How do I do a transfer of funds and assign a budget Catagory to the transfer? (Q Mac)

John Krueger

I am trying to do a transfer of funds from one account to another and assign it a budget category and I can't seem to figure out how to do it?

jacobs

The first part is easy; the second part isn't currently possible.

The easiest way to do transfers is to make the Transfer column visible in your register(s). Click the Columns icon in the bottom toolbar, then check Transfer. Then, entering your transaction which is a transfer, select the account you're transferring to.

But you can't budget for transfers in Quicken Mac -- at least currently. From an accounting standpoint, budgets consist of revenues and expenses, and a transfer is neither revenue nor expense. If a transfer is paying a credit card bill, for example, the expenses have already been recorded and categorized with all the individual transactions in the credit card account, so the payment of the bill would double-count expenses if it counted for anything.  But for many Quicken users, the payment of a credit card bill or loan payment feels like an expense they need to budget for, so it requires the program to include some (but not all) cash flow transfer to be included in the budget. The Quicken Mac product manager has acknowledged this, and has said they are going to implement a way to do this, but we don't know when it will become available. 

jacobs

John, you can easily do the actual transfers in Quicken. You just can't budget transfers. My examples of a credit card or loan payment above were just typical examples. Savings funds are another typical one. As I said above, they're working on some way to allow this in the future, but for now, you can't.

The question you may want to ask yourself is whether you need to budget for all these categories. If you have a set distribution of funds from your IRA into several savings accounts, do you really need to see that in your budget? You can see the account balances in your sidebar or on a net worth report, and if the distributions are basically on auto-pilot, you might narrow the focus of your Quicken budget to the items which are variable that you want to actively keep an eye on. Just a thought; people have lots of different ideas of what they use a budget for.

jacobs

The first part is easy; the second part isn't currently possible.

The easiest way to do transfers is to make the Transfer column visible in your register(s). Click the Columns icon in the bottom toolbar, then check Transfer. Then, entering your transaction which is a transfer, select the account you're transferring to.

But you can't budget for transfers in Quicken Mac -- at least currently. From an accounting standpoint, budgets consist of revenues and expenses, and a transfer is neither revenue nor expense. If a transfer is paying a credit card bill, for example, the expenses have already been recorded and categorized with all the individual transactions in the credit card account, so the payment of the bill would double-count expenses if it counted for anything.  But for many Quicken users, the payment of a credit card bill or loan payment feels like an expense they need to budget for, so it requires the program to include some (but not all) cash flow transfer to be included in the budget. The Quicken Mac product manager has acknowledged this, and has said they are going to implement a way to do this, but we don't know when it will become available. 

John Krueger

Thank you. It isn't a credit card payment that I'm dealing with. It is a transfer and distribution of funds from my IRA. Some of the funds go into various special Savings accounts for ourselves and our grandkids (Budget categories: Savings and individual "education" categories for each grandkid). These are all budgeted funds. The rest goes into our checking account as income.

jacobs

John, you can easily do the actual transfers in Quicken. You just can't budget transfers. My examples of a credit card or loan payment above were just typical examples. Savings funds are another typical one. As I said above, they're working on some way to allow this in the future, but for now, you can't.

The question you may want to ask yourself is whether you need to budget for all these categories. If you have a set distribution of funds from your IRA into several savings accounts, do you really need to see that in your budget? You can see the account balances in your sidebar or on a net worth report, and if the distributions are basically on auto-pilot, you might narrow the focus of your Quicken budget to the items which are variable that you want to actively keep an eye on. Just a thought; people have lots of different ideas of what they use a budget for.

John Krueger

Good thought. Being from german blood, I seem to be very anal in wanting to budget all of my spendable funds. :) :) :) I will consider your suggestion. Thank you for your timely reply.

JT_Runner

Just wanted to put in another vote for this feature for Quicken on Mac, as it still appears not to be available. One of my examples is how to budget for mortgages: a portion of the monthly expense is mortgage interest, and another portion is for paying off principal, which is also tracked as a loan in Quicken. Ideally the transfer against the loan account could be budgeted for. Currently, here is no way to track budget for paying off the loan. It negates the loan feature in the context of budgeting for loan payoffs.

jacobs

@JT_Runner  As noted above, the developers understand people want to be able to budget for transfers and have been working on it for quite a while. Adding the capability to select/exclude accounts in reports -- functionality added over the past 6 months -- was an important precursor to what they'll be doing for the budget. Apparently a lot of the budget code needs to be re-written, but we won't know what they're cooking up until something is released.

When will that be? We don't know, and they don't say. But I'd guess it might be sometime this summer. And base don some of the other features they're introduced over the past year, it's likely the first release will provide some functionality, and then they'll continue to tweak it based on user feedback until they "get it right."