specific accounts at this time.

Are the amounts that are being excluded transfers by chance? If so, the ability to include transfers in the budget is unavailable at this time.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7333957/add-ability-to-include-or-exclude-transfers-on-budgets-in-quicken-for-mac-452-legacy-votes

If the issue isn't with transfers, I would verify the category name on the transactions to ensure they include the sub-category. For example, "Auto: Loan" isn't categorized as just "Auto" 

Let us know!

UKR

susan.cassagne said:

Hi! Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The categories show up in my budget, but the actual expenses for some categories do not. For example, Auto:Loan has expenditures, but the category shows with no expenditures. Is there no way to distinguish which accounts are reflected in a budget?
Thanks!

Are you sure, Auto:Loan should have transactions going into it?
On a manual loan account, when you pay your auto loan from your checking account, the transaction's principal amount is recorded as a Split transfer to the loan account, not as an expense to Auto:Loan.
Only if the loan account is connected to the bank for transaction downloading (which I recommend you don't do), will the principal amount of the payment be recorded to Auto:Loan, because a connected loan account gets all its information downloaded from the bank, not from the split payment transaction.

susan.cassagne

Well, this makes the Budget function absolutely useless (for me) unless I change certain category names. The ability to choose the accounts to pull categories from would certainly help. Thank you all.

jacobs

@susan.cassagne Speaking specifically about loans, the issue here is that paying an auto loan payment is typically split into two parts: part of the payment is Interest Expense, and part is a transfer to reduce the principal of your loan. Do you have a separate loan account in Quicken, and is your payment transaction set up as such a split?

If yes, then you've run into the problem many Quicken Mac users have complained about: while Quicken is correct from an accounting standpoint treating the principal portion of your loan payment as a transfer between checking (an asset) and the loan (a liability), the budget shows only income and expenses, and a transfer between assets and liabilities is neither. What you (and many others) want is a way for the budget to function more like a cash flow statement, where transfers can be included. This makes complete sense, because you're budgeting for your cash flow, not an accounting income statement. And so as you've discovered, it's not possible to do this currently in Quicken Mac. The good news is that the product manager has said they're going to implement a way to do this; however, we have no idea how soon this functionality will appear in the program.

Aside from a transfer like this loan, are there other categories you're having problem sight in your budget?

Some people get frustrated at not being able to budget for a monthly credit card payment -- which again, is a transfer from checking to a credit card, and is not an expense. The individual charge transactions on the credit card are the expenses, and you can probably see that if Quicken included both the categorized expenses and the payment of the credit card, your budget would include these expenses twice. From a purely cash flow standpoint, the transactions on your credit card are jot relevant, only the payment of the credit card bill. So the Quicken developers have to find a way to allow people to practically do their budgets without tossing aside all rules of accounting.

susan.cassagne

I finally came to that conclusion. I added a similar category (Auto:Loan and Auto Loan) and separated the categories in the two accounts. The auto loan is interest free, so the total expense is the principal. Still, a little frustrating that I have to "trick" Quicken into doing what I need! Thank you!